What is Dari? Who speaks Farsi? What about Persian?
How does Tajiki fit in? Where is Hazaragi in this maze?
Farsi and Persian—they’re actually the same word. There is no p-sound in Arabic, hence Farsi and Parsi (Persian) are interchangeable. Before Islam, greater Iran [1] was ruled by two great Iranian empires—the Achaemenians (6th-century BC) and Sassanids (up to the 7th-century AD). Their homeland was Parsa in present-day southwestern Iran. The ancient Greeks called it Persis. The Persian language can be divided into three eras:
- Old Persian — spoken during the reigns of Cyrus and Darius of the Achaemenian Empire (550–330 bc). Only a few extant edicts and proclamations on cuneiform inscriptions remain.
- Middle Persian (or Pahlavi) — The Sassanid Period (ad 226–652). Pahlavi literature is entirely Zoroastrian with its own script.
- New or Modern Persian — from ad 900 to the present. Arabicized Persian with Arabic script.
Dari — Afghan Farsi, comes from the Persian word, dar-bari (courtly); hence the language of the court. Since language is so closely linked to national identity, the Persian-speaking elite of Kabul wanted to distinguish ‘Afghan Farsi’ from ‘Iranian Farsi’. Dari became the official term for Persian in Afghanistan in the mid-20th century, [2] though the term ‘Farsi’ remains common, especially in rural areas. About 50 per cent of the population are native Dari speakers. These include peoples of Tajik, Hazara, and Pashtun ethnicity.
Tajiki — the Persian language of Tajikistan. There are several versions of its etymology. Popular version: Tajik comes from taj (crown), hence the people and language of the crown. Historical version: Arabs who conquered the Persian world were called tazi (horse riders). Gradually, tazi came to simply mean Muslims. As the Persians who had fled to the far northeast of the Sasanid Empire converted to Islam, they too were called tazis or tajis.
How different is Dari from (Iranian) Farsi? How much is Tajiki like Dari or Farsi?
Dari and Farsi are both in Arabic script, while Tajiki is in Cyrillic script. The written Dari and Farsi are very similar, with some vocabulary and a few grammatical and spelling differences. An Afghan will easily detect if the text is written by an Afghan or Iranian.
Spoken Farsi and Dari are mutually intelligible, though some rural people would find their differences difficult to understand. There are distinctions in accent and intonation, idioms, greetings, vocabulary for basic foods, and some basic grammatical structures. However, through radio and television broadcasts, listeners from both Dari and Farsi are becoming increasingly accustomed to each other’s accents. However, Tajiki is quite distinct, borrowing heavily from Russian vocabulary.
Is Hazaragi a separate language, dialect, or accent?
Hazaragi, one of several Dari accents, is distinct from other Dari accents, and some linguists consider Hazaragi a separate language. Hazaragi often truncates Dari words and pronounces them in its own distinct ways, frequently mixing its speech with Turkish and Mongolic vocabulary.
Hazaragi is spoken in many districts of central Afghanistan. In Kabul, Herat, and Mazar, many Hazaras speak with this accent as well; however, since they are removed from the rural areas of central Afghanistan, their dialect bears close resemblance to Dari.
Notes
- In pre-Islamic times, Iran referred to the lands of the Aryan peoples. ‘Persia’, as it has been used in the 20th century, refers to modern-day Iran.
- Dunning Wilson, ‘Afghan Literature: A Perspective’, in Afghanistan: Some New Approaches, ed. George Grassmuck and Ludwig Adamec (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1969), p. 84.
