The history of Dari language

The word Dari refers to the language that is popularly known as Persian. Dari is also called Farsi or Parsi. These different names have been synonymously in use throughout history and refer to the same one language. There are two theories regarding the origin of the word Dari. One states that the word Dari came from the word Darbar which means court, courts of kings. It argues that this language was the very respected and chosen language for communications at royal courts of kings. Thus it came to be known as the language of courts or Darbari. Later in time the word Darbari was shortened and evolved to Dari which still has the same meaning as Darbari. The second theory relates the origin of word Dari to the word Dara or valley. Many accomplished language researchers, admit that the language Dari or Farsi itself was born in Khorasan, a mountainous land where people live in numerous valleys (Dara). Therefore, the name Dari came to refer to the language spoken by people of the valleys (Dara) or in the valleys.
Dari or Farsi is a widely used language in Central Asia. It is the official language of Iran, Tajikistan and Afghanistan. Dari/Farsi is a branch of the Indo-Iranian (Indo-Aryan) languages, a subfamily of the Indo-European languages. There are three different phases in the development of Aryan languages: Old, Middle, and Modern. Old Dari/Farsi and the Avestan language represents the old stage of development and were spoken in ancient Bactria. The Avestan language is called Avestan because the sacred scriptures of Zoroastrianism, Avesta, were written in this old form. Avestan died out long before the advent of Islam and except for scriptural use not much has remained of it. Old Dari/Farsi, however, survived and there are many written records of old Dari, in cuneiform called Maikhi, in Khorasan. Old Dari was spoken until around the third century BC. It was a highly inflected language.
Middle Dari was spoken from 3rd century to 9th and is related to several other Central Asian tongues such as Sogdian, Chrosmian and also Parthian languages. Parthian was the language of the Parthian Empire (Arsacid). Parthian, though left some influences on middle Dari, declined when the Sassanian power expanded. Middle Dari had a simpler grammar and was written in multivalent letters. Middle Dari declined after conquest of Arabs in the 7th century and much of its rich literature was lost or destroyed by the Arabs. However, a lot of it was also translated into Arabic.
Modern Dari began to develop by 9th century. It is a continuation of the Khorasanian standard language which had considerable Parthian and Middle Dari elements. It has much simpler grammar than its ancestral forms. After the conquest of Arabs in 7th century, it is written in arabic script, with few modifications, and has absorbed a vast Arabic vocabulary.
Dari literature is one of the richest in the world and composed of the body of writings in Modern Dari. After the Arab conquest of 7th century Islam replaced Zoroastrianism and Arabic became the language of law, religion and culture in Khorasan. However with the rise of Samanids and political revival of Khorasan, Dari emerged as a literary medium and became the established literary form of Dari language. During the period of Samanids a new era of literary began. The ancient tradition of Khorasan and Islam merged together. Dari was specially instrumental in freeing Islam from an exclusive Arabic attachment and universalized Islam thus helping to preserve it.
Dari poetry had began sporadically in Khorasan in 9th century. The earliest main genres are the epic, qasida (Purpose poem), masnavi (long narrative poem), and ghazal (lyric). By 10th century Dari had become an important and melodious medium- as the remaining works of Rudaki, a versatile poet, indicate. He is regarded as the father of Dari poetry. After Rudaki's death the epic tradition, with its sources in Avesta and Middle Dari texts, began. The first epic poet was Marvazi Samarqandi who composed a Shah Nameh (Book of Kings) in 910. Daqiqi Balkhi another poet of tenth century wrote a better known Shah Nameh in 975. However, Firdowsi Tusi composed another Shah Nameh (1010) which became the very best known epic in Dari literature.
Qasida, another form of poetry, was also first written by Rudaki. Mostly qasidas are panegyrics, sometime elegiac, didactic and occasionally they deal with philosophical or biographical literature. The average length of qasida is between sixty and hundred lines and they are written in couplets. Qasidas that are more than two hundred lines are also frequently written. The earliest exponents of this form of poetry Ansuri Balkhi, Asjadi, and Farrukhi were the greatest poets of their time. Of many panegyrists in the history of Dari literature, Anvari Balkhi was regarded as the foremost. In philosophical qasidas Naser-e Khosrow was very well respected. Omar Khayyan was another poet of this era who is considered to be of astonishing originality.

