Dari (Persian Dialect) - Cultural Influence

Cultural Influence

Dari has contributed to the majority of Persian borrowings in other Asian languages, such as Urdu, Punjabi, Gujarati, etc., as it was the administrative, official and cultural language of the Persocentric Mughal Empire and served as the lingua franca throughout the South Asian subcontinent for centuries. The sizeable Persian component of the Anglo-Indian loan words in English and in Urdu therefore reflects the Dari pronunciation. For instance dopiaza or pyjama come from the Dari pronunciation, while in the Iranian Persian they're pronounced do-piyāzeh and pey-jāmeh. Persian lexemes and certain morphological elements (e.g. the "ezāfe") have often been employed to coin political, cultural etc. concepts, items or ideas that were historically unknown outside the South Asian region, as it 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 of Afghan Dari proverbs collected in Afghanistan.