Changing the writing system of Iran to save our languages
The Iranian Revolution of “Woman, Life, Freedom” is meant to usher in more than just political change. In this article, I advocate for altering the writing system and linguistic policies of Iran. The proposed writing system, detailed in subsequent sections, is “Ard” — a root word that translates to “Order/Base/Truth” in many Iranian languages.
This system is part of an ongoing project aimed at creating a universal Iranian script. It is intended not only for the preservation of phonetic components of languages within Iran but also for those beyond its borders. Beyond mere functionality, this script is designed to reflect the artistic beauty of Iranian languages and their intrinsic aural aesthetics.
Decay of native languages of Iran
The Woman Life Freedom Revolution of Iran served as a defining moment in uniting the nation against the authoritarian principles entrenched in the governance of the Islamic Republic (IR). This unity was further enhanced by fostering open conversations among Iranians and by bridging the divide between those in the heartland and the country’s peripheral regions. A significant factor underpinning this cohesion was the recognition of the heightened severity of IR’s repressive tactics in the peripheries, characterized by extreme violence, including the deployment of bullets and wartime weaponry. This heavy-handed approach was especially pronounced in regions like Ilam, Kurdistan, West Azerbaijan, and Balochistan provinces, compelling Iranians to rally in solidarity with their marginalized compatriots.
Social media platforms, notably X, ClubHouse, and the r/NewIran community on Reddit played a pivotal role in this era of heightened unity. They offered Iranians a space to connect, plan, mobilize, share personal accounts of life under the IR, and engage in meaningful dialogues.
Among the myriad topics discussed, the impending danger of language extinction for non-Persian communities emerged as a pressing concern. Many felt that the IR’s assimilation policies, underpinned by a warped notion of “nation” and “citizenship”, were discriminatory. While the Shia faith was at the forefront of the IR’s prejudiced stance, the enforcement of the Persian language, particularly through policies that sidelined other native Iranian languages, was frequently decried.
Tracing the roots of these policies reveals their origins in the Pahlavi era’s drive to mold a unified nation-state bound by a single language. The 20th century saw the ascension of Reza Shah, who took inspiration from Ataturk’s domestic policies. His push for a modernized “Iranian identity” marked the beginning of a Persian revival in parallel with a systematic erosion of Iran’s other languages. This policy was a product of its time and an attempt to create a solid nation-state to prevent further loss of territory during the land grabs of the colonialist powers. The linguistic homogenization continued with a legacy of many on the peripheries refusing assimilation and becoming disenfranchised with the Iranian name and identity. The relentless push for a Persian-centric identity led to a brief period of secession by Soviet-backed Kurdish and Azerbaijani political figures, who were driven by ethnic nationalism and the preservation of their “national” identity — which was excluded from the “Iranian” frame.
The image above is a page from a language book published in Tabriz. It captures the sentiment of Iran’s linguistic policies — highlighting the Iranian identity as one that is “Persian-speaking, loyal to the Shah, and devoted to the nation.” For Persian speakers, this might have appeared as a standard narrative. However, to non-Persian communities, it was an exclusionary policy that continues to this day.
Contrastingly, many Persian speakers believe that the IR, far from championing the Persian language, has actively sought its removal from everyday discourse. The legal jargon underpinning the nation’s laws is dominantly Quranic Arabic. Moreover, mainstream media often exhibits a penchant for Arabized terminologies. A subtle form of psychological manipulation is evident in the entertainment sector, with antagonists in films typically bearing Persian and Iranian names, while protagonists are christened after revered religious figures like Imams and the Prophet.
This has led many patriotic Iranians to attempt reviving the Parsig language as a purified form of Persian — free of Aniranian loan words. Other moderate attempts have also been made to remove all Arabic loanwords from colloquial Modern Persian. Many individuals contributing to this effort are not necessarily from Persian-speaking provinces. This is primarily because the Persian language is almost never viewed as an ‘ethnic language’ but rather a collective heritage of all Iranians.
