Western Persian or Iranian Persian is the most widely spoken dialect of Persian language. It is natively known as Farsi or Parsi. It is officially spoken in Iran and also by various minorities in Iraq and the Persian Gulf states. It is mutually intelligible with Dari and Tajik.
Etymology
The term Persian is an English derivation of Latin Persiānus, the adjectival form of Persia, itself deriving from Greek , a Hellenized form of Old Persian Pārsa, which means "Persia". According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term Persian as a language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century. Farsi, which is the Persian word for the Persian language, has also been used widely in English in recent decades, more commonly to refer to the standard Persian of Iran. However, the name Persian is still more widely used. The Academy of Persian Language and Literature has called for avoiding the use of the endonymFarsi in foreign languages and has maintained that Persian is the appropriate designation of the language in English, as it has the longer tradition in western languages and better expresses the role of the language as a mark of cultural and national continuity. Eminent Iranian historian and linguist Ehsan Yarshater, founder of Encyclopædia Iranica and the Center for Iranian Studies at Columbia University, mentions the same concern in an academic journal on Iranology, rejecting the use of Farsi in foreign languages. Etymologically, the Persian term Fārsi derives from its earlier form Pārsi, which in turn comes from the same root as the English term Persian. The phonemic shift from to is a result of the medieval Arabic influences that followed the Arab conquest of Iran, and is due to the lack of the phoneme in Standard Arabic.
Standard varieties' names
Iran's standard Persian has been called, apart from Persian and Farsi, by names such as Iranian Persian and Western Persian, exclusively. Officially, the official language of Iran is designated simply as Persian. Dari Persian, that is the standard Persian of Afghanistan, has been officially named Dari since 1958. Also referred to as Afghan Persian in English, it is one of Afghanistan's two official languages together with Pashto. The term Dari, meaning "of the court", originally referred to the variety of Persian used in the court of the Sasanian Empire in capital Ctesiphon, which was spread to the northeast of the empire and gradually replaced the former Iranian dialects of Parthia. Tajik Persian, that is the standard Persian of Tajikistan, has been officially designated as Tajik since the time of the Soviet Union. It is the name given to the varieties of Persian spoken in Central Asia, in general.
ISO codes
The international language-encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the codefa, as its coding system is mostly based on the native-language designations. The more detailed standard ISO 639-3 uses the name "Persian" for the dialect continuum spoken across Iran and Afghanistan. This consists of the individual languages Dari and Iranian Persian.
Differences between Iranian and Afghan Persian
There are phonological, lexical, and morphological differences between Afghan Persian and Iranian Persian. There are no significant differences in the written forms, other than regional idiomatic phrases.
Phonology
The principal differences between standard Iranian Persian, based on the dialect of the capital Tehran, and Afghan Persian, as based on the Kabul dialect, are:
The merging of majhul vowels and into and respectively in Iranian Persian, whereas in Afghan Persian, they are still kept separate. For instance, the identically written words شیر 'lion' and 'milk' are pronounced the same in Iranian Persian as, but for 'lion' and for 'milk' in Afghan Persian. The long vowel in زود "quick" and زور "strong" is realized as in Iranian Persian, in contrast, these words are pronounced and respectively by Persian speakers in Afghanistan.
The treatment of the diphthongs of early Classical Persian "aw" and "ay", which are pronounced and in Iranian Persian. Dari, on the other hand, is more archaic, e.g. نوروز 'Persian New Year' is realized as in Iranian and in Afghan Persian, and نخیر 'no' is in Iranian and in Afghan Persian. Moreover, is simplified to in normal Iranian speech, thereby merging with the short vowel . This does not occur in Afghan Persian.
The high short vowels and tend to be lowered in Iranian Persian to and, unlike are in Dari where they might have both high and lowered allophones.
The pronunciation of the labial consonant, which is realized as a voiced labiodental fricative, but Afghan Persian still retains the bilabial pronunciation ; is found in Afghan Persian as an allophone of before voiced consonants and as variation of in some cases, along with.
The realization of short final "a" as in Iranian Persian.
* This means that and in word-final positions are separate in Dari, but not in Iranian Persian, where is the word-final allophone of.
The realization of short non-final "a" as in Iranian Persian.
Dialect continuum
The dialects of Dari spoken in Northern, Central and Eastern Afghanistan, for example in Kabul, Mazar, and Badakhshan, have distinct features compared to Iranian Persian. However, the dialect of Dari spoken in Western Afghanistan stands in between the Afghan and Iranian Persian. For instance, the Herati dialect shares vocabulary and phonology with both Dari and Iranian Persian. Likewise, the dialect of Persian in Eastern Iran, for instance in Mashhad, is quite similar to the Herati dialect of Afghanistan. The Kabuli dialect has become the standard model of Dari in Afghanistan, as has the Tehrani dialect in relation to the Persian in Iran. Since the 1940s, Radio Afghanistan has broadcast its Dari programs in Kabuli Dari, which ensured the homogenization between the Kabuli version of the language and other dialects of Dari spoken throughout Afghanistan. Since 2003, the media, especially the private radio and television broadcasters, have carried out their Dari programs using the Kabuli variety.
