Talk:Dari (Zoroastrian)
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Dari is also commonly known by the appellation Gabri, but this name might be taken by some Zoroastrians as highly offensive, as it literally means 'language of the infidels'.
Is it taken by some Zoroastrians as highly offensive? Are we just guessing on this? john k 03:32, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
- No, trust me, you aren't guessing! Nowhere have I ever read that they any Zartushtis like this name. That would be like saying blacks enjoyed being called "niggers". Don't ask me what's wrong with this page (and why all intelligent people don't use unicode nowadays!), but there's a short etymology of gabr, gaur, gōr, etc. here. Also of interest is a page about the Zoroastrian quarter, called the Gabr-Mahalla from Vohuman.org. I also wish someone could find a picture of a Zoroastrian quarter in Yazd or Kerman. I've used the Yazd Fire Temple picture for my, well, Fire Temple article. Though I suppose there's no rule against redundancy (is there?).
- Also regarding Darī درى, Mary Boyce (the preëminent Zoroastrian scholar), says: "One especial barrier which the Zoroastrians had raised in self-protection, and upon which Western observers commented, was linguistic. In their rural fastness they had adopted a local dialect, incomprehensible to speakers of standard Persian, which they called 'Dari', the Muslims 'Gabri'; and this was spoken (though almost never written) by all Zoroastrians among themselves." (Zoroastrians, p. 178). Similar to Dari is the Indian equivalent of Parsi Gujarati which itself has been compared to Yiddish. Khirad talk
- About the etymology of gabr, there is no academic consensus. Zoroastrians in Iran don't call themselves gabr, but many of them use the words Gabri and Gabrōni to refer to the language. Jahangard 23:20, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
Ive removed a paragraph from the Dari's dialects secton, as it was incorrect. Naini and the dialect of Abiyaneh are distinct languages, though they are all closely related. --Maziart 08:11, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Excuse-me because I really don't know anything about Dari but... just because of this, it seems to me that Dari entry and Dari (Zoroastrian) look like they're talking about the same thing. If same, I guess they should be merged. If different... well, the difference should be made more evident for those (as myself) who don't see the difference Ictlogist 13:56, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] About the etymology and meaning of Gabr
There is no academic consensus over the etymology of gabr. So, saying that "gabr means infidel" is wrong (that pseudo-etymology about the relation of "kāfer" and "gabr" is rejected by academic sources). Zoroastrians don't call themselves gabr, mostly because of its usage in muslim texts (not because of its etymology). I should also note that the situation is different for "gabri" and "gabrōni". Many Iranian zoroastrians use these words to refer to the language. Jahangard 19:03, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
- Zoroastrians when speaking Fari to outsiders prefer to refer to their language as "dari". Non-Zoroastrians are reported in the literature to call it "gabri" though I have never heard anybody do so, though perhaps in the past when Yazd was a much smaller city and more of the population was in contact with the Zoroastrians this was more common. "gavrŭni" is the nativization into Dari of "gabri", which the Zoroastrians use amongst themselves, though I have been told on numerous occasions that they would like outsiders to know the language as "dari". I have never heard "gabrōni" with a "b". I would like to change the entry to reflect this but I am unsure how to transcribe the second vowel. In the main city dialect of Dari, this sound is somewhere between IPA [u] and [o]. Any suggestions? --Maziart 05:20, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
- I've often heard "gabrōni" (may be only Zoroastrians in larger cities use this pronounciation and the original Dari pronounciation is "gavrōni"). I agree that that vowel is somewhere between IPA [uː] and [oː] (it's a long wovel, similar to what is usualy transcripted as ō fo Middle Persian). Anyway, I was wondering if there is any old record for using the name "Dari" for this language. Do we have any pre-nineteenth century source which refer to that language as Dari? Jahangard 05:11, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
- Dari doesnt have a vowel length distinction; is there any way of just representing the quality? I dont know of any prenineteenth century sources at all.--Maziart 05:18, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
- I've often heard "gabrōni" (may be only Zoroastrians in larger cities use this pronounciation and the original Dari pronounciation is "gavrōni"). I agree that that vowel is somewhere between IPA [uː] and [oː] (it's a long wovel, similar to what is usualy transcripted as ō fo Middle Persian). Anyway, I was wondering if there is any old record for using the name "Dari" for this language. Do we have any pre-nineteenth century source which refer to that language as Dari? Jahangard 05:11, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
About the word gabr, Iranica article is quite informative. Jahangard 02:03, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
- Although its etymology is obscure, many use it to mean infidel regardless of its origins. The Ethnologue says Gabar and Gabri are derogatory names. It also lists Yazdi as a derogatory name, but that makes no sense as Yazdi is simply a geographic designation of the language which is very common for Iran's languages... azalea_pomp
[edit] In-Text Citations, Verifiability
I dispute the specific statement that Dari is a Northwest Iranian language and not merely a local dialect of the Persian language. I can find no evidence for that statement in any academic reference. A link to another Wikipedia article which itself is unverified is not a legitimate in-text citation. That list of references is meaningless if it does not explain which material is being cited by which references. A reader cannot be expected to read the whole list of references in order to verify one sentence in the article.
Please familiarize yourself with Wikipedia's policy on verification.
Wikipedia:Verifiability, which is policy, says that attribution is required for "direct quotes and for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged". Any material that is challenged and for which no source is provided may be removed by any editor.
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. "Verifiable" in this context means that any reader should be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. Editors should provide a reliable source for quotations and for any material that is challenged or is likely to be challenged, or it may be removed. [1]
--Dfitzgerald 16:17, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
- well, I don't know very much about this language, but ...
- the first link I checked (the one in the language box on the right) yielded "Northwest Iranian." While the second sentence of the article suggested that there wouldn't be much information on the language, your assertion that there were "no" academic references seems a little strange as all the off-site links provided in the article were academic resources, and all of them identified it as Northwestern.
- while the article didn't explicitly state that Dari was not a local variant of NP, its northwestern-ness and that Dari has a distinct ISO 639-3 language code were clues that it was distinct. That SIL database entry for the ISO code clinched it. Two dictionaries listed in the Bibliography suggested distinctiveness as well. I then did the legwork anyway and checked a few of the resources listed in the bibliography proper. I discovered that the language not only has a distinct vocabulary, morphology and some very peculiar verb forms, but that it is also not intelligible to speakers of standard Persian. Thats quite remarkable for Central Iran.
- I also discovered that the entire bibliography section was an pretentious cut-and-paste job of a list on the web. Junked in favor of a link to that bibliography list.
- -- Fullstop 23:16, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
- Dfitzgerald,
- Please familiarize yourself with a less patronizing approach to other users. Assume their good faith.
- It would have been more constructive if you had explained what specific statement you were challenging, instead that somewhat asserting that the whole article lacked proper in-text citation and/or references.
- I think that Fullstop made a very good job. Thank you.
- --FrancescoMazzucotelli 00:45, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
