From “National Bulwark” to “Circulars Office” at the Academy of Persian Language and Literature: Four Decades of Coining Words, from “rayāne” to “āmāje” S. Rouzbeh ۱۴۰۴/۰۹/۰۸ S. Rouzbeh examines the Academy of Persian Language and Literature, from the successful coinages of its early years to the political identity, public mistrust and awkward, belated word-making associated with the institution today. S. Rouzbeh – If you ask a young person today, from the new generation, “What does the Academy of Persian Language and Literature do?”, they are unlikely to think of Ferdowsi, Hafez and Saadi, or of editing the Shahnameh and compiling scientific glossaries. Instead, a few unfamiliar words and subjects for jokes will come to mind: things like “khoshāb” instead of compote, “khāmir-barg” instead of lasagne, or “āmāje” instead of the game of darts. This image, in itself, sums up the state of an institution that, on paper, should be the foremost bulwark for safeguarding the national language, but in the minds of a large part of society has become an “office of words” that remain mostly on the page of official resolutions rather than entering people’s speech. In the nearly ninety years since the Academy was formally established, the institution has changed its name and structure several times: the First Academy in 1314 (1935–36), during Reza Shah’s reign; the Second Academy in the late 1340s (late 1960s); and the Third Academy, from 1368 (1989–90) to the present. The declared mission in every period has been the same: to safeguard Persian and coin equivalents for foreign words. What has differed is its governing logic, its approach to language, and its relationship with society—a difference that today manifests itself as a deep gulf between its “official duty on paper” and its “standing in the public mind”. A lost identity: costly coinages and lost credibility over the past four decades—the era of the Islamic Republic The Third Academy claims to have approved equivalents for tens of thousands of foreign words on its own. The Academy’s president cites “more than sixty-five thousand” words and hundreds of glossary volumes as its record over thirty years, while its official budget has risen from around twelve billion tomans in the middle of the 1390s (2010s) to more than one hundred billion tomans in the 1403 (2024–25) budget. A simple question nevertheless remains: with this volume of word-making and this growing budget, what practical effect has the Academy had on people’s language, education, literature and the relationship between generations and Persian? And what has been the result in society, in texts and textbooks, and in everyday speech and correspondence? A successful legacy: when writers forged the language of “dadgostari” and “shahrdari” To understand the answer, we must start at a time when the Academy had not yet been defined under the direct shadow of politics. The First Academy, established in 1314 (1935–36), was less an office than a cultural manifesto. At its head sat Mohammad Ali Foroughi, alongside figures such as Malek al-Shoara Bahar, Ali-Akbar Dehkhoda and Badiozzaman Forouzanfar; first and foremost, they were writers, poets, editors of classical texts and university professors, not official functionaries of the machinery of power. The dominance of writers produced words that are now the backbone of our language, and few people remember that they were once “approved by the Academy”. “Shahrdari” replaced “baladieh”; “dadgostari” took the place of “vezarat-e adliyeh”; “daneshgah” and “daneshkadeh” replaced foreign names; “havapeyma” came in place of “tayyareh”; “zirdaryayi” replaced “taht al-bahri”; and “chapkhaneh” displaced “matba’e”. Words such as “karmand”, “dampezeshk”, “darmangah”, “rahan”, “palayesh” and “partoshenasi” also belong to this family: melodious, concise and wholly Persian words that emerged from the genuine needs of new institutions, the modern city and the sciences, and that those same writers introduced into people’s mouths through the press and education. At a higher level, these coinages had a clear significance: a gradual move away from ponderous titles rooted in the Arabic of jurisprudence and Ottoman usage, and a move towards making administrative and legal language more intelligible to citizens. Changing the name “adliyeh” to “dadgostari” was not merely a matter of replacing one word with another; it was a small step towards making people feel that the “law” spoke to them in their own language, rather than in the language of a remote and difficult text. In the 1340s (1960s), the Second Academy continued along the same path on a more modern scale, at the same time as universities and the modern sciences were growing. Politics eclipses literature: the Third Academy as a state institution After the 1357 Revolution (1979), the Third Academy began its work under the name “Academy of Persian Language and Literature”. On paper, its structure is orderly and extensive: hundreds of full and associate members, terminology groups for dozens of academic disciplines, the publication of numerous glossaries and a great many approved