Dari language

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This article is about the variety of Persian spoken in Afghanistan. For other uses, see Dari (disambiguation).
Dari Persian, Afghan Persian
Dari lang.jpg
Dari in Persian script
(Nastaʿlīq style)
Pronunciation [dæˈɾi]
Native to Afghanistan
Native speakers
12.5 million  (2000–2011)[1]
native language of between a quarter and a third of the Afghan population.[2][3][4] Spoken by roughly 50% of the Afghan population[2]
Dialects Kaboli, Mazari, Herati, Badakhshi, Panjshiri, Laghmani, Sistani, Aimaqi, Hazaragi[5]
Persian alphabet
Official status
Official language in
Regulated by Academy of Sciences of Afghanistan
Language codes
ISO 639-3 Variously:
prs – Dari, Afghan Persian
aiq – Aimaq
haz – Hazaragi
Glottolog dari1249  (Dari)[6]
aima1241  (Aimaq)[7]
haza1239  (Hazaragi)[8]

Dari (Persian: دری[dæˈɾiː]) or Dari Persian (Persian: فارسی دری[fɒːɾsije dæˈɾiː]) is the variety of the Persian language spoken in Afghanistan.[9] Dari is the term officially recognized and promoted since 1964 by the Afghan government for the Persian language.[9] Hence, it is also known as Afghan Persian in many Western sources.[2][10]

As defined in the Constitution of Afghanistan, it is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan; the other is Pashto.[11] Dari is the most widely spoken language in Afghanistan and the native language of approximately 25–33%[2][3][4] of the population, serving as the country's lingua franca.[4] According the World Factbook, it is furthermore spoken by 50% of the Afghan population.[2] The Iranian and Afghan types of Persian are mutually intelligible, with differences found primarily in the vocabulary and phonology.

Originally, Dari was the name given to the Old Persian language at a very early date and widely attested in Arabic and Persian texts since the 10th century.[12] In historical usage, Dari refers to the Middle Persian court language of the Sassanids.[13]

By way of Early New Persian, Dari Persian, like Iranian Persian and Tajik, is a continuation of Middle Persian, the official religious and literary language of the Sassanian Empire (224–651 CE), itself a continuation of Old Persian, the language of the Achaemenids (550–330 BC).[14][15] In historical usage, Dari refers to the Middle Persian court language of the Sassanids.[13]


Dari is a name given to the New Persian language at a very early date and widely attested in Arabic and Persian texts since the 10th century.[16] Since 1964, it has been the official name in Afghanistan for the Persian spoken there. In Afghanistan, Dari refers to a modern dialect form of Persian that is the standard language used in administration, government, radio, television, and print media. Because of a preponderance of Dari native speakers, who normally refer to the language as Fārsi (فارسی; "Persian"), it is also known as "Afghan Persian" in some Western sources.[2][10]




There are different opinions about the origin of the word Dari. The majority of scholars believes that Dari refers to the Persian word dar or darbār (دربار), meaning "Court", as it was the formal language of the Sassanids.[9] The original meaning of the word dari is given in a notice attributed to Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (cited by Ibn al-Nadim in Al-Fehrest).[19] According to him, "Pārsī was the language spoken by priests, scholars, and the like; it is the language of Fars." It is obvious that this language refers to the Middle Persian.[9] As for Dari, he says, "it is the language of the cities of Madā'en; it is spoken by those who are at the king’s court. [Its name] is connected with presence at court. Among the languages of the people of Khorasan and the east, the language of the people of Balkh is predominant.”[9]



Dari or Deri has two meanings:

  • language of the court

گرچہ هندی در عذوبت شکر است 1[26]

garche Hindi dar uzūbat2 shakkar ast

طرز گفتار دري شيرين تر است

tarz-e goftar-e Dari shirin tar ast




شکرشکن شوند همه طوطیان هند

Shakkar shekan shavand hameh totiyān-e Hend

زین قند پارسی که به بنگاله می‌رود

ze en qand-e Pārsi ke ba Bengāle meravad

English translation:

All the parrots of India will crack sugar

Through this Persian Candy which is going to Bengal[27][28]

Geographical distribution[edit]

Dari, which is sometimes called Farsi (Persian), is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan (the other being Pashto). In practice though, it serves as the de facto lingua franca among the various ethno-linguistic groups.

