Academy of Persian Language and Literature

{{Short description|Official regulatory institution of the Persian language}}

{{Infobox organization

| name = Academy of Persian Language and Literature

| image = Iran's Persian Academy.png

| formation = {{Start date and age|1935|05|20}}

| purpose = Regulatory body of the Persian language.

| headquarters = Tehran, Iran

| leader_title = President

| leader_name = Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel

| membership = Around 300 persons

| website = https://apll.ir/

}}

The Academy of Persian Language and Literature (APLL) ({{langx|fa|فرهنگستان زبان و ادب فارسی}}, Farhangestân-e Zabân-o Adab-e Fârsi) is the regulatory body for the Persian language, headquartered in Tehran, Iran. Formerly known as the Academy of Iran ({{lang|fa|فرهنگستان ایران}}, Farhangestân-e Iran), it was founded on 20 May 1935, by the initiative of Reza Shah, the first shah of the Pahlavi dynasty. The academy acts as the official authority on the language, and contributes to linguistic research on Persian and other languages of Iran.{{fact|date=September 2024}}

History

=Early efforts=

The first official efforts to protect the Persian language from foreign words and to standardise its spelling of Persian orthography were made in 1871, during the reign of Naser al-Din Shah Qajar.{{Citation needed|date=October 2014}} After Naser al-Din Shah, Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar ordered the establishment of the first Persian association in 1903.{{cite web|title=Farhangestan|url=http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/farhangestan|website=Encyclopaedia Iranica|accessdate=3 October 2014|ref=Farghanestan}} This association officially declared that it used Persian and Arabic as acceptable sources for coining words. The ultimate goal was to prevent books from being printed with the wrong usage of words. According to the executive guarantee of this association, the government was responsible for wrongfully-printed books. Words coined by this association, such as rāh-āhan ({{lang|fa|راه‌آهن}}) for "railway", were printed in Soltani Newspaper ({{lang|fa|روزنامه سلطانی|italic=yes}}); but the association was eventually closed due to inattention.{{Citation needed|date=October 2014}}

A scientific association was founded in 1911, resulting in a dictionary called Words of Scientific Association ({{lang|fa|لغت انجمن علمی|italic=yes}}), which was completed in the future and renamed Katouzian Dictionary ({{lang|fa|فرهنگ کاتوزیان|italic=yes}}).{{cite book|title=برنامه‌ریزی زبان فارسی|publisher=تهران: روایت فتح|isbn=978-600-6128-05-4|author=نگار داوری اردکانی|page=33|year=1389}}

=Establishment of the academy=

The first academy for the Persian language was founded on 20 May 1935, under the name Academy of Iran. It was established by the initiative of Reza Shah, and mainly by Ali-Asghar Hekmat and Mohammad Ali Foroughi, all names in the nationalist movement of the time.{{fact|date=September 2024}}

Ferdowsi was a motivation behind Reza Shah's decision to remove foreign loanwords from Persian and replacing them with Persian equivalents. In 1934, Reza Shah ordered the reconstruction of Ferdowsi's tomb and set up a country-wide ceremony in honour of a thousand years of Persian literature since the time of Ferdowsi, titled Ferdowsi millennial celebration, inviting notable Iranian and foreign scholars.{{fact|date=September 2024}}

The members of the academy included a number of notable literary figures and highly celebrated scholars upon its foundation,{{Cite web |url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/arts/story/2006/05/060517_jb_culture-academy.shtml |title=71st anniversary of the Academy of Persian Language and Literature |publisher=BBC Persian}} including Abbas Eqbal Ashtiani, Mohammad-Taqi Bahar, Ali-Akbar Dehkhoda, Mohammad Ali Foroughi, Badiozzaman Forouzanfar, Homayun Forouzanfar, Qasem Ghani, Abdolazim Gharib, Allame Mohammad Qazvini, Mohammad Hejazi, Ali-Asghar Hekmat, Mahmoud Hessabi, Mohammad-Ali Jamalzadeh, Ahmad Matin-Daftari, Saeed Nafisi, Ebrahim Pourdavoud, Isa Sedigh, Zabihollah Safa, Ali Akbar Siassi, and Rashid Yasemi.{{fact|date=September 2024}}

Some foreign scholars were also involved, such as Arthur Christensen (from Denmark), Mohammed Hussein Heikal (from Egypt), Abduqodir Maniyozov (from Tajikistan), Henry Masset (from France), Raf'at Pasha (from Egypt), Jan Rypka (from Czechoslovakia), Dodikhudo Saymiddinov (from Tajikistan), and Muhammadjon Shakuri (from Tajikistan) and Syed Waheed Ashraf (from India).{{fact|date=September 2024}}

Rpferdosi.jpg|Reza Shah officially dedicating the Tomb of Ferdowsi upon conclusion of the Ferdowsi Millenary Celebration