During the Samanid era the foundation of Dari prose was also laid. Several pieces of literature demonstrated the suitability of Dari language for sacred texts. Bal'ami, one of the vizier (high government official) of Mansur I Samanid, published a translation of the annals of Tabari. Also, in the same time, a group of theologian, made a Dari copy of Tabari's commentary on the Quran. These works and works of similar nature produced a clear demonstration that Dari was very suitable for religious works. In fact these works brought to an end the absolute domination of Arabic language over religious literature. Mansur I Samanid also commissioned the pharmacopeia of Abu Mansur Muvaffaq of Herat, the first Dari book on medicine. An extensive technical vocabulary, applicable to philosophy and science were also coined with the patronage of Samanids.
Thirteen and fourteen century were also a period when great poets lived and it is often called the golden age of Dari poetry. In this period, three great poet, Moulana Balkhi (Rumi), Sadi and Hafiz lived. They were excellent in a form o poetry called ghazal, a passionate mystical lyric form that is composed on a single rhyme. Ghazals were usually consists of five to fifteen couplets and they could be of variety of meters. The first mystic masnavi is believed to be written by Hakim Sanai of Ghazna and is known as Hadiqat al-Haqiqa (The Enclosed Garden of Truth). He was followed by Attar and Rumi. Rumi's Masnavi-e-Manavi consists of six books that contains 30,000 couplets. Masnavi's basic theme is love and Rumi in this book, is concerned with problems bearing on the conduct, meaning and purpose of life and the longing of the human soul for union with God. The Masnavi of Mawlana of Balkh is considered to be the most profound and the greatest work of Dari literature, and perhaps of all the Islamic literature. The Masnavi is often called Quran-e-Sani meaning the second Quran. Every page of it moves, absorbs and surprises the reader. Masnavi form of poetry was also suitable for epic and romantic stories. Of romantic masnavis the Khosrow -O-Shirin (Khosrow and Shirin) of Nezami is the best known.
Dari: The lingua franca in AfghanistanThe two major languages in Afghanistan are Pashto and Persian, known in Afghanistan as Dari. Both are Iranian languages. The fact that they are related is obvious even to the casual observer, although the historical connection is not very close. Persian is the principal West Iranian language and Pashto the principal East Iranian language. They may have first begun to split apart several centuries BCE The Iranian languages form one branch of the Indo-European language family that includes the Romance languages such as French and Spanish and the Germanic languages such as German and English. Pashto and Dari are, therefore, distantly related to English.
Uzbek and Turkmen, spoken by minorities in the northern areas of Afghanistan, are both Altaic languages, closely related to Turkish and the languages of the Central Asian republics that were formerly Soviet Socialist Republics. Thanks to trade links with the subcontinent, a good number of Afghans, especially from the southern part of the country, also speak and understand Urdu and Punjabi.
The similarities and differences among the languages–even the very distant relationship between English and Dari/Pashto–can be seen by comparing the numbers one through five.* The Dari and Pashto numbers are clearly related but bear no relationship whatever to the Uzbek or Arabic numbers.

English-one-two-three-four-five
Dari-[yak]-du-se-char-panj
Pashto-[yaw]-dowa-dree-salor-pinzah
Uzbek-bir-ikki-ooch-tort-besh
Arabic-[wahad]-[ithneyn]-[thalatha]-[arba'a]-[khamsa]

Although the languages in Afghanistan are written using adaptations of the Arabic alphabet, none is related to Arabic, which is a member of the Semitic language family, along with Hebrew, and completely different from either the Indo-European or the Altaic language families.
* The Dari, Pashto, and Arabic words are given in phonetic notation, signified by enclosure in brackets. The Uzbek numbers are transliterated from the Cyrillic alphabet.

