Iran

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English in Iran

dusseaux.antoine_289191, Thu, 2022-12-22 10:49
Regarding: 
Language Counts
Country: 
Iran, Islamic Republic of

There are certainly English speakers in Iran? (per https://www.elixirpublishers.com/articles/1385017036_64%20(2013)%2019095-19098.pdf : "private language schools teaching English have mushroomed across the country, even in villages there are now English language schools")

Editorial Action

No action taken.

Standard Arabic in Iran

dusseaux.antoine_289191, Thu, 2022-12-22 10:48
Regarding: 
Population
Country: 
Iran, Islamic Republic of

What's the source for the 1,320,000 Standard Arabic speakers in Iran?

"while Quranic Arabic is a mandated school subject under the Iranian constitution, these classes teach Quranic verses and other classical Islamic texts exclusively, prohibiting any contemporary use of the language." (  https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/how-irans-new-educat... )

Educational Language Policy and Arabic Teaching in Iran: insights from teachers ( https://www.elixirpublishers.com/articles/1385017036_64%20(2013)%2019095-19098.pdf )

"Arabic resembles a foreign language in the sense that the ordinary Iranian are not capable of writing or speaking in the language; nor are they capable of making sense of everyday Arabic written passages."

"While private language schools teaching English have mushroomed across the country, even in villages there are now English language schools, no such language school exist for Arabic."

Editorial Action

No action taken, at the present time.  This is tied into the decision that needs to be made about Standard Arabic [arb] in all the countries where it is spoken.

Arabic near Shiraz

dusseaux.antoine_289191, Fri, 2022-10-28 13:43
Regarding: 
Language Counts
Country: 
Iran, Islamic Republic of

This map shows many ethnic Arabs living near Shiraz (Fars province): http://www.irancarto.cnrs.fr/record.php?q=AR-040535&f=local&l=en

And yet, according to Ethnologue, no Arabic variety is spoken in this area:

Does it mean that these ethnic Arabs have switched to Persian and don't speak Arabic natively anymore? If they still speak Arabic, which variety do they speak? afb? acm? auz?

Cheers,

Editorial Action

No action taken.

Khorasan Arabic

dusseaux.antoine_289191, Mon, 2022-09-05 07:14
Regarding: 
Language Counts
Country: 
Iran, Islamic Republic of

According to The Arabic Language, Kees Versteegh, 2014, p. 285: "Apparently, between 5,000 and 10,000 speakers of Arabic still survive in a few villages in the Khorasan region in east Iran, on the border with Afghanistan and Turkmenistan (Seeger 2002, 2009). They call themselves ʿArab and speak a variety of Arabic that is entirely different from the Arabic spoken in Khuzestan (see Chapter 11, pp. 203f.), and may be related to the Arabic of Uzbekistan. The dialect spoken in Khorasan is affected by interference from Persian, unlike Uzbekistan Arabic, which is heavily influenced by Turkic."

Map of this variety: https://www.uni-heidelberg.de/md/semitistik/seeger_fs-arnold_eng.pdf

Data from CNRS and University of Tehran: http://www.irancarto.cnrs.fr/record.php?q=AR-040535&f=local&l=en

Because Khorasan Arabic doesn't have its own code, we could, as suggested by Versteegh, include it in [auz].

Here's how it is classified on Glottolog: https://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/khor1274

Editorial Action

We will add a language entry for Khorasan Arabic under [auz] (Uzbeki Spoken Arabic) in Iran, to be included in the next edition of the Ethnologue.