[A1Kaid]

Originally Posted by DarkStar

You have not touched the points that I countered with, in terms of this so called persian speaking belt, and the impracticality of imposing a language that is foreign to almost everyone in Pakistan.

Tajikistan is not Farsi speaking, nor is eastern/southern Iran, nor is southern Afghanistan.

The assessment you have made is incomplete and false because you fail to insert the fact that in Eastern Iran and Western Afghanistan even Central and SE Afghanistan the language (and lingua franca) is Dari (Eastern Farsi/Persian) it is a dialect of Persian.


In fact, in Afghanistan, Dari is considered the official language next to Pashto. Dari is widely spoken in Afghanistan, and Dari can also be understood in SE Iran. Not to mention various Afghan tribes currently speak Dari/Farsi or as it is called Farsi-e-Dari...

So geographically, The "Farsi-belt" would hold up.



Please read the excerpt below for more information:

"Iranian languages have been and are still widely used in Central Asia both by native speakers and as trade languages. Whereas in the past East Iranian languages, such as Bactrian, Sogdian and Khotanese, and West Iranian languages, notably Parthian and Middle Persian were prominent, New Persian has supplanted most of these languages. Only in the Pamir Mountains there are still pockets of speakers of East Iranian languages left, such as Shughni, Sarikoli, Yazgulami, and Sanglechi-Ishkashmi, thanks to their relative isolation.

Dari Persian is considered to be a more archaic form of (New) Persian. It is the major language of Afghanistan, one of the two official languages (next to Pashto). In practice though it serves as the de facto lingua franca among the various, different ethno-linguistic groups. Dari Persian dominates in the northern and western parts, and the capital, Kabul, in the east.

Dari Persian has contributed to the majority of Persian borrowings in South Asian languages, such as Hindi-Urdu, Panjabi, Bengali, etc., as it was the administrative and cultural language of the Persocentric Mughal Empire and served as the lingua franca throughout the Indian subcontinent for centuries. "

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dari_(Eastern_Persian) (I checked the footnotes for the source/references and they are valid)


Yes there maybe some vocabulary differences between the Persian Dari in Afghanistan and the Persian Farsi in Iran, however, it is important to note communication and understanding between the two languages is relatively strong and understandable...Contributing to the strength of the "Farsi Belt".


Please read below:

"The Persians however did not forget their own language and little by little the Middle Persian was being shaped into new Persian but with the addition of a considerable amount of Arabic and Parthian words in Arabic script. This new style was the mother of both Farsi and Dari. Officially, Farsi is The Persian of Iran and Dari is the Persian spoken in Afghanistan."

Source:http://www.afghan-web.com/language/farsidari.html

"Persian is spoken today primarily in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan, but was historically a more widely understood language in an area ranging from the Middle East to India. Significant populations of speakers in other Persian Gulf countries (Bahrain, Iraq, Oman, Republic of Yemen and the United Arab Emirates), as well as large communities around the World.

Total numbers of speakers is high: about 55% of Iran's population are Persian speakers; about 65% of Tajikistan's population are Tajik-Persian speakers: over 25% of the Afghanistan's population are Dari-Persian speakers; and about 1% of the population of Pakistan are Dari-Persian speakers as well. "

Source: http://www.iranchamber.com/literatur...n_language.php (Also please examine the "Persian Language Area" map provided by this informative website...



Here is a map that clearly identifies the "Persian language area", contributing to the "Persian-belt" or "Farsi/Dari-Belt".





So yes, the concept of the "Persian belt" or "Farsi/Dari-Belt" is realistic, and if Pakistan were to adopt Farsi it would strengthen the linguistic and cultural bond with our North and Western neighbors.