Purity or Realism?

The Dispute between Linguists and Linguistic Purists in Iran

Critical texts devoted to maintaining the purity of Persian are very popular in
Iran. Linguistic criticism has gone through several phases, and now representat
ives of modern linguistics are resisting defenders of the language and taking th
e discussion in a new direction.
The first phase of this traditionalist upholding of Persian was almost entirely
limited to combating loanwords from Arabic and to keeping the language free of f
oreign elements. The assumption was that replacing Arabic words would solve the
problems of Persian.
One of the first representatives of this way of thinking was Prince Jalaluddin M
irza, son of Fathali Shah (1243-89), who engaged in an exchange of ideas with Fa
thali Akhundzadeh, the celebrated Azerbaijani dramatist, thinker, and fervent op
ponent of using Arabic words and script in Persian. The Prince also wrote a book
on the history of Iran, using a purist style for the presentation of his patrio
tic ideals. This he called The Book of Kings, after Ferdausi.
The programmatic work begun with this book remained unfinished because of the Pr
ince’s early death. However, it was not forgotten and attracted a great response
. People such as Ebrahim Pourdavud, Ahmad Kasravi, Zabih Behruz, Mohammad Moghad
dam and Sadegh Kia continued his work, unsatisfied with anything less than a lan
guage purified of all loanwords. The activities of the two Academies of Language
during the Pahlavi period were somewhat more conservative and circumspect, but
more or less pursued the same approach.
The emotional and exaggerated trend towards the elimination of foreign words (es
pecially those of Arabic origin) from the Persian language persisted until recen
t decades. It could be observed both in studies by specific groups and also to s
ome extent in the publications of administrative, university, and cultural insti
tutes.
Persian is not a scholarly language
The purist attitude towards language continues to encounter harsh criticism: in
the past from writers and thinkers who made use of a Persian that included loanw
ords from the Arabic, and today from linguists who reject such an approach as un
scientific and contrary to the natural development of language. Linguists often
refer to the English language, because today’s Persian almost exclusively adopts
English rather than Arabic words. They ascertain that more than any other langu
age English has always adopted words, from French, Latin, Greek, even from Persi
an and Arabic, and has itself now become a donor language because English domina
tes thinking in most scholarly subjects. So what is at issue is not an incapacit
y implicit in the Persian language, but rather an incapacity to think in this la
nguage. The historical fact – it is maintained – is that the Persian language wa
s not a scholarly language before modern times. During the first centuries of th
e Islamic period Iranian scholars wrote in Arabic, and their successors, who gra
dually started to write in Persian, used the same specialist Arabic terminology.
However, the mature language of mysticism and the images used in Persian poetry
demonstrate that the language does inherently possess the capacity to give expr
ession to thoughts developed in Persian.
What particularly annoys linguists in this discussion is the purists’ ahistorica
l way of looking at what is at issue. The purists are charged with leaving out o
f account the historical development of words and all their associated connotati
ons, with banishing them from Persian and wanting to create another language. No
t every borrowing damages the recipient language, say their critics – as can be
seen from the European languages. They only adopted words, which are on the surf
ace of language. The same is true of Persian, with only a few exceptions. Howeve
r, the situation changes when such fundamental elements as grammar or linguistic
 structure are adopted. Over the long term, they say, that would destroy a langu
age’s structure. Fortunately, though, languages resist that kind of borrowing. E
ven though there has been give and take between Arabic and Persian for several h
undred years, neither has adopted missing sounds from the other. Constant contac
t with European languages has not resulted in Persian tolerating an accumulation
of consonants around a syllable – nor has this happened in Arabic or Turkish. I
n addition, centuries of linguistic contact with Arabic have not led to gender d
istinctions being applied to nouns and verbs. Both writers and linguists believe
that exceptions such as Arabic plurals should be avoided wherever possible. The
Persian language tends in that direction without such recommendations – for ins
tance, if there is congruence between adjective and noun. That is also largely a
voided, apart from certain idiomatic expressions.
The establishment of Academies of Language and the propagation of a ‘language po
licy’ rejecting the use of foreign words were among the reforms introduced by Re
za Shah, following the example of Atatürk. The difference was that in Turkey lin
guistic purism took on extreme forms and the language was largely ‘cleansed’ of
loanwords from the Arabic and Persian. Turkey even implemented a second project,
the introduction of the Latin alphabet, which was for a time also discussed in
Iran. Turkish experience of these reforms was not always positive. After two gen
erations Turks could not read the literature of the past (as if the centuries of
the Ottoman Empire had never been), nor were they capable of understanding publ
ications by other Turkic peoples, since Stalin had also imposed writing ‘reforms
’ and introduced the Cyrillic alphabet. As the newly-introduced alphabets were c
onstructed almost phonetically, and the pronunciation predominant in each people
’s capital city was used for this phonetic approach, the written link between th
e Turkic peoples was broken. Before these reforms, when a newspaper was publishe
d in Constantinople in Arabic script, Turks who were able to read could understa
nd it from the Balkans to Kyrgyzstan. This Arabic script did not indicate the sh
ort vowels and the difference between certain consonants, but both of these appe
ared in the phonetic script. Iran had once also broken with its ancient traditio
n when the Arabic script was introduced, with the result that it did not wish to
repeat the experience.
