Dari language

Dari (, , ), or Dari Persian (, ), is a political term used for the various dialects of the Persian language spoken in

Afghanistan

. Dari is the term officially recognised and promoted since 1964 by the Afghan government for the Persian language,Lazard, G.
Darī – The New Persian Literary Language
, in ''Encyclopædia Iranica'', Online Edition 2006. hence it is known as Afghan Persian or Eastern Persian in many Western sources. As Professor Nile Green remarks "the impulses behind renaming of Afghan Persian as Dari were more nationalistic than linguistic" in order to create an Afghan state narrative. Persian in Afghanistan is generally called ''Fārsi'' (فارسی) by Persian-speakers and ''Pārsi'' (پارسی) by ethnic

Pashtuns

. Apart from a few basics of vocabulary, there is little difference between formal written Persian of Afghanistan and Iran. The term "Dari" is officially used for the characteristic spoken Persian of Afghanistan, but is best restricted to formal spoken registers. Persian-speakers in Afghanistan contend that the term "Dari" has been forced on them by the dominant Pashtun ethnic group as an attempt to distance Afghanistan from its cultural, linguistic, and historical ties to the rest of the Persian-speaking world, which includes Iran, Tajikistan and parts of Uzbekistan.

As defined in the Constitution of Afghanistan, it is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan; the other is

Pashto

. Dari is the most widely spoken language in Afghanistan and the native language of approximately 40–45% of the population. Dari serves as the lingua franca of the country and is understood by up to 78% of the population.

Dari served as the preferred literary and administrative language among non-native speakers, such as the Pashtuns and Mughals, for centuries before the rise of modern nationalism. Also, like Iranian Persian and Tajiki Persian, Dari Persian is a continuation of Middle Persian, the official religious and literary language of the

Sassanian Empire

(224–651 AD), itself a continuation of Old Persian, the language of the

Achaemenids

(550–330 BC). In historical usage, ''Dari'' refers to the Middle Persian court language of the Sassanids. Frye, R. N., "Darī", ''The Encyclopaedia of Islam'', Brill Publications, CD version

Etymology

Dari is a name given to the New Persian language since the 10th century, widely used in

Arabic

(compare

Al-Estakhri

, Al-Muqaddasi and Ibn Hawqal) and Persian texts.

Since 1964, it has been the official name in Afghanistan for the Persian spoken there. In Afghanistan, Dari refers to a modern dialect form of Persian that is the standard language used in administration, government, radio, television, and print media. Because of a preponderance of Dari native speakers, who normally refer to the language as ''Farsi'' (, "Persian"), it is also known as "Afghan Persian" in some Western sources.

There are different opinions about the origin of the word ''Dari''. The majority of scholars believes that ''Dari'' refers to the Persian word ''dar'' or ''darbār'' (), meaning "court", as it was the formal language of the Sassanids. The original meaning of the word ''dari'' is given in a notice attributed to Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (cited by Ibn al-Nadim in ''Al-Fehrest''). According to him, "''Pārsī'' was the language spoken by priests, scholars, and the like; it is the language of Fars." This language refers to the Middle Persian. As for ''Dari'', he says, "it is the language of the cities of Madā'en; it is spoken by those who are at the king's court. ts nameis connected with presence at court. Among the languages of the people of Khorasan and the east, the language of the people of

Balkh

is predominant."

The Dari language spoken in Afghanistan is not to be confused with the language of

Iran

called Dari or Gabri, which is a language of the Central Iranian subgroup spoken in some Zoroastrian communities.

History

Dari comes from Middle Persian which was spoken during the rule of the Sassanid dynasty. In general, Iranian languages are known from three periods, usually referred to as Old, Middle, and New (Modern) periods. These correspond to three eras in Iranian history, the old era being the period from some time before, during, and after the Achaemenid period (that is, to 300 BC), the Middle Era being the next period, namely, the Sassanid period and part of the post-Sassanid period, and the New era being the period afterward down to the present day.