Ferdowsi millenary congress.jpg|Participants of the Ferdowsi Millenary Congress in Tehran

ferdowsi tomb4.jpg|The Tomb of Ferdowsi in Tus, Iran

Statue of Ferdowsi in Tus, Iran.jpg|The statue of Ferdowsi in Tus, Iran

The academy was a key institution in the struggle to re-build Iran as a nation-state after the end of the Qajar era. During the 1930s and 1940s, the academy led massive campaigns to replace many Arabic, French, and Greek loanwords whose immense usage during the centuries preceding the foundation of the Pahlavi dynasty had created a literary language considerably different from the spoken Persian of the time.{{fact|date=September 2024}}

Functions

The academy strives to protect the integrity of the Persian language. It heads the academic efforts for linguistic research on the Persian language and its sister Iranian languages. It has also created an official orthography of Persian.{{fact|date=September 2024}}

The attention of the academy has also been towards the persistent infiltration of Persian, like many other languages, with foreign words, as a result of the globalisation process. The academy constantly campaigns for the use of Persian equivalents of new loanwords. If no equivalents exist, it has the task of linguistically deriving such words from existing Persian roots, and promoting the adoption of these new coinages in the daily lives. The Iranian law requires those equivalents to be used in the official media, governmental affairs, and product management of all companies.{{Citation needed|date=July 2013}}

The Encyclopedia of Persian Language and Literature in South Asia

The Encyclopedia of Persian Language and Literature in South Asia (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) was established in 1993 in order to compile the Encyclopedia of Persian Language and Literature in South Asia.{{fact|date=September 2024}}

Membership

The academy members are selected from masters of Persian literature and linguistics. After the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Hassan Habibi was appointed as the academy's president, and he remained in that position until his death in 2013. The current president is Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel.{{fact|date=September 2024}}

The following is a list of both living and deceased permanent members of the academy since the 1979 Revolution.{{cite web|url=http://www.persianacademy.ir/fa/association.aspx|title=فرهنگستان زبان و ادب فارسی|publisher=Persian Academy|accessdate=23 December 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110414134658/http://persianacademy.ir/fa/association.aspx|archive-date=14 April 2011|url-status=dead}}

=Permanent members=

==Current==

==Deceased==

Announcement of the Academy about the name of the Persian language in foreign languages

On 19 November 2005, the Academy of the Persian Language and Literature delivered a pronouncement on the name of the Persian language, rejecting any use of the word Farsi (instead of English Persian, German Persisch, Spanish persa, French persan, etc.) in foreign languages.{{fact|date=September 2024}}

The announcement reads:

Persian has been used in a variety of publications including cultural, scientific, and diplomatic documents for centuries and, therefore, it carries a very significant historical and cultural meaning. Hence, changing Persian to Farsi would negate this established important precedent.
Changing the usage from Persian to Farsi may give the impression that "Farsi" is a new language, although this may well be the intention of some users of Farsi.
Changing the usage may also give the impression that "Farsi" is a dialect used in some parts of Iran rather than the predominant (and official) language of the country.

Supporting this announcement, gradually other institutions and literary figures separately took similar actions throughout the world.{{cite web|url=http://www.iranian.com/Features/Dec97/Persian/ |title=Persian or Farsi? |publisher=Iranian|date=16 December 1997|accessdate=23 December 2011}}{{cite web|url=http://www.persiandirect.com/articles/2004/july/id_00003.htm|title=Fársi: 'Recently appeared language!'|publisher=Persiandirect|accessdate=23 December 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303191652/http://www.persiandirect.com/articles/2004/july/id_00003.htm|archive-date=3 March 2016|url-status=dead|df=dmy-all}}{{cite web|url=http://www.persiandirect.com/articles/2004/july/id_00001.htm|title=Persian or Fársi?|publisher=Persiandirect|accessdate=23 December 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160915195418/http://www.persiandirect.com/articles/2004/july/id_00001.htm|archive-date=15 September 2016|url-status=dead|df=dmy-all}}{{cite journal|title=متنِ اعلامِ نظرِ شورای فرهنگستانِ زبان و ادبِ فارسی درباره‌ی کاربردِ Farsi به جای Persian در مکاتباتِ وزارتِ امورِ خارجه|journal=The Quarterly Journal of the Academy of Persian Language and Literature|date=Spring 1995|volume=1|issue=1|page=152|url=http://www.persianacademy.ir/UserFiles/image/naame01.pdf|editor1-first=Aḥmad|editor1-last=Samī‘ī Gīlānī|location=Tehran|language=Persian|access-date=2012-02-16|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304035325/http://www.persianacademy.ir/UserFiles/image/naame01.pdf|archive-date=2016-03-04|url-status=dead}}