Why Do They Not Talk Persian?

20/03/2008

You get on the plane and, to your surprise, you realize that the person at the control tower, who is an Iranian, is speaking in English with the pilot who himself happens to be another Iranian! I told them that it was forbidden to speak English on the plane on which I traveled. Why not talk in Persian? Well, sometimes you have to speak English because you must communicate with a foreign control tower - for instance when the person at the control tower is Chinese and the pilot is a Farsi speaker, they are forced to use a language that both sides could understand. But on what grounds do they decide to speak English on a flight to Mashhad? The reason is that the English words are already there and the only thing that they have to do is put these words in order. They do not bother to take the extra trouble of turning these words into Persian. Therefore, we must coin words so that we can prevent our language from being driven to the sidelines in such situations - which is unfortunately the case already. This often happens in hospitals as well. We also see the same thing in other places. These are the places in which I myself have seen such cases.

* Related by the Supreme Leader in a meeting with the members of the Academy of Persian Language and Literature on February 16, 1992

^{* Source: http://english.khamenei.ir}