Dari (
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Introduction
Dari is a member of the Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. Dari is the name given to classical Persian poetry and court language, as well 
as to Persian dialects spoken in Afghanistan. The name is an abbreviation of the name Court Persian (Fārsi-yi Dari). Like Persian, It is spoken as a first language by 5.6 million people in Afghanistan. Various dialects of Dari are also spoken by some 15,000 people in Iran (including Zoroastrian Dari), and by 1 million people in Pakistan, as well as in emigré communities in the Middle East, Europe, Canada, and the U.S. The total number of Dari speakers around the world is estimated to be around 7.6 million (Ethnologue).
Old Persian and its descendant, Middle Persian, are thought to have originated in Parsa (or Fars), the center of the 
Persian Empire in southwest Iran. Old Persian is attested from the inscriptions left by the Achaemenid dynasty (559 to 331 B.C.) which ruled the territory that is now Iran until the conquest of Alexander the Great. Middle Persian, also known as Pahlavi, after the Parthians who ruled Persia after the collapse of Alexander's Empire, is attested by pre-Islamic Zoroastrian religious writings. There is no conclusive evidence that these languages are the ancestors of Modern Persian and Dari.
The bulk of the surviving Persian literature comes from the times following the Islamic conquest of Iran in the 7th-8th centuries AD when the Persians, who wrote in both Persian and Arabic, became the scribes and bureaucrats, as well as writers and poets of the Islamic empire. Persian poets such as Sādi, Hafez, Omar Khayyam and Rumi have left a significant mark on the literature of many countries.
Dialects
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Dari has a number of dialects, most of which are mutually intelligible: Herati, Kabuli, Khorasani, and Parsiwan (Farsiwan), Yazd and Kerman. Radio Afghanistan broadcasts are promoting a standardized pronunciation of the literary language based on classical norms. Formal Dari speech is closer to Standard Western Persian (Farsi), while informal speech in some parts of Afghanistan is closer to Tajik of Tajikistan. |
Structure
Sound System
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The sound system of Dari differs somewhat from that of Contemporary Standard Persian, possibly due to the influence of surrounding Turkic languages. It has 29 phonemes, i.e., sounds that make a difference in word meaning. Vowels Consonants
Stress |
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- d
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The grammatical systems of Persian (Farsi) and Dari do not differ in any significant way. The description below covers the main grammar points of both languages. Both Dari and Persian are inflected languages, i.e., they adds prefixes and suffixes to roots to express grammatical relations and to form words. Unlike many other Iranian languages, Dari and Persian have lost most of their noun and verb inflections. |
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Word order |
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Dari has a large number of Persian and Arabic loan words which are more prevalent in the written than in the spoken language. Pashto and Tajik words have also been introduced into the language. Most recently, there have been a number of borrowings from English.
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Below are a few common Dari (Persian) phrases and words (in transliteration).
Below are the Dari numerals 1-10.
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Writing
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Persian and Dari are written in a modified Arabic script, known as Perso-Arabic, that contains 4 additional letters to represent Persian sounds p,
Several attempts were made in the 19th-20th centuries to replace the Perso-Arabic alphabet with Latin-based alphabets.
Below are the letters of the Universal Persian Alphabet (UniPers) with equivalents in Perso-Arabic.
Perso-Arabic writing has a variety of script forms:
Take a look Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Perso-Arabic script and in transliteration.
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Click here
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Persian words in English
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Resources |
Click here to find out where Persian (Farsi, Dari, Tajik) are taught in the United States. Online resources for the study of Persian, Dari, Tajik language and culture |
Interesting Facts
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Omar Khayyam (1048-1123 AD) All Persian-speaking people in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan claim the same literary masters. Among them is Omar Khayyam who left a lasting legacy as a mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and poet. Khayyam means 'tent maker.' He compiled astronomical tables, contributed to calendar reform, and discovered a geometrical method of solving cubic equation. In the English-speaking world, he is best known for The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (rubaiyat means 'quatrains'). |
 | How difficult is it to learn Dari? Persian, Dari and Tajik are Category II languages in terms of difficulty for speakers of English. |
Copyright 2007 © National Virtual Translation Center