Iran's linguistic watchdog, The Farhangestan has approved the use of the term payamak, or "little message" to describe SMS in future. Payam means message and -ak is a diminutive ending in Farsi, the official language of Iran. Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered official bodies to avoid using Western words and replace them with relevant Farsi translations given by the Farhangestan, hence the announcement.
Before the 1979 revolution, a large number of Western language words were becoming increasingly used within Iran, which caused concern about the so-called 'Western cultural invasion', which is also considered a political threat.
Iran is not the only country to be "concerned" about the cultural purity of its language, as the French government has often tried to redefine English technical terms into French equivalents - famously refining email as "courriel". The Culture Ministry banned the use of "e-mail" in all government ministries, documents, publications or websites, in late 2003 despite the fact that most people used the technical term "email" in preference."
Posted to the site on 19th July 2007
Posted to: www.cellular-news.com/story/25012.php