Dari
Language · official in 1 country
Dari is the name Afghanistan has used since 1964 for the Persian spoken in the country, though most of its speakers call it Farsi. Formal written Dari and the Persian of Iran differ in little beyond some vocabulary. The 2004 constitution names Dari one of Afghanistan's two official languages, beside Pashto.
The language on record
- Own name
- دری
- ISO 639-3
- PRS
- Script
- Arabic
- Family
- Western Iranian
- Official in
- 1 country
Where Dari is official
Afghanistan alone, where Dari shares national status with Pashto and is the language Tajiks, Hazaras, Aimaqs and many Pashtuns use with one another.
Official beside Dari
About Dari
Where the word Dari comes from
Arabic and Persian writers have used Dari as a name for New Persian since the 10th century. Most scholars connect it with the Persian dar or darbār, 'court', because it was the formal language of the Sasanian court. A note attributed to Ibn al-Muqaffa' calls Dari the language of the cities of Al-Mada'in, spoken by those at the king's court, and says the speech of Balkh was the chief one among the peoples of Khorasan.
The Persian of Afghanistan is a separate thing from Zoroastrian Dari, a central Iranian language spoken in some Zoroastrian communities in Iran.
Why Afghanistan renamed its Persian
Afghan governments had used Persian for administration for centuries, including those dominated by Pashtuns. In 1964 the official name of the local Persian changed from Farsi to Dari, while Pashto stayed the other official language. The Wikipedia article calls the decision more political than linguistic, taken to support an Afghan state narrative. The name still divides opinion. Some speakers see Farsi as a shared heritage with the poets and thinkers of the Farsi language; others hold that Dari has older roots and a distinct identity.
What separates Kabul speech from Tehran speech
Kabul Persian keeps sounds that Iranian Persian has merged, which puts it closer to Tajiki Persian. The word شیر is /ʃeːr/ 'lion' and /ʃiːr/ 'milk' in Kabul and /ʃiːr/ for both in Tehran. The letter و is still [w] in Afghanistan where Iran says [v]. The new year is nawroːz in Kabul and nowruːz in Tehran, and Dari keeps q and gh apart where Tehran speech often merges them.
Herat stands between the two, sharing vocabulary and sounds with both, and the Persian of Mashhad in eastern Iran is close to the Herati dialect. A 2018 paper by Takhar University and Afghanistan's education ministry identified three dialect groups in the country; Encyclopaedia Iranica counts the Sistan varieties as a fourth.
How far Dari reaches inside Afghanistan
Tajiks, Hazaras and Aimaqs speak it natively, and Pashtuns in Tajik and Hazara areas often use it as a first or second language. It is the common language of Kabul, Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif and Bamiyan. An estimate for 2020 put Dari speakers at over 75% of the population.
Common questions
Questions about Dari
Are Dari and Farsi the same language?
Both are Persian. Dari is Afghanistan's official name for its variety, and the two are mutually intelligible; in formal writing they differ in little beyond some vocabulary. Many Afghans who speak it call it Farsi.
What does the word Dari mean?
Court. The usual explanation traces it to dar or darbār, because Dari was the formal language of the Sasanian court.
Which English words came through Afghan Persian?
Dopiaza and pyjama both reached English from the Afghan pronunciation, by way of the Indian subcontinent, where Persian was the language of the Mughal administration. In Iranian Persian the same words are said do-piyāzeh and pey-jāmeh.