Talk:Dari/Archive 1

Dari

Dari, also known as Farsi, is apparently similar in syntax to Farsi.
That is confusing.
According to http://www.darilanguageproject.org/2003_summary_of_findings.pdf, Dari the language of the Zoroastrians (not Persian?), as well as the Afghani dialect of Persian. Here too, there appears to be some confusion. At, http://www.persiangulfonline.org/aboutus/letters/SoroushRichardShehabi.htm, Soroush Richard Shehabi claims that Afghani's actually speak Farsi which is really just Persian. I just don't get it

There are in fact two Dari languages. (1) The variety of Persian spoken in Afghanistan, which is mutually intelligible with Farsi. (2) The Northwestern Iranian language spoken by the Zoroastrians of Yazd, Iran (also called Gabri). See: www.darilanguageproject.org.

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It is a common mistake to make. Afghanistan's major language is Pashto. The reason why people think that its farsi is due to the pashtoon's being the poorer ethnicity, and thus not having as much power as the dari speakers.

http://www.sabawoon.com/afghanpedia/Language.Dari.shtm

You can see in that link that dair is spoken by only around 30% of the country, not the 60% shown in this wikipedia entry.

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Dari is only spoken in north afghanistan all together about 30%, but pashto is spken by more then 70% afghans all around afghanistan, because in every part of afghanistan in evrywhere provinces included the main place of DARI speakers KAbul and panjshir still their are more then 40% pashtoon in every province of dari spoken but in other part they all speak pashtoo, even though you wouldn't find a single person in whole city who understand DARI, and its a fact.

Pashtoo is spken by more than 70% afghans in Afghanistan

Incorrect information posted

Regarding the informations written about Dari in this article, I have some points to declare:

- Dari is not a dialect of Farsi (Persian) language of Iran

- Dari was not developed from Pahlawi Sasani as Farsi developped. In fact, Dari developed from Takhari, Partawi (Pahlawi Ashkani) and Soghdi languages

- Dari is a completely different language other than Gabri or Dari of Iran. Gabri or Dari of Iran is a dialect of Farsi, and there are major differences between them i.e. Vocabulary usage, Expressions, Dialect or accent, Writing style, etc. It would be illogical to refer Dari spoken in Afghanistan to the Dari/ Gabri of Iran.

- Dari itself has its own dialects i.e. Kabuli, Herawi/Herati, Takhari and Badakhshi.

- Dari was not distinguished because of the political means of the Pashtoon Government in Afghanistan. In fact, the researches taken out by great Tajik Afghan writers, historians, scholars and researchers proved that Dari developped from Takhari, Partawi and Soghdi languages.

In order to support my statements, here I cite some pieces of texts of old Farsi-Dari literature books:

- Some Manuscript writings on a stone found in one of the Kushanian Temples in Baghlan (a city in Afghanistan) in 1951 show that Dari developped from Takhari language. There are almost 160 words in 25 lines of Takhari language written in the Greek transcripts. In these manuscripts which are more than 1800 years old, one can clearly see the familiarities of Dari and Takhari languages. So it completely shows that Dari was NOT developped from Pahlawi Sasani as Farsi did.

- Mohammad Taqi Bahar, the great poet and writer of Iran, writes in his book "Sabk-Shunasi", vol.1: “...some people say that Dari is a developed dialect of Sughdi language, that the people of Bukhara, Samarqand and regions of Jaihun (Amu) river used to communicate in it for a long time. And some people, relying on the statements of Abdullah ibn-Muqaffa say that Dari was the language of cities and courts, and it was the softest and the most fluent language of the Sasanid p

same language

This page should be merged with New Persian.

This is what Professor. Gilbert Lazard, a famous Iranologist and also the writer of Persian grammer states: "The language known as New Persian, which usually called at this period by the name of Dari or Parsi-Dari,can be classified linguistically as a continuation of Middle Persian, the official religious and literary language of Sassanian Iran, itself a continuation of Old Persian, the language of the Achaemenids. Unlike the other languages and dialects, ancient and modern, of the Iranian group such as Avestan, Parthian, Soghdian, Kurdish, Pashto, etc., Old Middle and New Persian represent one and the same language at three states of its history. it had its origin in Fars (the true Persian country from the historical point of view and is differentiated by dialectical features, still easily recognizable from the dialect prevailing in north-western and eastern Iran".(Lazard, Gilbert 1975, “The Rise of the New Persian Language” in Frye, R. N., The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 4, pp. 595-632, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.). Mohammad Taqi Bahar is a great poet and scholar, but he is definitely superseded by Gilbert Lazard who had a more formal academic training, is a more modern source and has written many books on Persian grammer and the origin of Parsi-Dari.

