Persian (local names: فارسی, Farsi IPA: [fɒːɾˈsi]; or پارسی, Parsi IPA: [pɒːɾˈsi], see Nomenclature) is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is widely spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekstan and to some extent in Iraq, Bahrain, and Oman. New Persian, which usually is called also by the names of Farsi, Parsi, Dari or Parsi-ye-Dari (Dari Persian), can be classified linguistically as a continuation of Middle Persian, the official religious and literary language of Sassanian Iran, itself a continuation of Old Persian, the language of the Achaminids. Persian is a pluricentric language and its grammar is similar to that of many contemporary European languages.The Persian language has been a medium for literary and scientific contributions to the eastern half of the Muslim World.
Persian has had a considerable influence on neighboring languages, particularly the Turkis language in Central Asia, Caucasas, and Anatolia, neighboring Iranian languages, as well as Armenian and other languages. It has also exerted a strong influence on South Asian languages, especially Urdu, as well as Hindi, Punjabi, Sindhi, and Saraiki.
Classification
Persian belongs to the Westren Group of the Iranian branch of the Indo-Europen language family, and is of the Subject Object Verb type. The Western Iranian group contains other related languages such as Kurdis, Mazandrani, Gilaki, Talyasi and Baluchi. The language is in the Southwestren Iranian group, along with and very similar to the Tat language of Caucasus[] Larestani and Luri languages.Nomenclature
Contemporary local nomenclature
- Dari (from دربار /dærbɒr/ "court") is the local name in Afghanistan and - to some degree - in South Asia. However, most Afghans who reside in Afghanistan refer to it as "Farsi", like their Iranian counterparts.
- Farsi (فارسی / پارسی) (translation: Fārsi / Pārsi) is the local name of the language in Iran.
- Tjikis (тоҷикӣ in the Cyrillic Tajik alphabet) is the local name in Central Asia, especially in Tajikistan.
English nomenclature
Persian, the more widely used name of the language in English, is an Anglicized form derived from Latin *Persianus < Latin Persia < Greek Πέρσις Pérsis, a Hellenized form of Old Persian Parsa. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term Persian seems to have been first used in English in the mid-16th century. Native Persian speakers call it "Pārsi" (local name) or Fārsi. Fārsi is the arabicizad form of Parsi, due to a lack of the 'p' PHONEME in Standard Arabic. In English, this language is historically known as "Persian", though some Persian-speakers migrating to the West continued to use "Farsi" to identify their language in English and the word gained some currency in English-speaking countries. "Farsi" is encountered in some linguistic literature as a name for the language, used both by Iranian and by foreign authors. According to the OED, the term Farsi was first used in English in the mid-20th century. The Academy of Persian Language and Literature has declared that the name "Persian" is more appropriate, as it has the longer tradition in the western languages and better expresses the role of the language as a mark of cultural and national continuity. Some Persian language scholars[who?] have also rejected the usage of "Farsi" in their articles.International nomenclature
The international language encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code "fa", as its coding system is mostly based on the local names. The more detailed draft ISO 639-3 uses the name "Persian" (code "fas") for the larger unit ("macrolanguage") spoken across Iran and Afghanistan, but "Eastern Farsi" and "Western Farsi" for two of its subdivisions (roughly coinciding with the varieties in Afghanistan and those in Iran, respectively). thnologue, in turn, includes "Farsi, Eastern" and "Farsi, Western" as two separate entries and lists "Persian" and "Parsi" as alternative names for each, besides "Irani" for the western and "Dari" for the eastern form.A similar terminology, but with even more subdivisions, is also adopted by the LIGUEST list, where "Persian" appears as a sub-grouping under "Southwest Westren Iranian". Currently, VOA, BBC, DW, and RFE/RL use "Persian Service" for their broadcasts in the language. RFE/RL
also includes a Tajik service, and an Afghan (Dari) service. This is also the case for the American Association of Teachers of Persian, The Centre for Promotion of Persian Language and Literature, and many of the leading scholars of Persian language.
History
| History of the Persian language |
| Proto-Iranian (ca. 1500 BCE) Southwestern Iranian languages |
| Old Persian (c. 525 BCE - 300 BCE) Old Persian cuneiform script |
| Middle Persian (c.300 BCE-800 CE) Pahlavi script • Manichaean script • Avestan script |
| Modern Persian (from 800) Perso-Arabic script |
According to available documents, the Persian language is "the only Iranian language" for which close genetic relationships between all of its three stages are established and so that Old, Middle, and New Persian represent one and the same language of Persian, that is New Persian is a direct descendent of Middle and Old Persian.