Although it is thought that the first person in Europe to use the term ''Deri'' for ''Dari'' was

Thomas Hyde

, at Oxford, in his chief work, ''Historia religionis veterum Persarum'' (1700).

''Dari'' or ''Deri'' has two meanings. It may mean the language of the court:
: "the Zebani Deri (Zeban i Deri or Zaban i Dari = the language of Deri), or the language of the court, and the Zebani Farsi, the dialect of Persia at large (...)"

It may also indicate a form of poetry used from Rudaki to

Jami

. In the fifteenth century it appeared in Herat under the Persian-speaking Timurid dynasty. The Persian–language poets of the Mughal Empire who used the Indian verse methods or rhyme methods, like Bedil and Muhammad Iqbal, became familiar with the ''araki'' form of poetry. Iqbal loved both styles of literature and poetry, when he wrote:

This can be translated as:

''Even though in euphonious

Hindi

is sugar'' –
''Rhyme method in Dari (Persian) is sweeter''

''Hendī'' here refers more accurately to

Urdu

written in Perso-Arabic script. ''Uzūbat'' usually means "bliss", "delight", "sweetness"; in language, literature and poetry, ''uzubat'' also means "euphonious" or "melodic".

Referring to the 14th-century Persian poet

Hafez

, Iqbal wrote:

English translation:

Here ''qand-e Pārsī'' ("Rock candy of Persia") is a metaphor for the Persian language and poetry.

Persian replaced the Central Asian languages of the Eastern Iranics. Ferghana, Samarkand, and Bukhara were starting to be linguistically Darified in originally Khorezmian and Soghdian areas during

Samanid

rule. Dari Persian spread around the Oxus River region, Afghanistan, and Khorasan after the Arab conquests and during Islamic-Arab rule. The replacement of the Pahlavi script with the Arabic script in order to write the Persian language was done by the Tahirids in 9th century Khorasan. The Dari Persian language spread and led to the extinction of Eastern Iranian languages like Bactrian, Khwarezmian with only a tiny amount of Sogdian descended Yaghnobi speakers remaining among the now Persian-speaking Tajik population of Central Asia, due to the fact that the Arab-Islamic army which invaded Central Asia also included some Persians who governed the region like the Sassanids. Persian was rooted into Central Asia by the Samanids. Persian phased out Sogdian. The role of lingua franca that Sogdian originally played was succeeded by Persian after the arrival of Islam.

Table of the important terms of the Persian poets

This table gives information on how many times the poets of Persian literature wrote the terms Iran, Turan, Parsi, Farsi, Dari, Khorassan, and Pahlevi. It is worth mentioning that many of Nazm ( = verse نظم) i Dari or ''Dastan i Dari'' (a tale of Dari), Tarz e Guftar e Dari (طرز گفتار دری style of Dari convers) have been spoken. Nazm (verse form) and Nassir (نثر = novel, short story, etc.) and درامه (drama) – are conidered the three main genres of literature. New Persian literature begins with Poems of Rudaki.

Counted according to sources from these Internet sites

Geographical distribution

Dari is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan (the other being Pashto). In practice though, it serves as the de facto lingua franca among the various ethnolinguistic groups.

Dari is spoken natively by approximately twenty-five percent to eighty percent of the population of Afghanistan as a primary language.

Tajiks

, who comprise approximately 27% of the population, are the primary speakers, followed by Hazaras (9%) and Aymāqs (4%). Moreover, many

Pashtuns

living in Tajik and Hazara concentrated areas also use Dari as a first language. The World Factbook states that eighty percent of the Afghan population speaks the Dari language. About 2.5 million Afghans in Iran and Afghans in Pakistan, part of the wider Afghan diaspora, also speak Dari as one of their primary languages.

Dari dominates the northern, western, and central areas of Afghanistan, and is the common language spoken in cities such as Mazar-i-Sharif,

Herat

, Fayzabad, Panjshir,

Bamiyan

, and the Afghan capital of

Kabul

where all ethnic groups are settled. Dari-speaking communities also exist in southwestern and eastern Pashtun-dominated areas such as in the cities of

Ghazni

, Farah, Zaranj, Lashkar Gah,

Kandahar

, and Gardez.

