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Penglish, Pinglish or 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 (Persian chat), emails and SMS. It developed and spread due to a lack of software supporting Persian in the past, and/or due to a lack of knowledge about the software that was available. Although Parsi/Farsi/Persian is supported in recent operating systems, there are still many cases where the Perso-Arabic script are 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 (Ä,Š,Ž,Ü). 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.

there are softwares to help transliterate from Penglish to Perso-Arabic and vice versa. For example Google has added a page to its Google Transliteration set which can be used to transliterate from penglish into Perso-Arabic script.There are also communities and message groups for fingilish in some famous websites like Facebook.

Social Acceptance

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 Perso-Arabic script, communication occurs directly in English rather Fingilish.

Equivalency of letters

The table below shows how the Latin alphabet is used to transliterate the Persian language.

Table of equivalency of letters in Fingilish:

Fingilish keyboard

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 which can be used as counterparts for .

A Persian poem in Penglish

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 ov jAm ue jam dArad
Ze xAtam iy ke dam iy gom wav ad ce qam dArad?

Be xaT ov xAl ue gedAy An madeh xazine ye del
Be dast ue wAh vaw iy deh ke mohtaram dArad

Na har deraxt tahaMol konad jafA ye xazAn
qolAm ue heMat ue sarv am ke In qadam dArad

ras id mOsem ue An ke’az tarab co narges ue mast
neh ad be pA ye qadah har ke wew deram dArad

zar az bahA ye mey aknOn co gol dariq madAr
ke uaql ue kol be sad at ueyb moTaham dArad

ze seR ue qeyb kas AgAh nist qeSe ma xAn
kodAm mahram ue del rah dar In haram dArad?

Del am ke lAf ue tajaRod zad iy konOn sad woql
Be bOy ue zolf ue to bA bAd ue sobhdam dArad

morAd ue del ze ke pors am ke nist deldAr iy
ke jelve ye nazar ov wive ye karam dArad

ze jayb ue xerqe ye hAfez ce tarf betvAn bast?
Ke mA samad talabid im ov uo sanam dArad

See also

• Romanization of Persian
• Perso-Arabic script
• Uni-Pers

External links

• fingilish.net,First Web site to type Arabic script (Persian, Arabic, Azerbaijani, Urdu, Ottoman, ...) using Latin keyboard Type Latin and get Arabic / Farsi Letters.
• A web based Pingilish to Persian translator
• Pingilish to Persian Translator
• Tools for the Persian language: Pingilish-Persian transcriber, virtual Persian keyboard...
• behnevis.com: Interactive web based Persian transliterator
• eMonshi.com: Interactive web based Persian transliterator
• En2Fa Program site.First Pingilish into persian translator program.
• The New Arabic keyboard Type Latin and get Arabic Letters.
• Desphilic Script

• Persian orthography
• Arabic romanization