My mom is always worried about me eventually getting married to an American girl. She always says she wants to do some "Raft-o-Amad" with her aroos's family. And she thinks she will not be able to communicate with an American girl and her family. I somehow understand her concern though.
I've been dating an Iranian-American girl for quite a while and luckily she can speak Farsi so she passes my mom's requirements. Our conversations are in engelo-farsi, some in Farsi and some in English. Needless to say, I was raised in Iran and it’s only a couple of years that I'm here so I’m better off with Farsi. But she is raised in Canada and the US and she prefers English.
Having romantic conversations in English is the creepiest thing I have ever done. I guess it’s just so gross. Seriously who calls a loved one "Pumpkin"? Honestly, I tried so hard. I even looked up for some effective romantic lines on the internet, it just didn't work. On the other hand in Farsi we have gazillions of romantic poems that one can use too woo any woman. Just open up a conversation with a Fereidoon Moshiri’s poem and bingo, you are in! (Well, not necessarily, I mean you can read Shamloo and still be a jackass. But generally speaking it helps)
No wonder why Native speakers pop in some French words when they want to show off their romance. English is not for romance period. Maybe, a good language to do science or business, but not romance. I hate Farsi because of all the "Laffaazi (verbiage)" that can be done in this language but I'm all for it when it comes to romance.
Believe me "Delbar" is much more delicate than "Pumpkin" (Aaaaaargh)
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PT, I do not agree with you.
by KKs (not verified) on Sat Jun 07, 2008 05:34 AM PDTPT, I do not agree with you. I am not Iranian. I only know a few words in Farsi and I have been called Joon, Joonam, Azizam, Esh-ghe-man (I am sorry, I do not remember how to spell that) etc. for many, many years and have understood. Every time :)
Words you cannot use with a
by PT (not verified) on Mon Nov 26, 2007 08:26 AM PSTWords you cannot use with a person that isn't Iranian: Joon. Not just azizam joonam. But JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON. You know, when it's the right time and the right place, JOOOOOON. How about AKH! or vay vay vay...OR khak tu saret konan. OR any other fun word you can think of. Cherie doesn't cut it.
Language is Beside the Point
by Curious Joe on Sun Nov 25, 2007 08:48 PM PSTAll you have to do is remember "Darling", "Azizam" or "Cherie".
If you are broad-minded and non-monogamous, those 3 words will free you from remembering the name or particulars of the person you are being intimate for the weekend, the week, the year, or the the rest of your life.
There was once a guy (about
by mitra n (not verified) on Sun Nov 25, 2007 07:31 PM PSTThere was once a guy (about 30-35 years ago), he was very handsome, very witty, quite well off, thirty something, and per everyone ready to get married.
He had a German girlfriend (in Iran)and they had been dating for some years...
So people started asking him questions like when are you gonna get married? and when's the big day ? .... (of course when she was not around!)
He'd always laugh it off and change the subject, but one day he got tired of it all and said:
"x...... is a wonderful girl and she is very pretty, but the truth is I can't marry her cause if I call her 'googooli magooli-e jigari-e man' she won't understand!
And if I want to explain, it'll take a lifetime (and all the mazeh will vanish) and by then she'll probably not be 'googooli magooli-e jigari-e man' any longer!"
So he didn't marry her.
Later she married an Iranian guy who used a different set of words to explain his feelings!
( ...and they lived happily ever after!)
,
He finally, after several years, married a woman who was the most "banamak" woman we knew!
The thing was SHE used to call HIM "googooli magooli-e jigai-e man!!" .... and HE understood!
Jooon ;)
by DokhtarSasani on Sun Nov 25, 2007 04:44 PM PSTI agree with you 110% - one of the main reasons that I only date Iranian guys is this same issue of language and expression. Despite being one of the most descriptive languages in the world, English has nothing on Persian when it comes to romance. There are so many things that just can't be expressed in as yakh and biehsas a language as English. It's actually quite off-putting to hear "sweetie" rather than "azizam," especially when uttered from the lips of an Iranian (ah ah ah!).
Persian is actually known as the language of love thanks to its extensive love-related vocabulary. I personally think it has to do with the intensity of that vocabulary as well. After all, "fadat sham" carries so much more meaning than "you're my sugarpop," or something alaki like that. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that we have such a dramatic culture...