Cultural influence

Dari has contributed to the majority of Persian borrowings in several Indo-Aryan languages, such as

Urdu

,

Hindi

, Punjabi, Bengali and others, as it was the administrative, official, cultural language of the Persianate Mughal Empire and served as the lingua franca throughout the Indian subcontinent for centuries. Often based in

Afghanistan

, Turkic Central Asian conquerors brought the language into South Asia. The basis in general for the introduction of Persian language into the subcontinent was set, from its earliest days, by various Persianized Central Asian Turkic and Afghan dynasties. The sizable Persian component of the Anglo-Indian loan words in English and in

Urdu

therefore reflects the Dari pronunciation. For instance, the words

dopiaza

and

pyjama

come from the Dari pronunciation; in Iranian Persian they are pronounced ''do-piyāzeh'' and ''pey-jāmeh''. Persian lexemes and certain morphological elements (e.g., the ''ezāfe'') have often been employed to coin words for political and cultural concepts, items, or ideas that were historically unknown outside the South Asian region, as is the case with the aforementioned "borrowings". The Dari language has a rich and colorful tradition of

proverb

s that deeply reflect Afghan culture and relationships, as demonstrated by U.S. Navy Captain Edward Zellem in his bilingual books on Afghan Dari proverbs collected in Afghanistan.

Differences between Iranian and Afghan Persian

There are phonological, lexical, and morphological differences between Afghan Persian and Iranian Persian. There are no significant differences in the written forms, other than regional idiomatic phrases.

Phonological differences

The phonology of Dari as spoken in Kabul, compared to Classical Persian, is overall more conservative than the standard accent of Iran. The principal differences between standard Iranian Persian and Afghan Persian as based on the Kabul dialect are:

# The merging of ''majhul'' vowels and into and respectively in Iranian Persian, whereas in Afghan Persian, they are still kept separate. For instance, the identically written words شیر 'lion' and 'milk' are pronounced the same in Iranian Persian as , but for 'lion' and for 'milk' in Afghan Persian. The long vowel in زود "quick" and زور "strength" is realized as in Iranian Persian, in contrast, these words are pronounced and respectively by Persian speakers in Afghanistan.
# The Classical Persian high short vowels and tend to be lowered in Iranian Persian to and , unlike in Dari where they might have both high and lowered allophones.
# The treatment of the diphthongs of early Classical Persian "ay" (as "i" in English "size") and "aw" (as "ow" in Engl. "cow"), which are pronounced (as in English "day") and (as in Engl. "low") in Iranian Persian. Dari, on the other hand, is more conservative, e.g. نخیر 'no' is realized as in Iranian but in Afghan Persian, and نوروز 'Persian New Year' is in Iranian but in Afghan Persian. Moreover, is simplified to in normal Iranian speech, thereby merging with the lowered Classical short vowel (see above). This does not occur in Afghan Persian.
# The pronunciation of the labial consonant و, which is realized as a

voiced labiodental fricative

in standard Iranian, is still pronounced with the (classical) bilabial pronunciation in Afghanistan; is found in Afghan Persian as an allophone of before voiced consonants and as variation of in some cases, along with .
# The convergence of the

voiced uvular stop

(ق) and the

voiced velar fricative

(غ) in Iranian Persian (presumably under the influence of Turkic languages like

Azeri

and Turkmen) is absent in Dari, where the two are still kept separate.
# and in word-final positions are distinguished in Dari, whereas is a word-final allophone of in Iranian Persian.

Dialect continuum

The dialects of Dari spoken in Northern, Central, and Eastern Afghanistan, for example in

Kabul

, Mazar, and Badakhshan, have distinct features compared to

Iranian Persian

. However, the dialect of Dari spoken in Western Afghanistan stands in between the Afghan and Iranian Persian. For instance, the

Herat

i dialect shares vocabulary and phonology with both Dari and Iranian Persian. Likewise, the dialect of Persian in Eastern Iran, for instance in

Mashhad

, is quite similar to the Herati dialect of Afghanistan.

