zenmonkey wrote:Persian has two you's - formal سما which is singular and plural (like vous or Sie) and تو (the informal singular) that is used with familiar people like the French tu or German du. Usually, it is not like in Urdu but I understand from my teacher that some of the informal uses can be insulting. Colloquial and spoken Persian will use the informal more often while written tends to go for the formal. Note that both verb endings and verb shorting occur in colloquial speech. hastan instead of hastand, for example. The spoken simplifications of the language are interesting, pronoun dropping, verbal shortening and pronoun markers, the copula (verb to be) can be written both as separate words or as affixes, along with the possessive. I need to listen a lot more to get that final 'i' or 'm' sound that tells me a lot about who the phrase is directed at.
FSI Spoken Persian (1973) - still suggested that the familiar form should be used for a child, a member of the family, a very close friend or someone who is "socially below them - a servant, a laborer" - I suspect that this has evolved in the last 50 years much like in Mexico... where TV and radio has given rise to the use of the informal... but this is just my theory, will need to ask my tutor.
My two cents would be that
is more common than it was, but has probably evolved less than some other languages? So FSI isn't far wrong: it's perhaps just extended up from children to young people interacting together. Of course, younger people are
all socially below in Iran (as far as I can see); so if you are older (as you complain above!) then you could perhaps use it for people in their 20's. Of course this can increase social distance between you and them, as they feel obliged to use سما back to you; there is a big distance in Iranian social interactions between generations, and as an older man you may have to work harder to overcome that.
When I was working with refugees, many of them were young men in their 20s or below, generally cool/informal and likely to joke around in big groups like young men in most places. They, I think, would use تو in that situation, though they might revert to سما when dealing with each other in more formal ways.
Personally I never really felt comfortable using it: the potential for offense was too high, and in general people seemed to be more likely to be flattered by an excessive use of سما than insulted by too much formality. It would have made sense to use تو slightly more, when dealing with the youngest guys (late teens and early 20s), especially as I was (as perceived by them) in a position of authority and importance. But then I was trying to diminish the extent to which I was seen as an authority and a benefactor...
That's a vague and wandering way of saying that I think you can get by with سما most of the time. Some of the other textbooks you mentioned definitely deal with the تو forms, though.
p.s. this is very much my two cents taken from a limited range of situations, all outside Iran, with pretty weird power dynamics at play (always being the 'benefactor') and I may be misunderstanding/missing lots of details/not good enough at Farsi/stereotyping horribly... perhaps some of our better Farsi users can weigh in?