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I've been trying to learn Farsi lately and keep getting struck by the large number of French loanwords. Including at least one that goes back to time of the Cru

I've been trying to learn Farsi lately and keep getting struck by the large number of French loanwords. Including at least one that goes back to time of the Crusades - my wife's Iranian and she always calls me a "Firangi," which basically just mean "Westerner" now, but is a transliteration of "Frank." Apparently it also ended up becoming the name for an Indianized variant on the medieval European broadsword: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firangi_(sword) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firangi_(sword)

Texasian 11y ago
Oh wow, thats crazy interesting... There's a beach area on Penang in Malaysia called Batu Ferringhi. It means Foreigner's Rock. I guess the loan word spread throughout the muslim world somehow...
- ekianjo 11y ago
  Wow, really cool! Words are without borders.
  - partomniscient 11y ago
    Information wants to be free.
- benbreen 11y ago
  Amazingly, it even made its way into Chinese as folangji (佛郎機): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farang#Etymology_and_related_words https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farang#Etymology_and_related_w... Sort of reminds me of an anecdote I read somewhere in a book about medieval fashion - one theory is that those curvy-toed shoes you see in late medieval artwork originated in Tang dynasty China, and the fashion took ~500 years to slowly make its way west across Eurasia.
  - ekianjo 11y ago
    Your link also mentions the word is used in Thai as Farang as well.
    - uptownfunk 11y ago
      It's also in Hindi as Firangi as well.
  - Natsu 11y ago
    Now you have me wondering if it could possibly be the inspiration for the name of the Ferengi.
rezashirazian 11y ago
It is actually much simplier than that. The word you're speaking of is "Farangi" which is Farsi for foreigner. Farsi is an indo-european language so beside loan words which infiltrated the language during Reza Shah's moderinization of Iran, many of them actually share the same root as other Indo-European languages like English, French or German. Farangi is one of those words. It is not a borrowed word
- PopePompous 11y ago
  Farsi has plenty of cognates with English too. My favorite is "Behtar" which means better. The nice twist is that "Beh" means good, so "Behtar" literally means "gooder". English, or some earlier language that became English, probably had a word like "beh" which meant good. But we lost that word, but kept better. Farsi still has both words.
ukz 11y ago
'Pirang' in Bahasa Indonesia describes physical trait of Europeans i.e. hair colour.
malekpour 11y ago
Surprisingly, some essential or very common English words came from Persian including: Check, Magic, Rank, Path, Orange, Peach, Lemon, Candy, Sugar, Caravan, Bronze, Chess, Jackal, Kiosk, Mummy, Paradise...

Texasian 11y ago

Oh wow, thats crazy interesting... There's a beach area on Penang in Malaysia called Batu Ferringhi. It means Foreigner's Rock. I guess the loan word spread throughout the muslim world somehow...

ekianjo 11y ago
Wow, really cool! Words are without borders.
- partomniscient 11y ago
  Information wants to be free.
benbreen 11y ago
Amazingly, it even made its way into Chinese as folangji (佛郎機): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farang#Etymology_and_related_words https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farang#Etymology_and_related_w... Sort of reminds me of an anecdote I read somewhere in a book about medieval fashion - one theory is that those curvy-toed shoes you see in late medieval artwork originated in Tang dynasty China, and the fashion took ~500 years to slowly make its way west across Eurasia.
- ekianjo 11y ago
  Your link also mentions the word is used in Thai as Farang as well.
  - uptownfunk 11y ago
    It's also in Hindi as Firangi as well.
- Natsu 11y ago
  Now you have me wondering if it could possibly be the inspiration for the name of the Ferengi.

rezashirazian 11y ago

It is actually much simplier than that. The word you're speaking of is "Farangi" which is Farsi for foreigner. Farsi is an indo-european language so beside loan words which infiltrated the language during Reza Shah's moderinization of Iran, many of them actually share the same root as other Indo-European languages like English, French or German. Farangi is one of those words. It is not a borrowed word

PopePompous 11y ago
Farsi has plenty of cognates with English too. My favorite is "Behtar" which means better. The nice twist is that "Beh" means good, so "Behtar" literally means "gooder". English, or some earlier language that became English, probably had a word like "beh" which meant good. But we lost that word, but kept better. Farsi still has both words.

ukz 11y ago

'Pirang' in Bahasa Indonesia describes physical trait of Europeans i.e. hair colour.

malekpour 11y ago

Surprisingly, some essential or very common English words came from Persian including: Check, Magic, Rank, Path, Orange, Peach, Lemon, Candy, Sugar, Caravan, Bronze, Chess, Jackal, Kiosk, Mummy, Paradise...