Ethnologue is a missionary, non-scholarly, non Ph.D. amateur site with lots of false and invalid information. I have e-mailed them on different issue another time, where they made major mistakes on population characteristics and they thanked me for pointing it out. Such an amateurish site should not be used in Wikipedia. Yes Persian has dialect variations say from Tehran, to Esfahan to Mashhad to Herat and etc. For example the dialect of Herat and Mashhad are closer to each other, than Herat and Badakhshan. But these could be mentioned in the same page of New Persian. So far the content of this page are nothing but OR. Some very poor OR, for example relating the Dardic coin of Darius to to Parsi-Dari language.--alidoostzadeh (talk) 01:49, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem, as is so generously pointed out by the multitude of examples, is that "Dari" is an ambiguous term. "Dari (Persian)" is just as ambiguous. This article about the version (language or dialect makes no difference to me) spoken in Afghanistan (and incidentally spoken in eastern Iran) needs an unambiguous name. That is why I proposed "Eastern Farsi". I am happy to entertain other suggestions that do not involve the quagmire surrounding the word "Dari". Does anyone disagree that Dari is ambiguous? See the disambiguation page. --Bejnar (talk) 21:56, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

About the amateur status of Ethnologue: Ethnologue is a compilation from various sources. It is not amateur. It is recognized as a standards organization by the ISO and it employs professional linguists. Yes it started out and still functions as a Christian organization interested in producing Bibles in all the world's languages; that, however, does not make it amateur. Bill Bright, editor of Language: Journal of the Linguistic Society of America, wrote that it "is indispensable for any reference shelf on the languages of the world". See Ethnologue article. Yes it does contain errors, and yes it does work to fix them. --Bejnar (talk) 21:56, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Eastern Farsi is a madeup name by Ethnologue. Ethnologue does not have Ph.D. and linguistic credentials. I can show you some E-mails I have exchanged with ethnologue. Gilbert Lazard is a professional linguist. Dari and Persian are two different names for the same language. Both have been used historically. Dari is not ambiguous it is just the name of the language and sometimes they say Parsi_Dari. Dari is Parsi and Parsi is Dari. Dari/Parsi have different dialects even in mentioned countries. For example Herati dialect is different than say Kabuli. But as long as the languages are mutually intelligible they should not have various entries. --alidoostzadeh (talk) 00:46, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

The language of Eastern Iran and Western Afghanistan (traditionally known as Khorasani) is indeed identical, but also significantly different from the dialects of Eastern (Kabuli) and Northern (Mazari or Balkhi) Afghanistan. The fact is that there is neither an Iranian dialect of Persian, nor an Afghan dialect of Persian. The so-called Iranian dialect is the standard dialect of Tehran and different from the dialects spoken in Mazandaran, Khorasan, Kerman, or Isfahan. The dialect of Herat and Farah is different from the dialect of Kabul. The Khorasani (or Herati) dialect still uses older Persian expressions, for example bostāndan for "to get" instead of the standard gereftan in Kabul. They also use more archaic pronunciations, for example vakhēz! ("stand up!") instead of the newer bekhēz as used in standard Kabuli. There is also a significant difference in the vocalic sound. While the Kabuli dialect uses most of the time (correctly) an -a or -ā, the Herati dialect (or Khorasani in general) uses, similar to Western ("Iranian") dialects -o, -ū or -ü (for example in the word nūn/nün instead of the standard nān, "bread"; the -ü is pronounced as in German or Turkish, but blending into a -u). The -kh ([x]) is also softer than in the more eastern dialects (in total contrast to Tajiki (Bukhari)), sometimes blending into a harder h.

I do not understand why these different dialects are supposed to be categorized under "Dari", although the Kabuli dialect of Afghanistan is much closer to certain "Iranian dialects" (for example teh dialect of Shiraz) than Khorasani.

Naming the dialects of Afghanistan "Dari" was a political move of the Muhammadzai ruling family who wanted to create some kind of new "Afghan identity" by breaking all historical ties to Iran. This was, in part, also motivated by the political alliance with Kemalist Turkey (the powerful Afghan politician Mahmoud Tarzi was educated by the Young Turks; his daughter married into the Ottoman family; another daughter was married to Amanullah Khan, king of Afghanistan, and the first among all rulers in the world to visit Atatürk), and continued into the era of Zahir Shah in which all political leaders were students of Tarzi. While before the 20's Persian books in Afghanistan were known as "Farsi" books, the name was changed to "Farsi-e Dari" in the 20's and 30's, and then finally minimized to "Dari" in the 60's (the Afghan constitution of 1964 only recognizes "Dari" as the name of the Persian language). The Encyclopaedia Iranica writes: Darī (q.v.) is a term long recommended by Afghan authorities to designate Afghan Persian in contrast to Iranian Persian; a written language common to all educated Afghanis, Darī must not be confused with Kābolī, the dialect of Kabul and surrounding areas that is more or less understood by eighty percent of the non-Persian speaking population and is fast becoming the nation's koine. [...] The revival of the ancient term Darī was intended to signify that Afghans consider their country the cradle of the language. Hence, the name Fārsī, the language of Fārs, is strictly avoided. ("Modern literature of Afghanistan" by R. Farhādī, Encyclopaedia Iranica, xii, Online Edition, [1])

It's all for political purposes and should be explained as such in the article.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.83.147.180 (talk • contribs) 30 Dec 07

Dari should not be called a Persian (Iranian) Language

Its no mystery that there are alot of Iranians and Pro iranians Writing the history of afghanistan to there own agendas and Its a shame that Dari is called a PERSIAN LANGUAGE when it should be called in an Afghani Language. Tell us what you think? Pashtun786 (talk) 01:36, 26 January 2008 (UTC)Pashtun786