terms. But the main difference lies in the make-up of its leadership and its relationship with political power. From the outset, the Academy’s presidency went to figures known more for their association with politics than for literary and linguistic work—from Hassan Habibi to the current incumbent, Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, former Speaker of Parliament and a close associate of the inner circle of power. The membership does include distinguished linguists and literary scholars, and serious research has been carried out in lexicography. But the weight of a political presidency and a large, fixed budget have meant that, in the public mind, the Third Academy is seen less as a “gathering of people of language” and more as part of the Islamic Republic’s official machinery: an institution whose task is to formulate and establish the language of official power. It is natural that this administrative and political identity should have a direct impact on the fate of the words coined there. From “narm-afzār” to “khoshāb”: two contradictory lists of the Academy’s achievements Even so, some achievements cannot be ignored. Words such as “rayāne”, “narm-afzār”, “sakht-afzār”, “kārbar”, “hamāyesh” and, to some extent, “bālgard” have taken hold in official texts and parts of everyday language. Many researchers and students use the Academy’s dictionaries and specialist glossaries, and it cannot be claimed that the institution has been idle in the field of linguistic research. But alongside these are long lists of words that either sounded heavy and artificial to Persian speakers from the outset, or arrived so late that they had lost their chance to live in the language. There are plenty of familiar examples: “khoshāb” for compote, “khāmir-barg” for lasagne, “daftarak” for brochure, “zakhire-jā” for reservation, “derakhsh” for a camera flash, and, most recently, “āmāje” for the game of darts. Although many of these words may comply with the rules of word formation, they do not fit the brisk, compressed rhythm of contemporary Persian and fail to gain a foothold in spoken language. At best, they linger for a while in textbooks or administrative documents, then either fade away or become the subject of jokes. Worse still is the stream of words that the Academy never approved but which, in the public mind, have nonetheless been laid at its door: “derāz-āviz-e zeynati” for tie and “kash-loghmeh” for pizza are examples. The Academy has repeatedly stated that it has passed no resolutions concerning clothing or food names, but public trust has eroded to the point where any unfamiliar combination is immediately branded as the institution’s doing. Attempts to impose words from above are seen as interference in the private realm of language and are rejected. To this, we must add the chronic delay in coining terms. When a word such as “pizza” or “computer” has been established in shops, the media and everyday conversation for years, trying to impose a Persian equivalent after the fact—even if the word itself is not bad—is like chasing a train that left the station long ago. Trust has eroded to the point that even relatively successful words are overshadowed by the label “Academy coinage” and are seen on social media more as a subject for jokes than as a means of expression. The wrong priority: shunning “juristic Arabic” while clinging to “compote” Amid these contradictions, one key point emerges: priorities have shifted away from where the language genuinely “hurts” towards areas that are safer. The Academy’s official mission is to “purify Persian of foreign words”, but in practice its focus has been mainly on European words, and English in particular. In the everyday lives of Iranians, the heaviest and least comprehensible layer of foreign vocabulary is Arabic legal and administrative terminology: the language used in the judiciary, prosecutors’ offices, legal texts, and parts of universities and religious institutions. Terms such as “kān lam yakun”, “ta‘zīr sentence”, “suspension of punishment”, “retrial”, “plea for mercy” and “request for authorisation” are neither familiar nor clear to ordinary citizens, even though they are directly bound up with their lives, property and freedom. Under the Pahlavi era, part of the project of coining words was directed at this very layer. Changing “Ministry of ‘Adliyyeh’” to “Ministry of Justice”, or “Baladiyeh” to “municipality”, was, beyond its symbolic aspect, an attempt to Persianise and simplify language that affected people’s legal fate. In the Third Academy, this process has almost come to a halt. The same Arabic legal language, with the same structures and terminology, still weighs heavily on the text of the law and judicial practice, while the Academy has effectively chosen to be more active in lower-risk fields such as technology, nutrition and sport: areas where a mistaken word ends up as an internet meme, not as an ambiguous interpretation of a ruling. The absence of Hafez and the pressure of foreign words: an empty linguistic field for the new generation Alongside all this, we must also consider the role of the