Language Purism Policy in Iran

After the Arab conquest in the VII century. n e., despite the fact that the language of the conquerors was from a completely different language family , the Iranians nevertheless began to massively borrow Arabic words from various spheres of vocabulary, first of all, religious and scientific vocabulary were borrowed, although many basic words penetrated from Arabic. For example: menkār - beak, ammu - uncle, atfāl - children (up to 1 year old), ankabut - spider, ayām - days, bein - between, bedouin - without. Arabic grammatical features were also borrowed, in particular, Arabic (broken) plural forms (ketāb - book - plural kotob - books; gazā - food - plural agziye), very unusual for Indo-European languages. The Arabian breeds , and even the category of the genus, and, in some borrowings, the Arabic articles were adopted, for example: al-ān - now, al-vedā-farewell. According to some estimates, the Arabic borrowings currently in use make up about 8 thousand words, or about 40% of everyday words (without derivatives). Despite serious phonetic changes in a number of Arabic words in the Persian language, their graphics remained unchanged, they were written in the same way as in the Arabic language ^[1] .

Arabisms were widely used in the Persian language without any systematic attempts to replace them until the beginning of the 20th century. However, already in the XIX century. there were aspirations to clear the Persian language from them. So, the Cajarian prince Jalaladdin Mirza (1832-71) was fond of pre-Islamic history and promoted it. He wrote using only purely Persian words, so the language of his works is very simple. His main work, Nāme-ye Khosravān (Book of Kings), is the history of Iran from the pre-Islamic period to its time. To find equivalents for all Arabic words, Jalaladdin Mirza had to restore many forgotten Old Persian words . So, in the title for the book, the Old Persian word nāme is used, and not the Arabic ketāb. For this, he used the book Dashatir, which tells about the pre-Islamic history of Iran and whose author, Azar Ceyvan, claimed to have restored Old Persian words. However, as it soon became clear, he did not restore the original words, but came up with new ones from modern Persian roots, and these artificially created words were mistakenly accepted by Jalaladdin. However, his example inspired several writers to use purely Persian vocabulary as well. Other purists of the time were Mirza Fath Ahundzadeh (d. 1878), a proponent of the transition of the Persian language from Arabic to Latin, as well as Mirza Aka-Khan Kermani (1853-1896), who, however, did not see a solution to the problem of Arabism in the revival Old Persian vocabulary because of its inapplicability to the modern language, but in the use of purely Persian words from living Iranian dialects. This movement also had opponents, for example, the writer and activist of the Constitutional Revolution, Talebof (1834-1911), who considered Arabisms a natural element of the Persian language , advocating their preservation and respect for them, in addition, he was a supporter of borrowing and European terms ^{[2 ]} .

A real, systematic struggle against Arabism began during the reign of Reza Shah (1925-41), which was strongly opposed to the Arab-Islamic elements of Iranian culture. Under him, in 1935, the Academy of Persian Language and Literature (Farhangestan) was created, whose task was to expel as many Arabic words as possible. The Shah’s regime aimed at completely breaking with the classical literary heritage of Iran, as well as breaking ties between Iran and the Arab world, ending the influence of the Arabic language and literature and creating a language barrier between Persians and Arabs . The Academy included the most famous writers and linguists of the time. At the beginning, the approval of new purely Persian terms was slow, which caused Reza Shah's displeasure, and the academy was reorganized in 1938. As a result, its activity accelerated sharply, and in total it managed to replace more than 3,500 Arabic words (or up to a third of all Arabic vocabulary) with purely Persian, thereby reducing their share in Farsi vocabulary from 60% to 40%. For example, the words were introduced: pezeshk (doctor; lit. sage) instead of Arab. tabib; dāneshkade (faculty; letters. izba knowledge) instead of Arabic. kulliye; shahrdāri (city hall; lit. holding the city) instead of Arab. bastard. In addition, if the Arabic words had Persian synonyms, it was aggressively proposed to use only them: for example, bāzargāni (trade) instead of Arab. tejārat; pāyān (end) instead of arab. āher. Her activity, therefore, extremely strongly influenced the Persian language, sharply reducing the percentage of Arabisms. After the dissolution of the academy in 1941 (in the same year, Reza Shah abdicated in favor of his son Mohammed-Reza ) a while later, with the new Shah, the second Farhangestan (1970-79) was created, which continued the active struggle against Arabism ^{[ 3]} .

After the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the clergy came to power, the attitude towards the Arabic language changed radically. He became a compulsory subject in all Iranian schools, his knowledge was encouraged in every possible way, Arab borrowing was no longer persecuted, and the authorities began to introduce even some new Arabic terms (for example: bridazefine - destitute) ^{[4] [5]} . However, in the end, no mass return of previously expelled Arabic words occurred, and gradually efforts to spread the Arabic language were curtailed. Therefore, all the main purely Persian words that arose as a result of the policy of purism during the Pahlavi dynasty have been preserved and continue to be actively used today. On the other hand, an intensified struggle began to be waged against Western European ("non-Islamic") borrowings, which entered the language mainly in the 20th century, which were treated fairly calmly under the pro-Western Pahlavi. For them, the third Farhangestan (emerged in 1990) actively and very successfully introduces terms based on purely Persian roots ^[4] . Recently, in Iranian society, the struggle against Arabism has begun again. There are cultural figures who even use exclusively purely Persian words in their speech, and therefore their speech is poorly understood by ordinary Iranians and needs a special translation ^[6] .

• مردی که پارسی حرف می زند