Penglish, Pinglish, Fingilish or Fargelisi (a portmanteau word formed from Persian + English, or Farsi + English) is a term used to describe the way Persian words are written using the Latin alphabet (as opposed to the Persian alphabet), or generally the casual romanization of Persian words popularized after computers, emailing and online chat became ubiquitous. This type of writing is commonly used in online chat, emails and SMS. It developed and spread due to a lack of software supporting Persian alphabet in the past, and/or due to a lack of knowledge about the software that was available. Although Persian writing is supported in recent operating systems, there are still many cases where the Persian alphabet is unavailable and there is a need for an alternative way to write Persian with the Latin alphabet.
Initially there were no strict rules for conversion into Fingilish or how words were romanized, and the way of writing Fingilish varied greatly by accent. More recently a standard called Desphilic script has been introduced, which standardizes the concept and usage of a Persian-Roman alphabet. Desphilic script can be used to officially transliterate Persian and related dialects into a character set suitable for ordinary English keyboards, and also accepts UniPers characters (Â, Š, Ž). Unipers is another standard, defining an extended Persian-Roman alphabet for Persian language.
The following table contains some examples of romanized Persian words and the ways they are used by Persian chat users.
| Penglish | Desphilic | Persian | English |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dorood | DorOd | درود | hello |
| amadan | Amadan | آمدن | to come |
| parvaz | parvAz | پرواز | flight |
| sakhtar | sAxtAr | ساختار | structure |
| ghamoos | QAmOs | قاموس | manifest |
There is software to help transliterate from Penglish to Persian and vice versa. For example, Google has added a page to its Google Transliteration set which can be used to transliterate from Penglish into Persian script. There are also communities and message groups for Fingilish on some famous websites like Facebook.
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Writing Fingilish is often considered bad style among Persian speakers, and is confined to (very) informal communication. It is considered to be highly inappropriate to write official or polite messages in Fingilish; this reaches the point that, when there is no way to write the Persian alphabet, communication occurs directly in English rather Fingilish. Recently its counterpart Enersian has arisen and is being used in Iran in SMS.
The table below shows how the Latin alphabet is used to transliterate the Persian language.
Table of equivalency of letters in Fingilish:
| Persian | Fingilish |
|---|---|
| آ،ا | a (aa) |
| ب | b |
| پ | p |
| ت | t |
| ث | s |
| ج | j |
| چ | ch |
| ح | h |
| خ | kh (x) |
| د | d |
| ذ | z |
| ر | r |
| ز | z |
| ژ | zh, j |
| س | s |
| ش | sh |
| ص | s |
| ض | z |
| ط | t |
| ظ | z |
| ع،ء | `, ae, ea |
| غ | gh |
| ف | f |
| ق | q, gh |
| ک | k |
| گ | g |
| ل | l |
| م | m |
| ن | n |
| و | u, v |
| ه | h |
| ی | y |
There also exist trials and standards to help Fingilish users and provide them a more convenient way to write Persian using roman alphabet. Because some Persian alphabet letters do not exist in English, a Persian Keyboard (PArsi keyboard or PArsic keyboard) has been invented which provides Fingilish users with additional characters like [ ä Ä , š Š , ğ Ğ , ž Ž , ü Ü , ö Ö, ķ Ķ] which can be used as counterparts for [آ ش ق ج ژ او خ ].
As a detailed example for illustrating Penglish standards, This is a famous poem from the great Persian poet Hafez using Standardized Penglish:
Del iy ke qeyb namAy ast o jAm e jam dArad
Ze xAtam iy ke dam iy gom shavad che qam dArad?
Be xaT o xAl e gedAyAn madeh xazine ye del
Be daste Shahvashiy deh ke mohtaram dArad
Na har deraxt tahaMol konad jafAye xazAn
qolAm e heMat e sarvam ke In qadam dArad
rasid mOsem e An ke'az tarab cho narges e mast
nehad be pAye qadah har ke shesh deram dArad
zar az bahAye mey aknOn cho gol dariq madAr
ke aql e kol be sadat eyb moTaham dArad
ze seR e qeyb kas AgAh nist qeSe maxAn
kodAm mahram e del rah dar In haram dArad?
Delam ke lAf e tajaRod zadiy konOn sad Qol
Be bOy e zolf e to bA bAd e sobhdam dArad
morAd e del ze ke porsam ke nist deldAriy
ke jelve ye nazar o shiveye karam dArad
ze jayb e xerqe ye hAfez che tarf betvAn bast?
Ke mA samad talabid im o ou sanam dArad
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