Someone trying to pass himself off as Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan had put up a blog on blogspot, written in Farsi.* It seems to have been another Iranian living in the Toronto area. I wonder what motive someone would have to do such a thing; it seems that the imposter was using his site to say all sorts of nasty things. Could this be an attempt to discredit expatriate Iranian bloggers in the eyes of their own people, especially back home in Iran?
*Or Arabic. I read somewhere that both languages are used by Iranian bloggers, but since I read neither, I'll just say it's written in that pretty alphabet that looks like clouds and tree branches.
Posted by Andrea Harris at June 3, 2003 11:03 AMHello,
As I read somewhere, it has been written from Iran and by sending emails to Blogger, it is blocked now. I think the best thing is to not talk about these stupid attempts and neglect them.
Well, I didn't link to it. (Good thing, since it is gone.) But, I disagree that we shouldn't talk about it. I think we should -- we need to let these frauds know that we are on to their game, and they aren't going to get away with it.
Posted by: Andrea Harris at June 3, 2003 at 11:55 AMAs I wrote for Hoder, hopefully it is blocked and perhaps deleted now and I think it is because of the emails we sent to Blogger. I still think it is the best way, to neglect them and also talk to blogger to block them if possible but trying to mix virtual and real world stuff, make things like what we hear about recent Iran events.
Cheers,
Simone
Posted by: simone at June 3, 2003 at 12:24 PMI'm curious as to which language was used. Farsi is Indo-European and Arabic is Afro-Asiatic, and more specifically Semitic.
Posted by: RR Ryan at June 3, 2003 at 04:39 PMI'm curious as to which language was used. Farsi is Indo-European and Arabic is Afro-Asiatic, and more specifically Semitic.
Posted by: RR Ryan at June 3, 2003 at 04:40 PMI'm curious as to which language was used. Farsi is Indo-European and Arabic is Afro-Asiatic, and more specifically Semitic.
Posted by: RR Ryan at June 3, 2003 at 04:40 PMJust click once -- if it seems to be taking a long time to load your comment, be patient -- the server is sometimes slow.
About the language: I can't tell. The alphabet they use for Farsi now is derived from Arabic. (There is an old Avestan script, but I don't think that is used for everyday writing in Iran anymore. Any linguists who know more feel free to chime in.)
Posted by: Andrea Harris at June 3, 2003 at 06:39 PMI inquired about that and some friends told me they are in arabic not farsi language.
Cheers,
-Adam
Posted by: Adam at June 3, 2003 at 11:59 PMWell, I guess everyone is confused here. I would be too. Let me explain it better as Persian is my mother tongue and I know Arabic as well.
1. Persian (or as we call it Farsi, in Persian) has got the same alphabet as Arabic, plus 4 other letters: G, Ch, P, and zh
2. As much as %40 of Persian words are either Arabic, or derived from Arabic. But pronounced differently.
3. Despite all these similarities, it is much harder (almost impossible) for an Arab to understand Persian, compared to for example an Spanish understanding Italian.
4. All weblogs by Iranians are in Persian. Although as much as %5 of Iran's population have Arabic as their mother tongue. Mostly those who live in southern Iran close to Arab borders.
Cheers
P.S. Please contact me of you need any more explanation on that.