REPLY : I BET YOU.....................
by Faribors Maleknasri M.D. (not verified) on Sun Nov 25, 2007 11:26 AM PSTI think every language can be evaluate, assessed judgedcand classified only in the same language. comparing different languages is pointless relating to romance. how should a american or europian girl understand when she gets her beuty compared with moon. specialy wiht moon on 14th night? the english language is more helpfull in technicals, farsi more for poems. the very skilfull translator have translated SAADI HAFIZ and specially the Omar khayam. but stil iranians read these excellent works better in farsi. taking the very rich farsi language into account one gets the result: iranian culture is by no means depressing. just in contorary. how can the rostam story be depressing as one reads the part relating the doughter of SHAH E SAMANGAN? Or about tahmine or about RAKHSH as he takes a female hourse and produses for SOHRAB another hourse? and the way of life also classifies the cultures. For example just acknowledge the following, it is more than a Taser story
The world saw a video last week of Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers using a Taser against a Polish man in the Vancouver International Airport in October.
The man, Robert Dziekanski, died soon after the attack. In recent days, more details have come out about him. It turns out that the 40-year-old did not just die after being shocked - his life was marked by shock as well.
Dziekanski was a young adult in 1989, when Poland began a grand experiment called “shock therapy” for the nation. The promise was that if the communist country accepted a series of brutal economic measures, the reward would be a “normal European country” like France or Germany. The pain would be short, the reward great.
So Poland's government eliminated price controls overnight, slashed subsidies, privatized industries. But for young workers such as Dziekanski, “normal” never arrived. Today, roughly 40% of young Polish workers are unemployed. Dziekanski was among them. He had worked as a typesetter and a miner, but for the last few years, he had been unemployed and had had run-ins with the law.
Like so many Poles of his generation, Dziekanski went looking for work in one of those “normal” countries that Poland was supposed to become but never did. Two million Poles have joined this mass exodus during the last three years alone. Dziekanski's cohorts have gone to work as bartenders in London, doormen in Dublin, plumbers in France. Last month, he chose to follow his mother to British Columbia, Canada, which is in a pre-Olympics construction boom.
“After seven years of waiting, [Dziekanski] arrived to his utopia, Vancouver,” said the Polish consul general, Maciej Krych. “Ten hours later, he was dead.”
Much of the outrage sparked by the video, which was made by another passenger at the airport, has focused on the controversial use of Tasers, already implicated in 17 deaths in Canada and many more in the United States.
But what happened in Vancouver was about more than a weapon. It was also about an increasingly brutal side of the global economy - about the reality that many victims of various forms of economic “shock therapy” face at our borders.
Rapid economic transformations like Poland's have created enormous wealth - in new investment opportunities; currency trading; in leaner, meaner companies able to comb the globe for the cheapest location to manufacture. But from Mexico to China to Poland, they also have created tens of millions of discarded people, the people who lose their jobs when factories close or lose their land when export zones open.
Understandably, many of these people often choose to move: from countryside to city, from country to country. As Dziekanski appeared to be doing, they go in search of that elusive “normal.”
But there isn't enough normal to go around, or so we are told. And so, as migrants move, they are often met with other shocks. A treacherous razor fence protecting Spain's North Africa enclaves, or a Taser gun on the US-Mexican border. Canada, which used to be known around the world for its openness to refugees, is militarizing its borders, with lines between immigrant and terrorist blurring fast.
Dziekanski's inhuman treatment at the hands of the Canadian police must be seen in this context. The police were called when Dziekanski, lost and disoriented, began shouting in Polish, at one point throwing a chair. Faced with a foreigner like Dziekanski, who spoke no English, why talk when you can shock? It strikes me that the same brutal, short-cut logic guided Poland's economic transition to capitalism: Why take the gradual route, which required debate and consent, when “shock therapy” promised an instant, if painful, cure?
I realize that I am talking about very different kinds of shocks here, but they do interconnect in a cycle I call “the shock doctrine.” First comes the shock of a national crisis, making countries desperate for any cure and willing to sacrifice democracy in the process. In Poland in 1989, that first shock was the sudden end of communism and the economic meltdown. Then comes the economic shock therapy, the undemocratic process pushed through in the window of crisis that jolts an economy into growth but blasts so many people out of the picture.
Then, in far too many cases, there is the third shock, the one that disciplines and deals with the discarded people: the desperate, the migrants, those driven mad by the system.
Each shock has the potential to kill, some more suddenly than others.
I have just got a shock and I think how can people live in those countries? for away from real humanfitting culture? Greeting
i bet you an American guy
by just me (not verified) on Sun Nov 25, 2007 08:55 AM PSTi bet you an American guy would disagree. you can't say that persian is more romantic than English or french is more than spanish..The romance of language deeply depends to the culture. for instead persian poems are depressing and sad and that is because of our depressing culture. All language has their own romantic tone. i personally never dated persian before to talk romantic, but i found it's an unfamiliar and strange sound when someone says man asheghetam,i laugh even watching Persian movie. to me, the words "i love you" is more familiar because I have dated Americans... it's all about familiarity and comfort.