Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0178/01784.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 34KB | 546 lines

$Unique_ID{COW01784}
$Pretitle{268}
$Title{Iran
Chapter 2B.   Peoples and Languages}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Eric Hooglund}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{iran
persian
language
groups
arabic
tribes
population
majority
kurds
arabs}
$Date{1987}
$Log{Figure 5.*0178401.scf
}
Country:     Iran
Book:        Iran, A Country Study
Author:      Eric Hooglund
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1987

Chapter 2B.   Peoples and Languages

[See Figure 5.: Major Ethnic Groups.]

    Iran has a heterogeneous population speaking a variety of Indo-Iranian,
Semitic, and Turkic languages. The largest language group consists of the
speakers of Indo-Iranian languages, who in 1986 comprised about 70 percent of
the population. The speakers of Indo-Iranian languages are not, however, a
homogeneous group. They include speakers of Persian, the official language of
the country, and its various dialects; speakers of Kirmanji, the term for
related dialects spoken by the Kurds who live in the cities, towns, and
villages of western Iran and adjacent areas of Iraq and Turkey; speakers of
Luri, the language of the Bakhtiaris and Lurs who live in the Zagros; and
Baluchi, the language of the seminomadic people who live in southeastern Iran
and adjacent areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Approximately 28 percent of
the population speaks various dialects of Turkish. Speakers of Semitic
languages include Arabs and Assyrians (see fig. 5).

The Persian Language

    The official language of Iran is Persian (the Persian term for which is
Farsi). It is the language of government and public instruction and is the
mother tongue of half of the population. Persian is spoken as a second
language by a large proportion of the rest. Many different dialects of Persian
are spoken in various parts of the Central Plateau, and people from each city
can usually be identified by their speech. Some dialects, such as Gilaki and
Mazandari, are distinct enough to be virtually unintelligible to a Persian
speaker from Tehran or Shiraz.

    Persian is an ancient language that has developed through three historical
stages. Old Persian dates back to at least 514 B.C. and was used until about
A.D. 250. It was written in cuneiform and used exclusively for royal
proclamations and announcements. Middle Persian, also known as Pahlavi, was in
use from about A.D. 250 to 900. It was the official language of the Sassanid
Empire and of the Zoroastrian priesthood. It was written in an ideographic
script called Huzvaresh.

    Modern Persian is a continually evolving language that began to develop
about A.D. 900. Following the Arab conquest of the Sassanid Empire in the
seventh century and the gradual conversion of the population to Islam, Arabic
became the official, literary, and written language, but Persian remained the
language of court records. Persian, however, borrowed heavily from Arabic to
enrich its own vocabulary and eventually adopted the Arabic script. In
subsequent centuries, many Turkic words also were incorporated into Persian.

    As part of the Indo-European family of languages, Persian is distantly
related to Latin, Greek, the Slavic and Teutonic languages, and English. This
relationship can be seen in such cognates as beradar (brother), pedar
(father), and mader (mother). It is a relatively easy language for
English-speaking people to learn compared with any other major language of the
Middle East. Verbs tend to be regular, nouns lack gender and case distinction,
prepositions are much used, noun plural formation tends to be regular, and
word order is important. The difficulty of the language lies in the subtlety
and variety of word meanings according to context. Persian is written right to
left in the Arabic script with several modifications. It has four more
consonants than Arabic-- pe, che, zhe, and gaf--making a total of thirty-two
letters. Most of the letters have four forms in writing, depending on whether
they occur at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of a word or whether
they stand separately. The letters stand for the consonants and the three long
vowels; special marks written above or below the line are used to denote short
vowels. These signs are used only in dictionaries and textbooks, so that a
reader must have a substantial vocabulary to understand a newspaper, an
average book, or handwriting.

    Persian is the most important of a group of several related languages that
linguists classify as Indo-Iranian. Persian speakers regard their language as
extremely beautiful, and they take great pleasure in listening to the verses
of medieval poets such as Ferdowsi, Hafez, and Sadi. The language is a living
link with the past and has been important in binding the nation together.

    There is no accepted standard transliteration of Persian into Latin
letters, and Iranians write their names for Western use in a variety of ways,
often following French spelling. Among scholars and librarians a profound
dispute exists between those who think Persian should be transliterated in
conformity with the rules for Arabic and those who insist that Persian should
have its own rules because it does not use all of the same sounds as Arabic.

    Among educated Persians, there have been sporadic efforts as far back as
the tenth century to diminish the use of Arabic loanwords in their language.
Both Pahlavi shahs supported such efforts in the twentieth century. During the
reign of Reza Shah Pahlavi (1925-41), serious consideration was given to the
possibility of Romanizing the writing of Persian as had been done with
Turkish, but these plans were abandoned. Since the Revolution, a contrary
tendency to increase the use of Arabic words in both spoken and written
Persian has emerged among government leaders.

The Persian-speaking People

    The Persians constitute the largest ethnic component in Iran. They
predominate in the major urban areas of central and eastern Iran--in the
cities of Tehran, Esfahan, Mashhad, Shiraz, Arak, Kashan, Kerman, Qom, and
Yazd--and in the villages of the Central Plateau. An estimated 50 to 60
percent of the population speaks Persian as a first language.

    In music, poetry, and art the Persians consider themselves--and are
generally considered by other groups--as the leaders of the country. This
feeling is strengthened by a consciousness of a heroic past and a rich
literary heritage. Both before the Revolution and since, Persians have filled
the majority of government positions.

    The vast majority of Persians are Shia Muslims (see Shia Islam in Iran,
this ch.). The Shia religion serves as a source of unity among Persians and
other Iranian Shias. Since at least the beginning of the nineteenth century,
Persians have dominated the higher ranks of the Shia clergy and have provided
important clerical revolutionary leaders such as ayatollahs Khomeini and
Hosain Ali Montazeri. Fewer than 500,000 Persians are followers of other
faiths. These include Bahais, Jews, or members of the pre-Islamic Zoroastrian
faith.

Indo-Iranian-speaking Groups

Lurs and Bakhtiaris

    In the central and southern Zagros live the Bakhtiaris and the Lurs, two
groups that speak Luri, a language closely related to Persian. Linguists have
identified two Luri dialects: Lur Buzurg, which is spoken by the Bakhtiari,
Kuhgiluyeh, and Mamasani tribes; and Lur Kuchik, which is spoken by the Lurs
of Lorestan. Like the Persians, the Bakhtiaris and Lurs are Shia Muslims.
Historically, each of the two groups was organized into several tribes. The
tribal leaders or khans, especially those of the Bakhtiari tribes, were
involved in national politics and were considered part of the prerevolutionary
elite (see table 3, Appendix).

    The Bakhtiaris have been considered both a political and a tribal entity
separate from other Lurs for at least two centuries. They are concentrated in
an area extending southward from Lorestan Province to Khuzestan Province and
westward from Esfahan to within eighty kilometers of the present-day