 |
څوچه پاتي یو افغان وي - تل بدا افغانستان وي | تا زنده یک افغان است - جاوید افغانستان است
|
|
Dari Language Projec
|
The
language that we refer to as Dari is also referred to as Gabri or
Behdinān. Though Gabri is the appellation by which the language is
most commonly known, we eschew its use because of its cultural
insensitivity, and we encourage others to do so as well. Literally,
“language of the infidels,” Gabri is the name which was bestowed
by Iran’s Muslim conquerors upon the language spoken by those few
members of Iran’s historically Zoroastrian majority who neither
fled nor converted following the Muslim invasion of Iran in the
seventh century. Some scholars speculate that these Zoroastrians
resisted external influences on their language in order to promote
the solidarity of their persecuted community. The speakers of Dari,
who obviously do not consider themselves infidels, resent the use of
this term to refer to their language. In choosing to call their
language Dari, the speakers of the language invoke their ancestral
connections to a pre-Islamic Iran.
The
language studied by the Dari Language Project is not the Persian
dialect spoken in Afghanistan, though it, also, is called Dari by its
speakers. Both the Dari spoken by Zoroastrians and the Dari (Persian)
of Afghanistan bear the same name for much the same reasons.
Originally, Dari was the official spoken language of the Sasanian
court and bureaucracy, which approximated the official written
language, Pahlavi (Middle Persian). The subsequent Arab invasion
resulted in the extension of Dari's usage even farther east than
under the Sasanian Empire, into Bactria (ancient northern
Afghanistan). Dari was committed at about this same time to paper in
the Arabic script by early poets (pre-Firdosi). Arabic borrowings
were being absorbed into the language, however, at a rapid pace and
soon the unaltered Dari gave way to the Arabicized Farsi. In a sense,
one could consider Dari and Farsi (New Persian) merely different
styles of the same language, the former simple and unadorned and the
latter heavily influenced by Arabic borrowings. Thus, speakers of
both Afghani Persian and Gabri chose a name for their two languages
that evokes the cultural richness of a highly venerated past (for
details see Frye, Richard N. (1973) The Rise of the New Persian
Language. Journal
of the K. R. Cama Oriental Institute Bombay
44:76-80.)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|