The oldest records in Old Persian date back to the Persian Empire of the 6th century BC.
The known history of the Persian language can be divided into the following three distinct periods:
Old Persian
Old Persian evolved from Proto-Iranian as it evolved in the Iranian plateau's southwest. The earliest dateable example of the language is the Behistun Inscription of the Achaemenid Driuse I (r. 522 BC – ca. 486 BC). Although purportedly older texts also exist (such as the inscription on the tomb of Cyrus II at Pasargadae), these are actually younger examples of the language. Old Persian was written in Old Persian cuneiform, a script unique to that language and is generally assumed to be an invention of Darius I's reign.After Aramaics, or rather the Achaminids form of it known as Imperial Aramaic, Old Persian is the most commonly attested language of the Achaemenid age. While examples of Old Persian have been found wherever the Achaemenids held territories, the language is attested primarily in the inscriptions of Western Iran, in particular in Parsa "Persia" in the southwest, the homeland of the tribes that the Achaemenids (and later the Sassanids) came from.
In contrast to later Persian, written Old Persian had an extensively inflected grammar, with eight cases, each declension subject to both gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) and number (singular, dual, plural).
Middle Persian
In contrast to Old Persian, whose spoken and written forms must have been dramatically different from one another, written Middle Perian reflected oral use. The complex conjugation and declension of Old Persian yielded to the structure of Middle Persian in which the dual number disappeared, leaving only singular and plural, as did gender. Middle Persian used postposition to indicate the different roles of words, for example an -i suffix to denote a possessive "from/of" rather than the multiple (subject to gender and number) genitive caseform of a word.Although the "middle period" of Iranian language formally begins with the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, the transition from Old- to Middle Persian had probably already begun before the 4th century. However, Middle Persian is not actually attested until 600 years later when it appears in Sassanids era (224–651) inscriptions, so any form of the language before this date cannot be described with any degree of certainty. Moreover, as a literary language, Middle Persian is not attested until much later, to the 6th or 7th century. And from the 8th century onwards, Middle Persian gradually began yielding to New Persian, with the middle-period form only continuing in the texts of Zoroastrian tradition.
The native name of Middle Persian was Parsik or Parsig, after the name of the ethnic group of the southwest, that is, "of Pars", Old Persian Parsa, New Persian Fars. This is the origin of the name Farsi as it is today used to signify New Persian. Following the collapse of the Sassanid state, Parsik came to be applied exclusively to (either Middle or New) Persian that was written in Arabic script. From about the 9th century onwards, as Middle Persian was on the threshold of becoming New Persian, the older form of the language came to be erroneously called Pahlavi, which was actually but one of the writing systems used to render both Middle Persian as well as various other Middle Iranian languages. That writing system had previously been adopted by the Sassanids (who were Persians, i.e. from the southwest) from the preceding Arsacids (who were Parthians, i.e. from the northeast). While Rouzbeh (Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa, 8th century) still distinguished between Pahlavi (i.e. Parthian) and Farsi (i.e. Middle Persian), this distinction is not evident in Arab commentaries written after that date.
] New Persian
The history of New Persian itself span more than 1000–1200 years. The development of the language in its last period is often considered in three stages of early, classical, and contemporary periods. The fact that almost all current native speaker of the language do understand ancient texts of Persian language and the grammatical differences of ancient language is acquainted by today speakers simply by reading and memorising those ancient texts gives a special status to Persian language as a whole.Early New Persian
Classic Persian
See also: List of Persian poets and authors
The Islamic conquest of Persian marks the beginning of the new history of Persian language and literature. This period produced world class Persian language poets and the language served, for a long span of time, as the lingua franca of the eastern parts of Islamic Word and of the Indian subcontinents. It was also the official and cultural language of many Islamic dynasties, including Samanids, Buyids, Tahirids, Zayarids, the Mughal Empires, Timurid, Ghaznavid, Seljuq, Khawarizmids, Safavid, Afsharids, Zand, Qajar, Ottomas and also many Mughal successor states such as the Nizams etc. For example, Persian was the only oriental language known and used by Marco Polo at the Court of Kublia Khan and in his journeys through China. The heavy influence of Persian on other languages can still be witnessed across the Islamic world, especially, and it is still appreciated as a literary and prestigious language among the educated elite, especially in fields of music (for example Qawwali) and art (Persian leterature). After the Arab invasion of Persia, Persian began to adopt many words from Arabic and as time went by, a few words were even taken from Altaic language under the Mongol Empire and Turco-Persian society.Use in the Indian subcontinent
Main article: Persian & Urdu
For five centuries prior to the British colonization, Persian was widely used as a second language in the India Subcontinents. It took prominence as the language of culture and education in several Muslim courts in South Asia and became the sole "official language" under the Mughal emperors. Coinciding with the Safavid rule over Iran, when (royal) patronage of Persian poets was curtailed, the centre of Persian culture and literature moved to the Mughal Empire, which had huge financial resources to employ a veritable army of Persian courtly poets, lexicographers and other litterati. Beginning in 1843, though, English gradually replaced Persian in importance on the subcontinent. Evidence of Persian's historical influence there can be seen in the extent of its influence on the languages of the Indian subcontinent, as well as the popularity that Persian letarature still enjoys in that region.Contemporary Persian
A variant of the Iranian standard ISIRI 9147 keyboard layout for Persian.
