عاجل
Preface
I begin my study by addressing some constructive
questions about the common factors that can be attributed to the gradual
extinction of language, which frequently occurs intentionally and
systematically particularly in multiethnic countries that one language strictly
dominated on other languages as a discriminatory policy to assimilate the
language of the ethnic minority or aboriginal people by imposing the most
spoken language of particular majority on these people and placing a long ban
on their languages to build monolingual
country. Apparently, the non-Persian languages
have been subjected to harsh measures of linguicide.
The
Iranian officials seemingly are not willing to stop burying their head under
the sand and accept that people in the integrity so-called Iran are not
homogenous in term of ethnicity to be able to bring them together under a
certain political banner.
The policies of linguicide in Ahwaz region,
enshrined in the constitution and law of Iranian regimes because according to
19 and 15 of Iran constitution all non-Persian ethnic minorities have right for
education in their native language but fascist Persian regime violates the
rights of learning Arabic in Ahwaz and other non-Persian languages such as
Kurdish in east Kurdistan, and Turkish in south Azerbaijan.
This disgraceful policy was adopted by Iran
soon after the collapse of Qajar dynasty and formation of Pahlavi monarchy where
Reza Shah raised to power and formed the integrity so-called Iran under the
slogan of "Aryan land" by occupying non-Persian neighboring regions that had
full autonomy during that era such as Arabestan (Al-Ahwaz) under the rule of
Sheikh Khazaal in the south and south west of Iran that later its historical
Arabic name changed into the current Khuzestan province. Let us put all this
aside and raise some questions concerning language:
1 What is language death?
2 Why should we care?
3 Why do languages die?
What
is language death?
The phrase of language death means a
process that affects speech communities where the level of linguistic
competence that speakers possess of a given language variety is decreased,
eventually resulting in no native or fluent speakers of the variety. Language
death may affect any language idiom, including dialects and languages.
Why
do languages die?
Here, I do include the sociopolitical factors
that are fuelling by Iran as systematic political targets in Ahwaz region for
eliminating the Arabic language among the Ahwazi people whose native language
is Arabic while they have no right to learn their language in an academic
environment.
These sociopolitical factors are official
language policies (monolingual policies), racial discrimination, language
stigmatization, repression, war, forced migration, emergence of settlements and
so on. The above-mentioned factors were
conducted against the Ahwazi Arab people by the hand of Iranian regimes since
1925 until today. However, among these
factors, the Official monolingual policies can be and have been a particularly
decisive factor in language death of non-Persian nations in Ahwaz, Kurdistan, Azerbaijan
where local people speak in their native language that characterize with
aboriginal dialects. In fact, after the Qajar dynasty, which had reigned since
1718, was replaced by the Pahlavi monarchy on non-Persian languages and
cultures began to be enforced through violence.
Why should we care?
While the illiteracy rate in Iran is about 10
to 18 percent, this is over 50 percent among the Arabs men in Ahwaz
(Khuozestan) and even higher for Ahwazi women .the indigenous Ahwazi Arabs
students abandon school that rate 30 percent in the elementary level, 50
percent in secondary level and 70 percent in high school because they force to
study in the official Farsi language which is not theirs. There is not any
official institute for teaching Arabic in Ahwaz and learning Arabic is just
confined to religious study for people who want to be a clergyman consequently
the Ahwazi Arab are semi learner in their native language and are struggling to
learn Arabic despite the denial of their Arabic language .
In fact, the education system in Iran
promoted and enforced a superficial sense of nationalism based on Persian
language and identity. Therefore, the multicultural, multiethnic, and
multilingual character of Iranian was explicitly denied and oppressed.
Moreover, shortly after the establishment of
the Pahlavi dynasty in the1925, all non-Persian ethnic groups and nationalities
in Iran were denied the right to education in their own language. Notwithstanding the fact that the non-Persian nations such as Arabs, Turks,
Kurds, Baluchs, Turkmens, and others constituted the numerical majority in the country,
all the Persian regimes from Pahlavi to the Islamic Republic are sought to
supplant our languages, cultures, and histories with those of Persian minority.
There are four criteria released from
UNESCO indicating languages that are at the risk of death row:
UNESCO LANGUAGE ENDANGERMENT SCALE
Vulnerable:
Most children speak the language, but it may be restricted to certain domains
(e.g., home).
Definitely endangered: Children no longer learn the language as mother tongue in their
home.
Severely endangered: Language is spoken by grandparents and older generations; while
the parent generation may understand it, they do not speak it to children or
among themselves.
Critically endangered: The youngest speakers are grandparents and older people, and they
speak the language partially and infrequently.
Yet, it is not surprise if we admit that
the harshest policy of deliberate linguicide definitely practiced in Iran,
where the entire state machinery is mobilized in order to eliminate the
non-Persian languages including Arabic
,Turkish and Kurdish in both speaking and writing. However, non-Persian people
are free to speak in their native tongue in private spaces (e.g., home).but, it
would be considered a crime against the "territorial integrity" of the state if
a member of the parliament or a political party uses the language in political
campaigns, or if the language used in education or broadcasting. It is still
illegal to write in the language. Most publications in Arabic in Ahwaz are
regularly banned and confiscated, and authors, translators, publishers,
distributers, and even readers are punished by the state.in the recent years
several cultural institutes e.g., Al-HiWar, the cultural institute, was banned
and all its founders arrested and
sentenced to death penalty under some vaguely -worded charges. This cultural
institute despite the severe restriction on its cultural activism was striving
to revive the Arabic language among the young generation by holding some educational,
cultural programs.
