Re: New team for [Persian, Old (ca.600-400 B.C.)] ([peo])

["Roozbeh Pournader" <roozbeh gmail com>]

On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 4:16 AM, David Lodge <dave cirt net> wrote:
> There is precedence for deceased languages in Gnome - there is an Olde
> Englisc team (ang) (though nothing's been done for a few years) as there is
> for Latin.

But I don't think Mazdak can really translate GNOME to the Old Persian
language. He probably wants to translate to another language and is
getting the English name/code wrong (also considering what he's been
using for the native name).

I really don't think one can even get to a glossary, let alone a
localization. For Latin (and to some degree for Old English), we have
a lot of text, about various subject matters, and theoretically that
can be extended. For Old Persian, we just have inscriptions in stone,
about conquests or why certain palaces were built. Written Old Persian
has not ever been used for day-to-day material: for that, the Persian
Empire used Aramaic (for "federal" issues, on papyrus) or the varius
local mesopotemian languages written in traditional cuneiform (on
clay).

Apart from short phrases in modern grammar books about Old Persian, no
new text in Old Persian was probably created in the last 24 centuries.
And almost all of the Old Persian corpus is things like this:

"I am Xerxes, the Great King, King of Kings, King of countries
containing many kinds (of men), King in this great earth far and wide,
son of King Darius, an Achaemenian.
Proclaims Xerxes the King: By the favor of Ahuramazda I built this
Gateway of All Nations. I built many other beautiful things in Persia.
I built them and my father built them. All beautiful things we built,
we have built by the favor of Ahuramazda."

Roozbeh