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Persian and Tajik DEMO : Purchase from www.A-PDF.com to remove the watermark CHAPTER EIGHT PERSIAN AND TAJIK Gernot Wind/uhr and Jo hn R Perry 1 INTRODUCTION 1 .1 Overview The fo cus of this chapter is Modern Standard Persian and Modern Standard Tajik. Both evolved from Early New Persian. We stern Persian has typologically shifted differently from modern Tajik which has retained a considerable number of Early Eastern Persian fe atures, on the one hand, and has also assimilated a strong typologically Turkic com­ ponent, on the other hand. In spite of their divergence, both languages continue to share much of their underlying fe atures, and are discussed jointly in this chapter. 1.1.1 Historical background Persian has been the dominant language of Iranian lands and adjacent regions for over a millennium. From the tenth century onward it was the language of literary culture, as well the lingua franca in large parts of West, South, and Central Asia until the mid­ nineteenth century. It began with the political domination of these areas by Persian­ speaking dynasties, first the Achaemenids (c. 558-330 BCE), then the Sassanids (224-65 1 CE), along with their complex political-cultural and ideological Perso-Iranianate con­ structs, and the establishment of Persian-speaking colonies throughout the empires and beyond. The advent of Islam (since 651 CE) represents a crucial shift in the history of Iran and thus of Persian. It resulted in the emergence of a double-focused Perso-Islamic construct, in which, after Arabic in the first Islamic centuries, Persian reasserted itself as the dominant high register linguistic medium, and extended its dominance into fo rmerly non-Persian and non-Iranian-speaking territories in the East and Central Asia. The writing system became that of the new dominant religion, and there occurred increasing infusion of Arabic features into the lexicon, phonology and grammar (com­ parable to the absorption of the Norman component into English). However, throughout the evolution of the literary standards from Early New Persian to Modern Standard Persian the considerable typologcal changes that Persian underwent are due to both internal Persian developments, induding the leveling of regional fe atures, and to the assimilation of expanding areal cross-linguistic typological isoglosses. 416 PERSIAN AND TAJIK 417 1.1.2 Pe rsian and related groups See Chapter 2, Map 2.6. 1.1.2.1 Varieties of Persian Overall, Persian varieties are divided into a Western group mainly in Iran and an Eastern group in Afghanistan and Central Asia, with transitional varieties. Ca ucasus The northwestern outpost of Persian is Caucasian Tat Persian spoken in an Azeri Turkic, Caucasian and Armenian environment, with three varieties: (a) Muslim and (b) Jewish (Juhuri) in Azerbaijan and Dagestan, and (c) Christian Armeno-Tat in Armenia. Iran (I) Persian sociolinguistic registers include: (a) Modern Standard Persian, the written norm in Iran (Farsi) and Afghanistan (Dari), evolved during the last few centuries: (b) Colloquial Persian, specifically the normalized fo rm of Colloquial Te hrani Per­ sian, used fo r most polite spoken communication, which increasingly shows reflexes in the standard language; (c) Xo dem uni 'our own ', « xod-eman-i), i.e. familiar speech, the non-normalized local variant such as in Tehran. (2) Regional and local varieties in the urban centers throughout Iran in non-Persian dialect and language areas. (3) Khorasan Persian varieties, representing a major distinct regional subgroup and stretching from east of Tehran to the Afghan border. Te hran to the Afghan border. Tr ansitional group Varieties straddling the Iran-Afghan border: (I) closely related Kohistani in Iran and Afghan Farsiwani, and (2) Sistani on both sides of the border. Afghanistan See Kieffer 1983, inc!. map and detailed table. (I) Afghan Persian, officially called Dari, mostly close to literary Persian. (2) Kaboli (Kaboli), increasingly become the standard Afghan vernacular. Large regional Persian varieties include: (3) Herati (Herati) near the Iranian border. (4) Ayamaqi (Aymaqi) near Herat (in pockets also in Iranian Khorasan). (5) Hazaragi (Hazaragi), stretching northeast through the Afghan center, some in Iran. (6) Afghan Tajik in the NE, including Afghan Badakhashani, the latter with the out- post Madaglashti near Peshawar in Pakistan. Note that the terms "Tajik" as well as "Dari" are sometimes erroneously used collect­ ively for all Afghan varieties. Central Asia Tajik, in an Uzbek Turkic environment, with fo ur broadly definedgroups (see 1.2 below). 