#mina javaherbin

By Mina Javaherbin

I grew up in prerevolutionary Iran and immigrated to the United States when I was a teen. My new book, My Grandma and Me, is an homage to a peaceful childhood, when everyday activities are bliss. When I came to America, I was running from war and revolution. It took me a long time and a considerable amount of money to follow the immigration procedures and become an American citizen. All this happened before mass immigrations, revolutions, and wars in other countries had made a noticeable dent in the American psyche. These days the internet has caused a silent revolution in everyone’s consciousness and we are more aware of our global village.

Terms such as global village, multicultural, and diversity did not trend during my childhood. However, we’ve always known about one another, and we even try to communicate—hence the United Nations. But it’s clear from the recurring disagreements and wars that sitting across a table in a large building is not enough, and a multicultural mind-set is needed to prevent things from getting lost in translation.

PERSIAN OR FARSI

I have a nerdy pet peeve and it’s a rather easy one to explain. So without further ado let me jump in.

The matter is the word Farsi vs. Persian.

Both words are the name of the language people speak in Iran (as if anyone cares, since Bachelor is on, or is it the Dancing With The Stars night tonight?). 

Back to the subject, Persian is the name of that language in English and Farsi is the name of that language when the person is speaking the language.

Say wha?

This might help.

Say you are from Germany and your name is Johan and you know how to speak German and English. 

I come to you and ask you in English, “Hi Johan do you speak German?” You will naturally reply to me in English, “Why yes Mina I do speak German at home with my wife and children all the time.”

Now say you, Johan, are trying to get the train home but you hear two German tourist admitting to be lost and wishing there was someone there which could speak their language and help them find their hotel. You decide to help them and you go up to them and say.

“Ich spreche Deutsch!”

Note in the German language the name of German language is not German it’s Deutsch.

One more example to make sure this nail won't become loose again.

We say to a friend as we speak English “I speak Spanish,”  But in Spanish we must say

"Hablo español."

Note that in the Spanish language the name of Spanish language is not Spanish, it's Espanol.

When we are speaking English, the language of Iranians is called Persian and when they are speaking Persian they call it Farsi.

In English there is no word such as Espanol, Deutsch or Farsi. The respective words for those languages in English are Spanish, German and Persian.

Capito?!

One more thing; if an author or a poet or someone in the artistic field decides to use artistic license and utilize the word Farsi instead of Persian - well that’s just that. It is not right or wrong and we don’t have to judge everything and everyone all the time and out of context.

But it’s good to know the correct usage of words.

That’s all folks.

Thank you for reading. 

I like to dedicate my first blog of 2013 to elementary school teachers and all teachers for their love and passion of teaching. I like to thank all of you out there who are teaching the future generations and realize the immense influence you have on the lives of the children of today. With that emphasis on the value of education I like to recommend some more accent on world geography, world cultures and even the world politics in early years.

Attention and emphasis on what is going on out there in the world not only brings the knowledge of the world to the class but it also highlights what we have here in USA. The appreciation of what one has is always easier via comparison.

Appreciation of our voting system, the freedom of speech and the know how of having a voice in our own government can mobilize children to want to become more involved in the politics in their future. By that I don't mean to recruit more politicians, I mean to create more informed citizens. As a nation of people who live in the "government of the people, by the people, for the people” it is of essence that our society should know a lot more about politics. In fact I’m always amazed to see that our nation who has the ability to vote their government in and out of the office has one of the lowest interest and knowledge rates about the politics in general.

Therefore we witnessed many who their sole source of knowledge is biased TV or celebrity news magazines, making crazy contributions to the debates of the past election year. People who do not know a thing about the world around them and never read about politics, people who their weekly reading is about the shoe sizes of celebrities somehow thought since they could vote they should also open their mouth and talk politics!

I did wish they would shut up, but mostly I wished to guide them to a class which teaches politics 101. But more importantly I was thinking of the children in those households and what they were learning from their non-political parents who felt obligated to spew ill-informed knowledge at the dinner table. A friend's son, not yet even double digits in years , said to us while eating at our house one day, "I hate so and so (a kid we all knew) he’s so bossy like Obama!" 

(I assure you we were not talking politics at the dinner table and his saying truly came out of  left field!)

WOW! Where'd this come from? I immediately saw the dropped jaws of my own older children who did not reply to the uninformed utterance of a child who clearly did not know what he was talking about and was perhpas mirroring the emotional sentiments in his own household in the heat of the election year. 

I still think about what the little boy said and where did it really come from?

I'm proud to be able to hang out with people who do not think like me or do not believe in what I believe in. I find shared grounds with them and go on living. I don’t like to shut my door and only allow in people who are exactly like me. I want to have a wide view of the world and this has always brought me deeper insight in terms of educating myself, my children and in some rare cases maybe others!

Learning about facts, listening and common grounds should have a place in schools. Racism, hate and more are taught to children in their homes as early as their pre-school age. We need to have the education which can offer other options to the impressionable youth.

Teachers you're my only hope. War, hate and racism can simply not solve a thing. We must all believe that if we want to go on as a race, we must learn to live together and listen to each other, curb the urge to shut each other out and create conversations to educate ourselves and each other. We must learn to talk about informed facts and truly listen and then may be we "shall not perish from the earth" as our wise man Lincoln said.