Nonetheless, while there is a stark difference in the discrimination experienced by Persian and non-Persian speakers when it comes to IR’s language policies, a shared sentiment resonates among both groups: their languages are under siege, manipulated, and distorted by the prevailing regime.
The role of Iran’s civilizational heritage
From the earliest Elamite settlements that epitomized the flowering of Iran’s cultural zenith to the influx of different people onto the Iranian Plateau, Iran has been built upon a foundation of diversity and symbiotic evolution of overlapping cultures. At the time of the foundation of the Persian Empire of Cyrus the Great, the Iranians composed a minority group within the empire. What greatness was achieved and showcased on the walls and behind the Gates of Nations of Persepolis, was the manifestation of inclusive governance, tolerance of diversity, and conscious evolution of civilization through exchange and integration.
This rich diversity was also showcased in the famous Gardens of Cyrus in Pasargadae, the Paradise, where each governed territory was represented by its native floral habitation and protected by a sophisticated form of irrigation system, inspired by the Babylonians and Iranian religious traditions (possibly pre-Zoroaster) of cultivating the lands.
Following the collapse of the empire at the hands of the Greeks and the subsequent resurgence of Iranians, a plethora of groups, including the Romans, Arabs, Turks, Mongols, Uzbeks, Armenians, Georgians, and Russians, ventured into Iran. While each of these groups experienced a significant degree of Persianization, they also infused elements of their own heritage into the evolving Iranian culture. This integration and mutual exchange have become a predominant narrative.
Modern-day Iran transcends the classical understanding of the nation-state. It can be a Nation-State to the extent that the ‘Nation’ is openly inclusive of all identities within the country. It embodies the heritage of diverse groups that made their way into its territories, integrating and contributing to its rich diversity. From the Western Armenians who sought refuge in Iran and the Turkmens who settled in Turkmen Sahra, to the Arabs of Khuzestan and the Qashqai tribes of Shiraz, each of these communities, regardless of whether they speak Indo-Iranian languages, constitutes an indispensable facet of Iran’s rich cultural heritage. Their languages have given voice to our collective history, capturing it in poems, tales, and chronicles. As Iranians, we bear the responsibility to zealously safeguard this linguistic heritage. It is this proposition that underscores the proposal to modify the writing system in the wake of the revolution’s eventual triumph.
Prior to initiating a discourse on the change, it is important to review the standardization of the perso-arabic script and its significant contribution in the preservation of Iran’s linguistic heritage to this point.
Standardization of the Perso-Arabic script
The modern Persian language, with its roots traceable to the 9th century when it adopted the Arabic script, has remained a civilizational axis for the linguistic and cultural continuity of Iran. Interestingly, its roots don’t trace back to Middle Persian (commonly known as Pahlavi) which was native to the Fars region and key to Zoroastrian scriptures.
Instead, it descends from Dari, a dialect spoken in the Sasanian capital, Ctesiphon, and the northeastern Iranian region of Khorasan. Khorasan, initially the heartland of the Parthians, underwent Persianization under the Sasanians, leading to Dari Persian replacing the Parthian language, which by the Sasanian era’s close had become obsolete. New Persian assimilated foreign lexicons, prominently from northern Iranian languages like Sogdian and especially Parthian.
From the 11th century onwards, Persian began its geographical proliferation, becoming the bridge through which Central Asian Turks acquainted themselves with Islam and urban culture. As a trans-regional lingua franca, its morphology made it particularly versatile, maintaining this role until the 19th century. This widespread adoption owes significantly to the evolution of the Arabic script in Iran, which transformed from its Kufic variant to its present form.
