Tehran - An Iranian linguistic centre has called for the use of a Farsi term for mobile-phone text-messaging, or SMS, the Fars news agency reported Wednesday. The Farhangestan, the country's linguistic watchdog centre responsible for presenting genuine Persian vocabulary, has approved the Farsi term payamak (little message) for SMS, Fars reported.
Payam means message and -ak is a diminutive ending in Farsi.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had last year ordered the government and official organizations to avoid using Western terms and replace them with relevant Farsi translations given by the Farhangestan.
Farsi contains a large number of Arabic terms similar to Latin phrases in European languages - including most first names, which cannot all be denoted in the Persian language.
Before and after the 1979 Islamic revolution, Western terms - mainly French and English - were gradually adopted by speakers of the language, causing deep concern among Tehran's rulers over the so- called "Western cultural invasion" which is also considered a political threat.
Western terms already Persianized include the equivalent in Farsi of "telephone which you carry with yourself" for mobile phone and "long-distance-writing" for fax.
Terms like bye bye, or merci (thank you), or ascenseur (lift), have become an integral part of Farsi and are used by almost everybody - even in rural areas - sometimes more often than the Farsi equivalents.
Also terms like balabar (getting up) for lift have been approved but are not used and are hardly understood by most people.
There are also a lot of technical terms - "machine," "telephone," or "traffic" - for which no Farsi terms have yet been found.
