Selected Bibliography for Persian study
The newest reference grammar, copies of which are given to the Persian instructors,
is W.M. Thackston’s An Introduction to Persian, Ibex Publishers, Inc., 1993. Thackston
is Professor of Persian and Near East Languages at Harvard.
Ann Lambton's Persian Grammar,
Cambridge U.Press, 1988. (Principally a grammar resource for the
instructor, this book can put the students off with long reading
examples and grammaticalexplanations, but is an excellent source book
for the
teacher.)
Gilbert Lazard's A Grammar of Contemporary Persian (Costa Mesa, California: Mazda, 1992) a valuable reference work for Persian grammar.
L.P. Elwell-Sutton, Elementary Persian Grammar, Cambridge University Press, 1963.
Mehdi Marashi, Elementary Proficiency in Persian, published by the University of Utah
in 1991. (This latter has many useful exercises such as crossword
puzzles and fill-in-the-blanks which are useful in the classroom.)
Finally, the students will have the enormous benefit of the vast array of Persian sites on the web, some of which the instructor will choose and assign for practice in reading comprehension (in particular, www.farsinet.com, Interactive Iranian Persian Global eCommunity for Farsi Speaking People of Planet Earth, which has music, art, poetry, literature, and history), some of which the student will explore on his own for grammar, listening comprehension, and vocabulary.
Additional bibliography
Campbell, G. L. 1991. Compendium of the World's Languages, Vol. 1 –2, London and New York: Routledge.
Central Intelligence Agency. 1992a. "Ethnolinguistic Groups in Afghanistan." (Map number 724842 (R00434) 4-92).
Central Intelligence Agency. 1992b. "Major Ethnic Groups in Tajikistan." (Map number 725416 (R00144) 6-92).
Crystal, D. 1987. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
Levy, R. 1951. The Persian Language. New York: Philosophical Library,
Linguistic Society of America. 1992. Directory of Programs in Linguistics in the United States and Canada. Washington, DC.
Mir-Djalali, E. 1992. Persian Language and Culture. Berkeley, CA: University of California, Berkeley, Department of Linguistics.
Obolonsky, S., K. Danan, and F. Nouri. 1963. Persian Basic Course: Units 1 - 12. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics of the MLA of America.
Payne, J. R. 1987. "Iranian Languages." In B. Comrie, ed. The World's Major Languages,
pp. 514-522. London: Croon Helm.
And by the author of our principal textbooks for the courses
Windfuhr, G. L. 1979. Persian Grammar. History and State of its Study. The Hague, Paris and New York: Mouton.
Windfuhr, G. L. 1987. "Persian". In B. Comrie, ed. The World's Major Languages, pp. 523-546. New York: Oxford University Press.
Windfuhr, G. L. 1992. "Persian," In W. Bright, ed., International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Vol. 3:183-188. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press