Based on the four above standard indicators about
"the language endangerment scale", I will explain the indicators by comparing
them with the suppressed non-Persian languages that are plagued in terrible
restricted domain of a harsh linguicide policy:
Linguicide and experience
Similar to other Ahwazi Arab native speaker, I
have experienced bitter times of linguicide. Born into an Ahwazi Arab family in
an Ahwazis town, I had to get my education in Persian, the only official
language in Iran, a multilingual country where Persian was the native tongue of
any half the population.
At Ahwaz University, where I studied linguistics
(2006-2010), my professors rarely referred to non-Persian languages and if my
classmates from Kurdistan and Azerbaijan or I bring some discussions about
Arabic, Kurdish and Turkish language entities, our professors reluctantly
answered our questions. These
discussions in the class regarding the non-Persian languages would be
considered 'secessionism', the unforgivable charges that are always waged
against our people.
Non-Persian nations were subjected to open and shameful acts of
linguicide, cultural annihilation, and forced assimilation. It is apparent that
the Iranian regime certainly wants non-Persian people to lose their cultural
independence and, in many cases, their spirituality, all of which go hand in
hand with language.
As some historical facts have been passed
from generation to generation to recall how thousands of Ahwazi Arab people in
schools and offices and even in the street were arrested, tortured, and
disgraced on charges of speaking in Arabic particularly in Al-Mohammara during
the Pahlavi regime. Since 1925, Reading or writing in Iran's non-Persian
languages was treated as evidence of secessionism, treason and violation of the
territorial integrity of the state.
The language policy of the Islamic regime,
which came to power in 1979, was no different, in principle, from that of the
secular monarchy. Article 15 of the Islamic constitution, which, in contrast
with the 1906 constitution, does allow for the teaching of "ethnic literature"
in schools, has not been implemented yet. Persian continues to be the only
official language in a country where it is the native tongue of no more than
half the population. Although publications in non-official languages are
tolerated, the symbolic violence, the vilifying of non-official languages, has
not come to the end.
Iranian regime not only targeted the
speaking, writing, folklore music and every other related expressions in
language but also they waged extensive state violence against all the
aboriginal and historical name of places in the non-Persian region. Geographic
terms, including the names of mountains, cities, villages, streets, rivers and
regions, have been persianized.
Today we can see that all the original Arabic
names of cities, villages and rivers in Al-Ahwaz were replaced by fabricated
Persian names. It is likely surprise you that Ahwazi Arab are not allowed to
name their children, as they like. There is a book of permitted names at civil
registers, and no one can pick a name that is not in this book. For instance,
Iranian authorities do not allow people to choose Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, or
Aisha as names for their children In Ahwaz. Civil registers will not put these
names on ID cards.
In
many cases, TV Farsi channels, radio stations and magazines openly and
systematically insult the well-respected figures of non-Persian religious or
historical Arab figures steering a symbolic violence, in the form of a
systematic extensive propaganda campaign in order to shame Arab native speakers
into abandoning their language and their identity.
By this assessment, we can classify the
Arabic language in Ahwaz along with other non-Persian languages as "severely
endangered languages" under the threat of extinction or gradual death where
the transmission of language between generations was interrupted by deliberate
Persian machinery of Iranian government . This oppressive policy sometime caused
non-Persian people to kill their own languages. To clarify this situation, I
propose the term "linguistic suicide" to refer to situations where
parents who are speakers of minority language sometime deliberately choose not
to teach this language to their children and instead adopt a majority language
in their home.
The major reason for this phenomenon is the
low prestige attached as language stereotypes to the minority language for
example the Arabic language called the speech of illiterate and rural people.
The Iranian regime by inciting hatred against ethno-linguistic minorities
caused the ethnic minorities to feel themselves discriminated against and
shamefully neglected by the centralized Persian government. This chauvinist
policy also created wide socio-economic gaps between center and the ethnic
minorities particularly the Ahwazi Arab people.
All
these discriminatory policy against language aims to kill the Arabic language
in Ahwaz and other non-Persian languages that lead people to dress Persian
culture. The other reason for linguistic
suicide is concern about children's ability to acquire fluency in Persian
language, the socially-and economically –dominant language in Iran.
The continuous discriminatory policy
against the ethno-linguistic minorities pursued by the Iranian regimes show
that the" linguistic diversity" seen as national threat based on the Iranian
regime's chauvinist ideology for this reason the Iranian regimes systematically
encourage the Persian community to propagate language stereotype policy in the
form of humiliating "ethnic jokes" against non-Persian languages in media or in
education system.
For years, the regime authorities prevent
those who belong to ethnic minorities to get education in their own language in
their schools, which goes against the Article 15 of Iran's constitution with
the fact that in the recent years the regime authorities have imposed
restrictions and have banned the use of non-Persian languages in their most
populated regions.
It
is time for linguists in Iran to stop their silence and speak out against these
systematic linguicide policies conducting against non-Persian languages in Iran
because the death of language is the death of the soul and identity of people.
At the end, I would like to dedicate this
article to everyone who stands to the freedom, every oppressed nation
particularly in the Middle East because the new Middle East must be peace,
friendship and achievement of national rights of the oppressed nations who
lived under racial subrogation for years and the world must open its eyes and
support the suffocated voices of these occupied nations especially in Iran.
Sources:
http://www.kurdishacademy.org/?q=node/180
http://grammar.about.com/od/il/g/languagedeathterm.htm
http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam032/99053220.pdf
http://www.wisegeek.com/why-did-latin-become-a-dead-language.htm