Nevertheless, the Turkish experience was not entirely negative. One of the succe
sses of language policy there was activation of the elements for the formation o
f new Turkish words, which prepared the language for the age of science and tech
nology: a bold enterprise that is also recommended by some Iranian linguists.
The campaign against infiltration through translation
The second phase of criticism concerned words and phrases which found their way
into Persian through translation. These are not borrowed words but rather borrow
ed coinages where an expression in another language is translated, element for e
lement, into the recipient language. Traditionalists hold this treatment of lang
uage responsible for the decline of the language and criticise translators whene
ver a chance arises. Criticism of translation is not our concern here, and it is
not the concern of defenders of the language either. They charge translators wi
th other misdemeanours:
1. When a translator introduces a new word to replace a well-known specialised t
erm. Here traditionalists and linguists are even in agreement. However, the latt
er believe that if the content of science changes, old terms referring to differ
ent subject matter cannot be used for new concepts. For instance, existential ph
ilosophy and the grammar of generative transformation require their own terminol
ogy.
2. When a translator introduces a new expression by way of a borrowed translatio
n, traditionalists resist this on the grounds that such terms are absent in Iran
’s thousand years of literature. Here too linguists are of the opinion that this
objection cannot be generally applied. Khosrow Farshidvar, a Tehran university
professor, has published an extensive list of translations into Persian from Ara
bic, English, and French, making this available for discussion. It seems that cr
itics have no objection to borrowed translations from Arabic since these have be
en incorporated in Persian to such an extent that only specialists are able to r
ecognise their origin. So such objections mainly relate to translators’ ‘Euroman
ia’. In this case too aversion to neologisms depends on the extent to which they
have been incorporated into everyday language. Persian translations of such exp
ressions as ‘birthday’, ‘Have a good trip’, ‘I’m pleased to see you’, ‘surname’,
‘green light’, and ‘railway’, which did not previously exist, are not resisted.
Yet renderings of such expressions as ‘to count on someone’, ‘My God’, ‘to open
fire’, and ‘considerable’ are regarded as invented. The representative of this
group is Abolhassan Nadshafi, a well-known writer and translator, whose critical
glosses appeared in a much-acclaimed book entitled Let Us Not Write Incorrectly
, intended as a kind of dictionary of problematic issues in Persian. Traditional
ists were full of praise for this book, while linguists such as Mohammad Reza Ba
teni and Ali Mohammad Haghshenas were of the absolute opposite opinion. Bateni s
ubjected Nadshafi to critical analysis in a series of articles headed ‘Allow Us
To Write Incorrectly’ and ‘Much Ado about Nothing’ (itself a borrowed translatio
n of one of Shakespeare’s comedies). He came to the conclusion that this book wa
s not the work of a scholar of language and that it was scarcely imaginable a li
nguist would make such a fool of himself. Bateni continues: ‘This book sets out
from the false assumption that language does not, and should not, change … In Mr
Nadshafi’s view the language of the past is its noble and pure form, and all th
e linguistic innovations and changes that have occurred in our time are obvious
signs of confusion, leading to degeneration of our forefathers’ unblemished tong
ue. Clearly this denies the essence and function of language. Precisely such tra
nsformations led to Ancient Persian becoming Middle Persian, and Middle Persian
New Persian. Romance languages such as French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian etc.
arose out of Latin … All of that got under way with the kind of little changes
that purists now call innovation, linguistic confusion, and degeneration.’ In Ba
teni’s opinion, avoidance of new coinages leads ‘to a desiccation of language’.
He says that one of the most important processes for the linguistic mastering of
modern scientific challenges is the activation of the elements within the langu
age for the formation of new words. He comes to the conclusion that, contrary to
what its defenders assert, the Persian language is not threatened and has devel
oped in accordance with the requirements of our times.
What linguists write about this only reaches a relatively small group of people,
whereas critics of today’s language speak to the general public. Scholarly crit
icism of Nadshafi’s book could not stop several editions attracting enthusiastic
readers and imitators. One of the latter was Yussef Aali Abbas Abad, whose Dict
ionary of Correct Writing is dedicated to Abolhassan Nadshafi as follows: ‘He is
justly among the avant-garde in the renaissance of correct writing, purificatio
n of the Persian language, and preservation of these pillars of Iranian national
identity. This book is mainly based on his ideas.’
