Event Report, Ibaraki Chapter, July 2022

IBARAKI/OLE SIG: July Persian Language and Culture, and the Relationship of Persian and English Languages by Abdollah Dodangeh. Dodangeh focused on the long history of Persian. He introduced the epic poem of the king, the greatest masterpiece of Persian literature, and explained Persian’s treasure of beautiful ancient culture and how the language could connect Middle Eastern and Western Middle Asia as “Harmonic language”, which is among the oldest Indo-European languages families and the second official language of the Islamic world after Arabic. Dodangeh went through Persian’s historical connection to the Bible, where Cyrus the Great, though not Jewish was even referred to as the Messiah, as he liberated Jews. Cyrus the Great was regarded as one who respected the human rights of the subdued nations. The Persian Language can be classified into Classical Persian, Middle Persian, and Modern Persian. A motto in Middle Persian, written by an Iranian poet, raised the participants’ interest as it was used at the United Nations building’s entrance in New York. As for modern Persian, which Dodangeh has been teaching, he elucidated the various influences Persian had on English and other languages and shared a video of Eric Clapton’s Layla. Regarding the text, the musician was inspired by a famous Persian poem. Reported by Naoko Ochiai