By the late Middle Ages, Persian’s structure became the blueprint for new Islamic literary languages like Ottoman Turkish, Chagatai, Dobhashi, and Urdu, designating them as “structural daughter languages” of Persian. Efforts to preserve Persian from foreign influence and to standardize its orthography gained momentum under Naser ed Din Shah in 1871. His successor, Mozaffar ed Din Shah, furthered this by founding the first Persian association in 1903, which, to standardize vocabulary, deemed both Persian and Arabic as legitimate sources. By the 1930s and 1940s, the Pahlavi dynasty’s academy embarked on extensive campaigns to shed Arabic, Russian, French, and Greek loanwords, leading to “Contemporary Standard Persian”. This modernized version uses the person-Arabic script with 23 consonants and 6 vowels, precisely aligning with Persian’s phonetic structure.
However, herein lies the challenge. While the script has fidelity to Persian, it fails to extend the same courtesy to other Iranian languages.
Shortcomings of Perso-Arabic script
When employed for phonetically complex North-Western Iranian languages, the script is either modified, ignoring non-existent phonemes, or distorted to accommodate the missing lexicon. For instance, while Azerbaijani, widely spoken in Iran, aligns with Persian in consonants, its vowels deviate. Similarly, Eastern Iranians have had to either adapt the perso-Arabic script or pivot to Cyrillic and Latin.
Kurdish Sorani and Balochi both consist of 31 consonants and 8 vowels. Kurdish Kurmanji, while sharing the same number of consonants with Sorani and Balochi, has 10 vowels. Mazandarani and Gilaki languages, both significant in their own right, possess 29 consonants and 9 vowels.
Azerbaijani stands out as the second most frequently spoken language in Iran. Its phonetic makeup comprises 23 consonants and 9 vowels. The Qashqai and Turkmen languages, though lesser known to the global audience, have their own unique structures with 21 consonants and 9 vowels.
Eastern Iranian speakers, on the other hand, face challenges in script adaptation. They often find themselves modifying the perso-arabic script to meet their linguistic needs or even resorting to Cyrillic and Latin scripts. Examples include Pashto, a language spoken both in Afghanistan and parts of Iran, which has 31 consonants and 7 vowels, and Ossetian, spoken in regions of Russia and Georgia, which consists of 30 consonants and 9 vowels. The Yaghnobi language which is the last remnant of Iranian Sogdian has 33 consonants and 9 vowels and is repressed in both Afghanistan and Tajikistan — threatened with extinction. Not enough scholarly work has yet been done for Pamiri speakers due to their geographic isolation.
Currently, there is no universal script that adequately represents all linguistic groups within the Iranian civilization sphere. The existing perso-arabic phonetics, while crucial for some languages, are not comprehensive enough for the educational needs and phonetic preservation of the larger Iranian linguistic heritage.
The is no country but Iran that bears the inherent responsibility to connect these linguistic islands by offering a tailored alternative. There is a pressing need for a new script that addresses these disparities and aids in preserving the rich Iranian languages effectively. It’s worth noting that introducing a new script does not imply sidelining the established Iranian script. Scripts can co-exist together. There is one example for comparative study: Japan
Coexisting scripts of Japan
Japan employs three primary writing systems: Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana.
Kanji characters are borrowed from Chinese. Each character represents either a word or a meaningful unit. They are mainly used for nouns, the basic forms of verbs, adjectives, and some specific adverbs.
Hiragana developed from a particular style of Kanji writing. It is used for native Japanese words, especially to indicate the grammatical functions of words such as verb and adjective endings. It is also used for words that don’t have an established Kanji form or when the Kanji is considered too difficult.
Katakana, like Hiragana, has its origins in Kanji, but it evolved from parts of those characters. It is primarily used for words borrowed from other languages, technical or scientific terms, and names of foreign places or people. Additionally, it’s used for onomatopoeic words and occasionally for emphasis, much like how English uses italics. Company names, certain plant and animal names, and brand names also frequently use Katakana.
