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Persian Language Dominance and the Loss of Minority Languages in Iran

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Open Journal of Social Sciences, 2020, 8, 8-18 https://www.scirp.org/journal/jss ISSN Online: 2327-5960 ISSN Print: 2327-5952 Persian Language Dominance and the Loss of Minority Languages in Iran Hossein Ghanbari1, Mahdi Rahimian2 1The University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada 2Mohawk College of Applied Arts and Technology, Ontario, Canada How to cite this paper: Ghanbari, H., & Abstract Rahimian, M. (2020). Persian Language Do- minance and the Loss of Minority Languages Iran is home to many different ethnic groups who speak different minority in Iran. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 8, languages. Despite that, the Persian language, among others, has dominated 8-18. other languages and connected Iranian diverse ethnic and linguistic groups https://doi.org/10.4236/jss.2020.811002 with each other. Scholars have attributed its dominance to its linguistic fea- Received: September 27, 2020 tures and the attempts of Iranian elites throughout history to safeguard the Accepted: November 6, 2020 Iranian culture and the Persian language from those of non-Iranian ones. Ira- Published: November 9, 2020 nian elites have endeavoured not only to maintain the Persian language but Copyright © 2020 by author(s) and purge it from non-Persian words and concepts, namely Arabic and Turkish. Scientific Research Publishing Inc. However, as a result of that dominance, not only other minority languages in This work is licensed under the Creative Iran have been lost but their speakers shifted toward the Persian language. Commons Attribution International This paper presents a historical account of that language dominance and loss License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ to advocate that Iranian linguists and language revitalizers can learn from the Open Access language revitalization practices around the world to maintain and revitalize their minority languages. Keywords Persian, Dominance, Minority Languages, Language Loss, Language Shift 1. Introduction The discussion of the loss and shift of the Iranian minority languages cannot be divorced from the discussion of the Persian language dominance in Iran. Despite the rich linguistic diversity in Iran, the Persian language became the dominant language and helped diverse Iranian ethnic groups communicate with each other. Its dominance is attributed, as described below, to its linguistic features and also to the efforts made by Iranian elites in that endeavour. Given that, in this paper, the writers will first present a discussion on the reasons that have DOI: 10.4236/jss.2020.811002 Nov. 9, 2020 8 Open Journal of Social Sciences H. Ghanbari, M. Rahimian risen the Persian language over other minority languages in Iran. Then, they will investigate the effects of the Persian language dominance on the gradual loss and shift of the Iranian minority languages. However, before that, they will briefly explore language loss in the world and the reasons that have induced it. 2. Iran Iran is located in western Asia and has a population of over 80 million people, and many of whom speak a minority language along with Persian, the official language of the country (Hamdhaidari et al., 2008). There are 75 minority lan- guages spoken in Iran and out of which 61 percent is Persian-speaking, 16 per- cent Azeri, 10 percent Kurd, six percent Lur, two percent Baluch, two percent Arab, two percent Turkmen and Turkic tribes, and one percent speak other lan- guages (Haddadian-Moghaddam & Meylaerts, 2015). In other words, multilin- gualism is not a new concept in Iran but rather has always existed there for a long time (Aghajanian, 1983; Riazi, 2005). After the introduction of Islam and the Arabic concepts and vocabularies had already entered the speech of the Ira- nian mass, Iranian elites attempted to safeguard their Persian language and cul- ture from that of Muslim Arabs. However, not many of the them deemed that a necessary endeavour. While some strived for a pure Persian language void of Arabic words and concepts, others paid no heed to that. It is in light of this that we argue in favour of a relationship between Iranian elites’ efforts in purifying the Persian language from the Arabic language and culture. As a result of those efforts, the Persian language rose to dominance over other minority languages in Iran, although we doubt if that was a conscious decision to push non-Persian languages to the margin. With that said, in the following section, the process through which the Persian language rose to dominance over other minority languages, especially after the Arab Muslims’ invasion of Iran, will be presented. Later, we will open our discussion on the effects of that linguistic and cultural dominance on the loss and shift in non-Persian minority languages in Iran. 3. Arab Muslims’ Invasion and Iranians’ Reactions This paper does not intend to discuss the reasons that led to the defeat of the Sassanid (224 - 651 CE) in Iran. However, it is believed that Arab Muslims struck at the Sassanid army at a right time. By the time Arab Muslims invaded Iran, the Sassanid army had already been defeated by the Byzantines, the Sas- sanid was involved in four years of dynastic disarray, and the Sassanid nobles were busy with some internal wars between themselves (Daryaee, 2012). All of these reasons worked to the benefit of the Arab Muslims and the defeat of the Sassanid kingdom in the 7th century A.D. that led to the rise of Islam and Arabic as the new religion and language in Iran. This paved the way to the Arabic and Islamic concepts, ideologies and vocabularies to crawl into the Persian language that eventually aroused different reactions to it. As Iranian cities fell one after another to the Arab Muslims, and many people lost their property and posses- DOI: 10.4236/jss.2020.811002 9 Open Journal of Social Sciences H. Ghanbari, M. Rahimian sions, Iranian elites and noblemen reacted differently to these Arab victors. Some picked up their weapons and fought back, albeit unsuccessfully, and some like the wealthy peasants cooperated with Arab rulers (Hayati & Mashhadi, 2010). According to Khosravi and Bayat (2008), this cooperation with the new rulers for one thing, saved thousands from massacre and also allowed the Ira- nian peasants to administer their business in the Persian language and without being harmed by Arab Muslim rulers (Gholizadeh, 2016). This was perhaps one of the most critical decisions ever made in the Iranian history as Iran and its minority languages could have had the same faith as other non-Arab countries whose national languages were uprooted and replaced with Arabic. 4. The Rise of the Persian Language to Dominance in Iran The dominance of the Persian language has been attributed to a number of rea- sons. For one thing, it is attributed to the linguistic characteristics of the Persian language that distinguish it from the languages of foreign rulers in Iran. Ac- cording to Talattof (2015), Arabic words in contrast with Middle or Old Persian words are simpler in structure, and could only influence the Persian language at the vocabulary domain and not at syntax. Therefore, although Arabic and Is- lamic concepts were taken up by the Iranians, the Persian language grammar has not been impacted by that of the Arabic language. As a consequence, the collo- quial and simpler form of Persian, called Dari Persian, was adopted and spoken by the Iranian mass (Talattof, 2015). To illustrate the role that the linguistic features of a language play in its dominance, the Greek language changed the Persian language grammar from synthetic to analytic which is demonstrated through the Model of Competition and Survival (Singh, 2018). According to this model, when two related languages, for example, Greek and Persian are both Indo-European languages, encounter each other, the grammar of the domestic language will be affected by that of the outside language and becomes simpler (Singh, 2018). The Persian language dominance over other minority languages in Iran is at- tributed to the high status of the Persian language in the Sassanid dynasty. Al- though multilingualism was commonly accepted in Iran (Aghajanian, 1983; Ri- azi, 2005), the Sassanid kings opted for the Persian as the language of communi- cation in Iran (Hayati & Mashhadi, 2010). It was used in as far places as Balkh, the center of commerce in ancient Iran, and was spoken by the Manavis, the fol- lowers of an Iranian religion, and by the Zoroastrians, who were later pushed to the eastern part of Iran to be safe from the Arab Muslims. In other words, not much changed after Islam was introduced to Iran as people kept on communi- cating with each other in Persian (Anooshe, 2006; Sadeghi, 2001) which played a significant role in its dominance over other over time. However, after the introduction of Islam to Iran, Arabic script took over and infused the Persian language with Arabic words and Islamic concepts (Talattof, 2015). Thus, as Iranian semi-independent dynasties rose to power in Iran, some DOI: 10.4236/jss.2020.811002 10 Open Journal of Social Sciences H. Ghanbari, M. Rahimian pursued a national approach to highlight their Persian culture and disdain that of the Arab Muslims. They did so to magnify the pre-Islamic Persian civilization and present it as a golden age so that it marked contrast with the Islamic domi- nation of Iran and the Arabization of the Persian culture and values (Kia, 1998). Others did not regard the idea of purifying the Persian culture and identity as important. For instance, although the Tahirid dynasty (821 - 873 AD), strived to break themselves free of the Arab rulers, they found the idea of purging the Per- sian language or culture from that of Arabic out of question.
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