A Contribution to the Solution for the Persian Transcription

Abstract

The lack of a generally accepted transcription system for Persian – or at least the one that would be accepted by most authors – represents a difficulty encountered on a daily basis by all scholar studying Persian language and literature or Persian studies in general. Among local Oriental scholars the issue of Persian transcription is limited to consideration of popular transcription of Persian names in our language. As for scholarly transcription, the use of the ZDMG transcription system for Arabic has taken root, wich, due to certain specific characteristics of Persian writing system, as well as the phonetic structure of Persian – especially Persian short vowel system – can produce certain dilemmas and vagueness. The paper proposes a system of transcription for Persian in accordance with the established principles and based on the transcription systems presented in the four recent Persian dictionaries, while taking into account some ideas of the ZDMG transcription system for Arabic, as well as certain minor interventions by the author himself.