Nevertheless, in the long term the linguists’ response was not without an impact
, since, unlike his role model, Aali Abbas Abad takes the language of contempora
ry literature as his standard, and in so doing accepts the development of langua
ge, at least up to the present day.
Persian as Iranians’ national identity?
While the discussion about purification of the language continues in Iran, with
traditionalists making national identity and even solidarity between Persian-spe
aking countries dependent upon it, the problem is emerging among the non-Persian
peoples of Iran and Afghanistan in another, explosive form. These peoples belie
ve that their non-Persian mother tongue is a mark of identity, and in Iran they
are claiming the right to be taught in this language, as is guaranteed in the Co
nstitution of the Islamic Republic but which after three decades has still not b
een implemented. Paragraph 15 of this Constitution declares: ‘The shared languag
e, spoken and written, of the Iranian people is Persian. Official documents, cor
respondence, texts, and schoolbooks must be in Persian. However, use of other na
tive languages and dialects is permitted alongside Persian in the press and othe
r media, as well as in teaching their literature in schools.’ Protests against t
he failure to grant this constitutional right have intensified since 1999 when U
NESCO made February 21st the Day of the Mother Tongue.
In this matter too there are differences of opinion between linguists and tradit
ionalists. Ali Mohammad Haghshenas, the well-known linguist and lexicographer, s
ays that any assertion of the superiority of one language over others is nothing
other than racism. Mohammad Reza Bateni is of the opinion that national identit
y cannot be defined by a single language, since ‘multilingualism is more the rul
e in the world than an exception’. The learning of a mother tongue – says Bateni
– does not lead to the break-up of a multi-ethnic state, but to the neglect of
these people’s prosperity.
In view of the fact that the non-Persian peoples of Iran amount to over half the
population, and some of them – especially the Azeris – provided the country’s p
olitical and military leadership for much of its long history, it is surprising
that their language was not used for teaching alongside the national language. I
s this just an outcome of Persian chauvinism, as some extremist representatives
of these peoples claim? Historical testimony does not support that assertion. Bo
th the Azeri Turks and other Turkic tribes ruled over this country for centuries
. The Pahlavi period is just a brief episode compared with this long history. No
t even all the members of the Pahlavi family were Persians. The religious leader
of the Islamic Republic of Iran is an Azeri. How can the supposed Persian chauv
inism have oppressed them? The court of Mahmoud Ghaznavi, the first Turkish rule
r of Iran, was simply swarming with Persian-speaking poets. Did anyone force Niz
ami, Khagani, or Saeb-e Tabrizi to write in Persian instead of their mother tong
ue? Did anyone compel Mawlana Rumi, who lived in the Turkish-speaking part of th
e Seljuk Empire and merely travelled across Iran in order to reach Konya, to wri
te his poems in Persian? Why did Shahriar, who was able to create a masterpiece
like Heydar Baba in Azeri-Turkish, acclaimed by Azeris on both sides of the bord
er, nevertheless write most of his poems in Persian? In the case of the Azeris,
at least, this state of affairs seems to be an outcome of neglect of their own l
anguage rather than of Persian oppression, since when they could their own langu
age, which they could during their eight hundred years of dominance in Islamic I
ran, they devoted more attention to Persian – as did the Mughal rulers of India.
The other side of the coin
The upholders of a pure mother tongue in Afghanistan also behave like Iranians.
In January 2008 the country’s Minister of Information and Culture reprimanded an
Afghan Television reporter for having used Persian neologisms for ‘faculty’ and
‘university’ instead of the usual words borrowed from Pashtu. The Minister call
ed these ‘foreign words’ and said the reporter’s behaviour was ‘against cultural
and Islamic principles’. Calling Persian words in Dari ‘foreign’ aroused the di
spleasure of Persian-speaking Afghans, Tajiks, and Iranians. These neologisms ha
ve been formed out of living elements in the Persian language, since of course w
hat is designated did not exist in these peoples’ shared past. However, present-
day requirements mean that they have also been accepted on the other side of the
Iranian border. Now Iranian traditionalists are playing the role of linguists w
ith regard to an Afghan problem, while the Kabul government has taken on the rol
e of establishing linguistic norms. Over the longer term this government will re
main as unsuccessful in this as its Iranian counterparts, failing to prevent the
acceptance of Persian words formed in Iran. The fact is that speakers of Afghan
variants of Persian are not sufficiently inventive to master the linguistic dem
ands of a new age.Manutschehr Amirpur
was born in Iran, lives today in Germany, and has worked for many years as a Far
si-German interpreter. He is responsible for the Persian edition of Art&Thought.
Translated by Tim Nevill
Copyright: Goethe-Institut e. V., Fikrun wa Fann
June 2009