418 THE IRANIAN LANGUAGES 1.1.2.2 Related varieties and dialect groups Colonial Persian Persian was cultivated at the courts of the Anatolian Seljuk and Ottoman rulers (from ca. 1200-1922), several of whom are known fo r composing Persian poetry. Probably best known among their proteges is Rumi (d. 1273), the most cherished Persian mystic poet who had come to Konya from Wakhsh near Balkh in Afghanistan. Literary Ottoman Turkish is a virtual amalgam of Turkish and Persian (with all of the latter's Arabic loan . elements). In the East, Urdu developed under heavy Persian influence. Persian first entered India with the conquest of north-west India by Ghaznavid armies in the eleventh century. Four centuries later, Persian was chosen as the court language of the Mogul rulers (1530- 1857), who were major patrons of Persian literature and poets from Iran, unlike the contemporary Safavids in Iran. It was at the courts of India and Turkey where many of the major traditional dictionaries of Persian were compiled from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, including grammatical treatises. Simultaneously, there developed in India a Persian vernacular, and it was from the Indian scribes and secretaries that the English officers of the East India Company, a number of whom wrote grammars of Persian, learned their Persian, with all its local idiosyncrasies. Persian was abolished in its last officialbastion ­ the courts of law-in 1837 by the authorities of the East India Company. Judea-Persian Judeo-Persian varieties, like other Judeo-Iranian varieties, are found throughout Iranian­ speaking regions, such as Jewish Tat Persian and Bukhara Tajik. In fa ct, Jewish mer­ chants and travellers have been the earliest speakers who wrote in Early New Persian, and left its earliest documents. These and later documents, in a Hebrew-writing tradition parallel to that in Arabic, have been crucial fo r the study of the diachrony and diatopy of Persian (e.g. Lazard 1968; Paul, ed., 2003a). Luri-type and Fa rs dialects In SW Iran there are two groups which can be recognized as "Perside", i.e. they continue numerous fe atures that evolved from Southern Early New Persian (see 7 Diachrony), though each evolved differently: (I) The Luri-type dialects (Luri proper, Bakhtiari, Boyer-Ahmadi, Mamasani­ Kohgeluye). (2) The Fars dialects stretching from the Gulfinto western and central Fars. 1.1.2.3 Number of speakers According to various sources, the totals of native speakers of Persian and its varieties (or rather 'ethnic' Persians) in the three Persian-speaking countries vs. the total popula­ tion (who at least use or understand Persian as a second language) are: Iran 35170 m; Afghanistan 17/33 m (Hazara 2.8 m; Aymaq 380,000); Tajikistan 5-617 .2 m. Overall, the numbers are, counting speakers outside these countries. a total of 6011 1 0 m, and of these: 35170 m fo r We stern Persian vs. 23/40 m fo r Eastern Persian. The estimates fo r Caucasian Tat suggest about 26,000, now reduced from a much larger number due to (partially fo rced) assimilation and emigration. PERSIAN AND TAJIK 419 1.1.3 Evolution of Standard Pe rsian 1.1.3.1 Early linguistic groups Sources from the nineth--eleventh centuries distinguished fo ur linguistic groups: (I) Parsi, the literary Middle Persian (mainly used by Zoroastrian priests). (2) Parsi proper (mutlaq), the literary and spoken Southern Early New Persian used from Fars to Sistan, which had retained numerous Middle Persian fe atures and vocabulary, with relatively fe w Arabic loans. (3) In the North, (Piirsi-i) Dari: The term originally referred to the administrative and spoken Persian that had developed at the Sassanian court in Ctesiphon and was administratively used throughout the Empire. In Khorasan it had already replaced the local Parthian dialects even before Islamization. As a ready vehicle fo r the Muslim administrations, besides Arabic, it became the vehicle of the Muslim mission into Central Asia and beyond, where a Persian variety had already been used as a lingua franca. This process not only led to the ultimate replacement of Sogdian, Bactrian, and Khwarezmian, but also inserted into this Dari an increasingly larger Arabic loan component as well as local eastern Persian and other Iranian vocabulary. (4) Pahlavi, Ar. ja lt/avi, lit. 'Parthian': The term implied the non-Persian Iranian languages, particularly in western and central Iran which was once part of the fo rmer Parthian Empire. In addition, Early New Persian varieties must also have been spoken in Sassanian border garrisons east and west. One of these was probably the ancestor offat Persian in the Sassanian outpost at the Caspian gate to the Caucasus, Darband. The others, prob­ ably older, were the outpost in Central Asia out of which ultimately developed Afghan and Taj ik Persian. See also the detailed study by Perry (2009). 1.1.3.2 Arabic and Turkic See Chapter 2, Map 2.7. (I) Arabic and Turkic A major contributing factor to the Arabization of Persian was the magnitude of Arab settlement in Greater Iran, and presumably the intense interaction and intermarriage between the immigrants with the local populations at both the highest and lowest social levels, and after large numbers of Arab tribes moved into the Fertile Crescent during Sassanian times, Shapur II (r.
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