Kanji was the first writing system used in Japan, but as the language evolved, there was a need for more phonetically suited scripts. This led to the development of Hiragana and Katakana to address the unique sounds and structures of Japanese.
This coexistence serves three primary purposes: Efficiency, Artistic expression, and flexibility for evolution.
Using a mix of scripts makes sentences easier to read. Kanji provides a compact way to convey information, Hiragana supplies the grammatical links, and Katakana identifies foreign words.
Different scripts can offer subtle shifts in meaning or feeling. For example, the choice between Hiragana and Katakana can change the nuance of a word.
As for flexibility for evolution, Kanji connects the Japanese language to its historical roots, while Katakana offers a way to incorporate foreign words and modern concepts. This third case is where our script and Perso-Arabic can easily co-exist. While the three-script system of Japanese might seem complex initially, it offers a practical and versatile means of written communication. Native Japanese speakers navigate between the scripts based on what they are writing and the context in which it is used.
Introducing Ard: The Universal Iranian Script
“Ard” is a root term in Persian, Azerbaijani, Armenian, Ossetian, and other Iranian languages, deeply linked with the concepts of Truth and Order. The development of “Ard” is motivated by the phonetic requirements of both Iranian and non-Indo-Iranian languages spoken within Iran. It emerged as a solution to the limitations of Latin, Arabic, and Cyrillic scripts in preserving the rich linguistic heritage of the respective speakers. We had initially called it Novirani, New Iranian, Parsik, and Iranik. However, when began focusing on Eastern Iranian and non-Iranian languages, Ard stood out as a common denominator with a strong reflection of the script’s ethos.
The journey of developing Ard began in 2015, as I and a group of Iranologists began an exploration into the Avestan and Manichean script as a response to creating a more functional writing system for Iranian languages. Both Avestan and Manichean had inherent complexities that overshadowed the phonetic beauty of the language. Both of them also stem from Semitic Aramean languages — giving credence to the fact that the core structure of the scripts neglected Iranian phonology.
Certain graphemes in the Avestan script had pronounced phonetic proximities, making their divergent morphological structures appear incongruous. The foundation of the Avestan script appeared to stem from a time when the predominant scripts — Phoenician, Aramean, and Latin — were the primary sources of inspiration.
In fact, historically Iranians never had a native writing system. The Eastern Iranians such as Scythians and Sarmatians had strong oral traditions and no writing system. Western Iranians, the Medes, and Persians, adopted Sumero-Akkadianc cuniforms. The Parthians adopted the Greek and Aramaic alphabet. The subsequent Manichean, Avestan, and Pazand scripts were all evolutions of the same Aramaic alphabet. This means Ard is the first native Iranian script that is a neography and doesn’t have a parent system. This is despite Avestan being one of the primary inspirations for developing Ard.
After nearly a decade of phonological research across various Iranian and Iranic languages, an earlier version of Ard (Novirani) was constructed with 45 consonants and utilized a vowel system consisting of 5 basic vowels, which, through combinations, extended to 15 distinct vowel sounds.
The systematic construction ensured a one-to-one correspondence between phonemes and graphemes, facilitating accurate representation of spoken sounds. Yet, while its phonological representation was comprehensive, its orthographic presentation required refinement.
Drawing inspiration from the structural elegance of Tolkien’s Tengwar, I adapted its orthographic principles to enhance the script’s visual appeal without compromising its linguistic integrity. The resultant script is not only consistent in its phonetic representation but also orthographically streamlined. The character shapes were meticulously selected based on their relational proximity and their inherent aural aesthetics.
Furthermore, the phonotactic properties of Ard script exude distinct rhythmic qualities, encoding a subtle clandestine message during articulation. A young Iranian or an Iranian speaker will recite a short folklore poem in three Iranian languages while memorizing the alphabet song.
This article is a preface to the more exhaustive analysis of Ard. My other article on Script of Truth: The New Iranian Writing System delves deeper into its linguistic intricacies and potential applications.