Dari is spoken natively by about twenty-five percent to one-third of the population of Afghanistan as a first language.[2][3][4][29][dead link][30] Tajiks who comprise approximately 27% of the population are the primary speakers, followed by Hazaras (9%) and Aymāqs (4%). Moreover, many Pashtuns living in Tajik and Hazara concentrated areas also use Dari as a first language. The World Factbook states that 50% of the Afghan population speaks Dari language.[2] About 2.5 million Afghans in Iran and Afghans in Pakistan, part of the wider Afghan diaspora, also speak Dari as one of their primary languages.[31]


Cultural influence[edit]

Dari has contributed to the majority of Persian borrowings in other Asian languages, such as Hindustani, Punjabi, Bengali, etc., as it was the administrative, official, cultural language of the Persocentric Mughal Empire and served as the lingua franca throughout the South Asian subcontinent for centuries. Often based in Afghanistan, Turkic Central Asian invaders brought the language into South Asia.[32] The basis in general for the introduction of Persian language into the subcontinent was set, from its earliest days, by various Persianized Central Asian Turkic and Afghan dynasties.[33] The sizable Persian component of the Anglo-Indian loan words in English and in Urdu therefore reflects the Dari pronunciation. For instance, the words dopiaza and pyjama come from the Dari pronunciation; in the Iranian Persian they are pronounced do-piyāzeh and pey-jāmeh. Persian lexemes and certain morphological elements (e.g., the ezāfe) have often been employed to coin words for political and cultural concepts, items, or ideas that were historically unknown outside the South Asian region, as is the case with the aforementioned "borrowings". The Dari language has a rich and colorful tradition of proverbs that deeply reflect Afghan culture and relationships, as demonstrated by U.S. Navy Captain Edward Zellem in his bilingual books on Afghan Dari proverbs collected in Afghanistan.[34][35]

Differences between Iranian and Afghan Persian[edit]

There are phonological, lexical,[36] and morphological[22] differences between Dari and western Persian. There are no significant differences in the written forms, other than regional idiomatic phrases.


Phonetically, Dari generally resembles a more formal and classical form of Persian. The differences in pronunciation of Iranian and Afghan Persian can be considerable, similar to those between Scottish and Cockney English,[citation needed] although educated speakers generally have relatively little difficulty understanding each other (except in the use of certain lexical items or idiomatic expressions).[citation needed] The principal differences between standard Iranian Persian, based on the dialect of the capital Tehran, and Afghan Dari, as based on the Kabul dialect, are:

  5. The convergence of voiced uvular stop [ɢ] (ق) and voiced velar fricative [ɣ] (غ) in Iranian Persian (presumably under the influence of Turkic languages like Azeri and Turkmen),[37] is still kept separate in Dari.



English Persian-Farsi Persian-Dari
to try سعی کردن سعی کردن/کوشش کردن
to speak حرف زدن حرف زدن/گپ زدن
to see دیدن سیل کردن/دیدن


Dialect continuum[edit]

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.


Political views on the language[edit]

The native-speakers of Dari usually call their language Farsi. However, the term Dari has been officially promoted by the government of Afghanistan for political reasons, and enjoys equal official status alongside Pashto in Afghanistan. The local name for Persian language was officially changed from Farsi to Dari in 1964.[38][39] Within their respective linguistic boundaries, Dari and Pashto are the medium of education.

See also[edit]


  1. ^ Dari, Afghan Persian at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Aimaq at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Hazaragi at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h "CIA – The World Factbook, "Afghanistan", Updated on 8 July 2010". Cia.gov. Retrieved 19 August 2013. 
  3. ^ a b c "AFGHANISTAN v. Languages". Ch. M. Kieffer. Encyclopædia Iranica, online ed. Retrieved 10 December 2010. Persian (2) is the language most spoken in Afghanistan. The native tongue of twenty five percent of the population ... 
  4. ^ a b c d "Dari". UCLA International Institute: Center for World Languages. University of California, Los Angeles. Retrieved 10 December 2010. 
  6. ^ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Dari". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. 
  7. ^ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Aimaq". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. 
  8. ^ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Hazaragi". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. 
  10. ^ a b "Documentation for ISO 639 identifier: prs". Sil.org. 18 January 2010. Retrieved 19 August 2013. 
  13. ^ a b Frye, R. N., "Darī", The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Brill Publications, CD version
  14. ^ Lazard, Gilbert 1975, “The Rise of the New Persian Language”
  16. ^ http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/dari
  22. ^ a b UCLA, Language Materials Projects. "Persian Language". Iranchamber.com. Retrieved 26 August 2012. 
  24. ^ John Richardson, London, 1777 pg. 15
  29. ^ "Languages of Afghanistan". SIL International. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 2005. Retrieved 16 September 2010. 
  30. ^ "Dari language". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 7 December 2010. 
  38. ^ Willem Vogelsang, "The Afghans", Blackwell Publishing, 2002

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]