SOME USEFUL PHRASES IN DARI FIVE REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD DARI LEARN MORE ABOUT DARI SPEAKERS سالم. نامم کاترین است. [sɒˈlɔːm nɔːˈmeːm kɔːˈtrin ɒst] AND THEIR LANGUAGE are the most numerous Turkic /salaam. naamĕm kaatrin ast./ people in . They predomi- Hi. My name is Catherine. 1. Dari is spoken as a first or second language by over 9.6 million people throughout Central Asian, most nantly mostly live in Uzbekistan, a land- notably in , , and . locked country of Central Asia that shares نام شما چیست؟ [nɔːˈmeː ʃoˈmɒ ʧist] /naam-ā shoma chēst?/ 2. A member of the Indo-Iranian , borders with Kazakhstan to the west and Dari shares many structural similarities to languages What is your name? such as Farsi and Tajiki. north, Kyrgyzstan and to the Though few people in America can speak or use east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan .3 چطور هستید؟ من خوب هستم، تشکر. [ʧɛˈtor hɒˈstɛd mɒn χob hɒˈstɒm, ˈtɒʃɒˌkor] Dari, it has a growing influence on the political, to the south. Many Uzbeks can also be /chĕtor hastĕd? man khob hastam, tashakor./ economic, and strategic situations across the region How are you doing? I’m fine, thank you. and throughout the world. As a consequence, those found in Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyr- who study Dari can find careers in a variety of fields gyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and the ,including translation and interpreting, consulting لطفا ًیک گیالس چای بیاورید. [lotˈfɒn jɒk giˈlɔːs ʧɔːɪ biˈjɒ•ßɒˌrɛd] foreign service and intelligence, journalism, and Uyghur Autonomous Region of /lotfan, yak gilaas chaay biya-varĕd./ many others. NGOs and other enterprises that deal . Please bring me a cup of tea. with Afghanistan desperately need specialists who speak Dari. شما از کجا هستید؟ [ʃoˈmɒ ɒz koʣeː hɒˈstəd] 4. Modern Dari provides a good foundation to learn /šoma az kojā hasted?/ classical Persian, providing a gateway to the history, Where are you from? literature, culture, and languages of the Persian and Islamic world, stretching from Turkey to India. Learning Dari is fun! The grammar of Dari is easy to .5 من از ایالت کالیفرنیا هستم. [mɒn ɒz kɒliˈforniyɔː hɒˈstɒm] learn, and there are numerous resources on the web /man az kaliforniyaa hastam./ to help you learn. Most of all, learning Dari will I’m from California. bring you in contact with the warm and hospitable people of Afghanistan. تشکر. [ˈtɒʃɒˌkor] /tashakor./ Thank you. ABOUT US The Center for Languages of the Central Asian Region CeLCAR) at Indiana University develops materials for) قابلش نیست. [ˌqɔːbɛˈlɛʃ nɪst] learning and teaching a wide variety of Central Asian /kaabĕleš nĭst./ languages. You’re welcome. For more information, go to celcar.indiana.edu. ,Eigenmann Hall, 1900 East 10th Street 238 خدا حافظ. ]χoˈdɔː hɔːˈfɛz[ Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47406 /khodaa haafĕz/ Phone: (812) 856-1230 Center for Languages of the Good-bye E-mail : [email protected] Special thanks goes to Dr. Rahman Arman Website: https://celcar.indiana.edu for his contributions to this pamphlet. Central Asian Region (CeLCAR) WHO SPEAKS THE DARI There are a number of lexical, phonological, and local people and their traditions have been influenced syntactic differences and nuances that distinguish for millennia by cultures and civilizations from Dari from Farsi and Tajiki. These variations include Greece to India. In ancient times, the people of LANGUAGE AND WHERE the following: the area followed . Before the Arab The use of certain tenses. For example, while Farsi invasion, in broad areas of the modern territory DO THEY LIVE? uses the auxiliary verb dāštan ‘to have’ and Tajiki of Afghanistan, people followed Buddhism and Dari is spoken natively by roughly 50% of the uses istādan ‘to stay’ to form the present and past Hinduism. After the Arab conquest, people converted population in Afghanistan and is one of the two continuous tenses, Dari does not employ any auxiliary to . Today, the