Varieties and dialects
| Persian language |
|---|
Regional and social varieties:
|
- Iranian Persian (Farsi or Parsi) is the variety of Persian spoken in Iran, also known as Farsi (in Persian) or Persian (in English).
- Dari (Eastern Farsi) is the local name for the Persian language spoken in Afghanistan.
- Tajki is the variety of Persian used in Tajikstan, Uzbekstan and Russia, but unlike the Persian used in Iran and Afghanistan, it is written in the Cyrillic script rather than Persian script.
ISO 639-3 lists ten dialects of Persian, the three main literary dialects listed above and seven regional dialects: Hazaragi,Aimaq, Bukharic, Dzhidi, Dehwari, Darwazi, Pahlavani.
The following are some closely related languages to Persian:
- Luri (or Lori), spoken mainly in the southwestern Iranian provinces of Lorestan, Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province, some western parts of Far Province and some parts of Khuzistan.
- Tat, spoken in parts of Azerbaijan, Russia, etc. It includes Judeyo-tat & Christian-Tat.
- Lari (in southern Iran)
Phonology
Main article: Persian phonology
Iranian Persian has six vowels and twenty-three consonants, including two affricates /tʃ/ (ch) and /dʒ/ (j).Vowels
The vowel phonemes of modern Iranian Persian
However, in the eastern varieties, the archaic distinction of /eː/ and /iː/ (respectively known as Yā-ye majhūl and Yā-ye ma'rūf) is still preserved, as well as the distinction of /oː/ and /uː/ (known as Wāw-e majhūl and Wāw-e ma'rūf). On the other hand, in standard Tajik, the length distinction has disappeared and /iː/ merged with /i/, and /uː/ with /u/. Therefore, contemporary Afghan dialects are the closest one can get to the vowel inventory of Early New Persian.
According to most studies on the subject (e.g. Samareh 1977, Pisowicz 1985, Najafi 2001,) the three vowels which are traditionally considered long (/i/, /u/, /ɒ/) are currently distinguished from their short counterparts (/e/, /o/, /æ/) by position of articulation, rather than by length. However, there are studies (e.g. Hayes 1979, Windfuhr 1979) which consider vowel-length to be the active feature of this system, i.e. /ɒ/, /i/, and /u/ are phonologically long or bimoraic whereas /æ/, /e/, and /o/ are phonologically short or monomoraic.
There are also some studies which consider quality and quantity to be both active in the Iranian system (e.g. Toosarvandani 2004). This view offers a synthetic analysis which includes both quality and quantity, often suggesting that modern Persian vowels are in a transition state between the quantitative system of classical Persian and a hypothetical future Persian which will eliminate all traces of quantity, and retain quality as the only active feature.
Suffice it to say that the length-distinction is strictly observed by careful reciters of classic-style poetry, for all varieties (including the Tajik).
Consonants
| Labial | Alveolar | Postalveoler | Patala | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | [ŋ] | ||||
| Plosive | p b | t d | k ɡ | [ɢ] |
POLITICAL HISTORY OF PAKISTAN
1 comments:
The 8 Best Casinos in Las Vegas - Mapyro
Play at The 8 Best 서귀포 출장샵 Casinos 진주 출장샵 in Las 통영 출장마사지 Vegas. The casinos are easy to 광주 출장샵 find, have great 여주 출장마사지 promotions, and have great customer service.
Post a Comment