Language Use

Dari has always been the prestige language in Afghanistan. It is the lingua franca, the language resorted to when speakers of different languages need to conduct business or otherwise communicate. However, there are different pressures favoring the use of either Dari or Farsi.
Pashto was designated a national language of Afghanistan by the Pashtuns in the various constitutions, and in the period of modernization, all non-Pashto-speaking government workers were required to learn the language. It was by no means a popular activity: those who took such Pashto classes allege that the Pashtun teachers made the language more difficult than it needed to be. Pashto was also required as a subject in elementary schools where the medium of instruction was Dari. The language served as a national symbol since it is primarily a language associated with Afghanistan, though around half its speakers live in Pakistan. Even so, Pashto has never had the status of Dari, which has a vast cultural and literary tradition.
Dari speakers are more diverse, counting Tajiks, Hazara, Farsiwan, and Aimaq among their numbers. In Afghanistan, all education above primary school is conducted in Dari, except specific Pashto language study. Pashto speakers are frequently bilingual in Dari, but Dari speakers rarely learn more than a few words of Pashto. Speakers of other languages in Afghanistan frequently pick up Dari as a matter of course, except in the totally Pashtun areas of the south. Both Dari and Pashto are spoken among Afghans in the United States, although Dari has been more prevalent in recent years.

Features of Dari and Pashto

As mentioned above, while Dari and Pashto are different languages, they share common roots in the Iranian family of languages. As such, they share common letters and some words, and their word order and verb systems are similar. They are both written using the Arabic alphabet.

Sound Systems

Dari has a set of consonants quite similar to those of English. There are short and long vowels, and stress is on the last syllable of the word. Pashto has seven vowels, and generally the same consonants as Dari does, but in addition has a series of retroflex consonants: t, d, r, n, and in the Kandahar dialect sh. Retroflex consonants are made by curling the tongue backward; our English r is a retroflex.

Grammars

Both languages have a basic word order in which the direct object comes before the verb. They also have verb systems that resemble the English verb system in basic ways. Dari and Pashto verbs have two basic stems – present and past – and make a distinction between perfective and imperfective that has its echoes in the perfect tenses of English (I went to the store vs. I have gone to the store).
Dari nouns have no grammatical gender, but are marked for person and number (singular and plural). Verbs agree with the subject in person and number; there is an extensive pattern of compound verbs consisting of a noun or adjective plus an auxiliary verb, as is the case in Pashto. However, Pashto also has three separate types of verbs, each with its own set of irregular verbs. Pashto is also more complex than Dari in terms of word formation. It has several classes of masculine and feminine nouns and adjectives and complex sets of weak and strong pronouns.

Vocabulary

Dari and Pashto have many words in common, a result of both being Iranian languages and therefore having the same ancestral words and of having been spoken side by side for centuries.
Both languages have a number of words borrowed from Arabic, as do all the languages spoken by Islamic peoples. Many given names, especially men's, are Arabic. In the compound verb classes of both languages, many of the nouns that form the first part of the compound are Arabic. For example, the Pashto [harakat kaw-] 'make a move' is composed of the Arabic [harakat] 'movements', and [saber kaw-] 'bear with' from Arabic [saber] 'patience'.
As is true of all languages, the dialects of Dari and Pashto spoken in areas adjacent to other languages are likely to have more borrowed words from those languages. For example, Pashto has borrowed words from Urdu, spoken in Pakistan, and the Dari spoken in the north has borrowed words from Uzbek and Turkmen.

Writing Systems

Both languages are written in the Arabic alphabet, which reads from right to left and connects letters in cursive style. (Dari has four extra letters to represent sounds that don't occur in Arabic. Pashto has the four extra letters that Dari has, plus an additional eight.) Because the Arabic alphabet does not use symbols to represent vowels (except in the Koran), it is impossible to transliterate from Dari or Pashto to English letter by letter, and there are a number of ways to spell the vowels.

Source: http://www.majzooban.org