majority of official languages of the country (the other being verbs. It simply uses the habitual tense in combination Dari-speaking Afghans follow Sunni ); it is also spoken with appropriate adverbs. Islam, but there are a considerable in some parts of eastern number of Shi’ite Muslims living in Iran. In Afghanistan, Dari Lexical differences. For example: Central (the ), Northwest has served as the lingua ‘chair’ - čawkíin Dari, but sandalí in Farsi, and (the ), and Northeast (the franca for many years, and stul (Russian loanword) in Tajiki. Ismailis) Afghanistan. is the main language of Depending on the homeland communication between ‘notebook’ - kitābča in Dari, but daftar in Farsi and Tajiki (daftar means ‘office’ in Dari). and surrounding ethnic groups, people in most Afghan some Dari-speaking Afghans cities. Many Dari speakers, Additionally, due to its contact with people and still practice some more ancient especially those in Central and Northern Afghanistan languages spoken in Central Asia, Dari uses a traditions, such as some Zoroastrian traditions identify themselves as belonging to the Tajik ethnic considerable number of loanwords borrowed from like Nawruz (Zoroastrian New Year) and setting group. However many members of other ethnic Pashto, Indian, Enlgish and some Turkic languages. candles on graves. Also, most Dari-speaking groups, including Hazara, Pashtun, Uzbek, and Afghans follow the principles of Pashtunwali (the Pamiris speak Dari as a second language as well. Dari Some commonly used Pashto loanwords include pohantun - ‘university’ and ş̌ārwāllí- ‘municipality’ “Pashtun code”), such as hospitality, honor, dignity, has a number of dialects such as Shamali (Northern), assistance, providing shelter to strangers, and respect Herati, Hazaragi, and Kabuli which is the basis of Some commonly used loanwords from English include for women, elders, and children. They also use the the . With the wars in Afghanistan, āys krim - ‘ice cream’, motar - ‘car’, and helikoptar - custom of shurā (group consultation) to solve issues many Dari speakers found refuge in countries such ‘helicopter’. that may emerge in the community. Overall, Dari- as Iran, Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, speaking Afghans remain a family and community Sweden, Canada, and the United States. WHAT ALPHABET IS USED oriented society. Farming, gardening, and animal husbandry are WHAT KIND OF LANGUAGE IS DARI? TO WRITE DARI? traditional occupations of Dari speakers, as they are Dari uses the uses the Perso- with all Afghans. Staple crops include vegetables, Dari, along with Farsi spoken in Iran and Tajiki spoken script, consisting of wheat, barley, corn, and rice. in Tajikistan, is one of the three literary languages 32 letters, 8 vowels and 24 that stem from a common language spoken in the Afghans still practice an ancient and exciting consonants. It is written and traditional sport called Buzkashi, or the ‘goat game.’ Middle Ages called Pārsi (Arabized as Fārsi). Together read from right to left and with Farsi and Tajiki, Dari belongs to the West Iranian The game consists of two has no distinct capital letters. times competing over the branch of Indo-European languages. The term Dari is This script has several styles derived from the word dar which meant the court in carcass of a dead animal of handwriting: Dari uses the (these days usually a calf of a the classical language. So Dari is “the language of the nasta’líq and shikasta styles. court.” cow), and the first rider (or team) who is able to pitch Dari is an analytic, or isolating language, which uses WHAT IS THE CULTURE OF the carcass across the goal auxiliary words to build constructions indicating line is the winner. Sometimes grammatical meanings. It does not have gender or AFGHANISTAN’S DARI SPEAKERS? a game of Buzkashi can last declension of nouns and adjectives; most plural For many centuries, Afghanistan has been the up to a week! nouns are regular. crossroads of numerous empires and cultures. The