The Kabuli dialect has become the standard model of Dari in Afghanistan, as has the Tehrani dialect in relation to the Persian in Iran. Since the 1940s, Radio Afghanistan has broadcast its Dari programs in Kabuli Dari, which ensured the homogenization between the Kabuli version of the language and other dialects of Dari spoken throughout Afghanistan. Since 2003, the media, especially the private radio and television broadcasters, have carried out their Dari programs using the Kabuli variety.

Phonology

Consonants

* Stops // are phonetically dental stops [].
* A glottal stop /ʔ/ only appears in words of Arabic origin.
* A flap sound // may be realized as a trill sound [], in some environments, mostly word-final position; otherwise, they contrast between vowels wherein a trill occurs as a result of gemination (doubling) of [], especially in loanwords of Arabic origin. Only [] occurs before and after consonants; in word-final position, it is usually a free variation between a flap or a trill when followed by a consonant or a pause, but flap is more common, only flap before vowel-initial words.
* When preceding a velar consonant, // becomes a velar nasal sound []. When preceding a bilabial stop, it is realized as a bilabial nasal [].
* When occurring in a word-final position //, it is articulated with a slightly heard back vowel as [].
* There is no presence of a voiced labio-dental fricative [] in Dari, however; when a // is preceding a voiced consonant, it becomes slightly voiced as [].

Vowels

* Vowel sounds // are realized as [] when occurring as lax.
*

Political views and disputes on the language

Successive governments of Afghanistan have promoted New Persian as an

official language

of government since the time of the Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526), even as those governments were dominated by Pashtun people.

Sher Ali Khan

of the Barakzai dynasty (1826–1973) first introduced the Pashto language as an additional language of administration. The local name for the Persian variety spoken in Afghanistan was officially changed from Farsi to Dari, meaning "court language", in 1964. Zaher said there would be, as there are now, two official languages, Pashto and Farsi, though the latter would henceforth be named Dari. Within their respective linguistic boundaries, Dari and Pashto are the media of education.

The term continues to divide opinion in Afghanistan today. While Dari has been the official name for decades, "Farsi" is still the preferred name to many Persian speakers of Afghanistan. Omar Samad, an Afghan analyst and ambassador, says of the dispute:

See also

* Persian grammar
* Middle Persian
* Tajik language
* Hazaragi dialect

References

Further reading

* Lazard, G.
Darī – The New Persian Literary Language
in ''Encyclopædia Iranica'' Online Edition.
*
* Sakaria, S. (1967) ''Concise English – Afghan Dari Dictionary'', Ferozsons, Kabul
OCLC 600815
* Farhadi, A. G. R.('Abd-ul-Ghafur Farhadi)(Abd-ul-ghafûr Farhâdi) (1955) ''Le Persan Parlé en Afghanistan: Grammaire du Kâboli Accompagné d'un Recueil de Quatrains Populaires de la Région de Kâbol'', Centre national de la recherche scientifique or Librairie C. Klincksieck, Paris.
* Farhadi, Rawan A. G. (1975) ''The Spoken Dari of Afghanistan: A Grammar of Kaboli Dari (Persian) Compared to the Literary Language'', Peace Corps, Kabul
OCLC 24699677
* Zellem, Edward. 2015.
* Zellem, Edward. 2012.
*

* Harold F. Schiffman Language Policy and Language Conflict in Afghanistan and Its Neighbors (Brill's Studies in South and Southwest Asian Languages) BRILL, Leiden, 1.ed, 2011

External links

*
*

Dari
at ''Encyclopædia Iranica''

Dari language, alphabet and pronunciation

Dari language resources

{{Authority control

Eastern Persian dialects in Afghanistan
Languages of Iran
Languages of Afghanistan
Persian language in Pakistan