education system and literature. Persian took shape and was refined centuries before any academy, through Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, Hafez’s ghazals, Saadi’s prose, Rumi’s Masnavi and Nezami’s verse epics. If this language today carries the identity and collective memory of millions of Iranians, at home and abroad, it is above all because of these texts, not administrative resolutions. Yet all we need do is leaf through school textbooks from recent decades to see how limited and selective the place of the Shahnameh, Hafez, Saadi and other classical poets has become in formal education. The finest passages of classical literature have either been removed or reduced to a few neutral lines, useful more for multiple-choice exams than for building an emotional connection between pupils and the language. The space left by this heritage has been filled with commissioned poems, encomia and texts whose primary aim is not to nurture the language, but to promote ideology. The Academy, as the official language institution, has either remained silent in the face of this trend or limited its contribution to a handful of ceremonial meetings and conferences. As a result, the new generation—especially Generation Z—has spent years on the one hand under pressure from compulsory Arabic and religious texts in formal settings, from nursery school through secondary school, growing weary of this imposed language; and on the other, it is confronted in the media and on social networks with a wave of broken English presented as a sign of being “modern” and “cool”. Today, everyday conversations among teenagers and young people are full of expressions such as: “it’s trending”, “I’m OK”, “it’s really hyped”, “they reacted”, “they posted a story”, “DM me”, “follow”, “report them”, “make a call”, “give them a ring”, “this video went really viral”. This phenomenon is no longer merely a simple linguistic choice; it is gradually becoming an unwritten project to demean the mother tongue. With their substantial advertising budgets, brands and public institutions, instead of working with writers and editors who care about Persian, turn to “content creators”, who think that the more English words they cram into a text, the more “modern” and “appealing” their content will be. In this climate, the new generation sees Persian not as a rich and capable language, but as an “old-fashioned” and “outdated” one that must be steeped in English to become appealing. This is happening even as many poets and writers—both in Iran and among emigrants—are breathing new life into Persian through modern poetry, novels and serious translations. But the absence of sound policy, and the Academy’s and the government’s misplaced focus, mean that these efforts are not reflected in textbooks, the official media or public education. The way to save it: independence from power and listening to those who use the language This is where the importance of trust and independence becomes clear. A language cannot be saved by resolutions and circulars. It is kept alive by those who write poetry and stories in it, translate it, work with texts in the classroom and speak it in everyday life. An institution such as the Academy can play a positive role in this process only if it accepts two simple but difficult conditions: Relative independence from politics, and listening to those who use the language. The Academy’s failure to earn public trust has shifted the centre of linguistic innovation beyond Iran’s official institutions and into the large Iranian community abroad—the diaspora. As long as the Academy is headed less by a literary and scholarly figure than by a symbol of a political faction, it is only natural that the institution’s output should be seen as “governmental” rather than “language-centred”. As long as words are coined in closed committees and imposed from above, without being tested with writers, translators, journalists, teachers and the language’s own users, many of them will remain on paper. And as long as the priority is verbal warfare against marginal words, instead of simplifying the language of law, contracts, medicine and public education, the language’s central knot—that is, the opaque layer of Arabic legal terminology and the gradual removal of the Shahnameh and Hafez from school life—will remain untouched. The Academy of Persian Language and Literature could once again become an institution worthy of the promise in its name, but not in its current role as an office for accumulating words. If it became smaller, more independent and more accountable; if it listened to ordinary people and writers; if, instead of “putting on a display of word-making”, it turned towards simplifying the language of power and bringing Ferdowsi, Hafez and Saadi back into schools and the media, then the words it coined would have a better chance of continuing to live not only in official resolutions, but also in people’s mouths. The day the official language of power draws closer to clear, humane language will mark the greatest possible service to Persian—a service that no “āmāje”, “khamir-e barg” or “khoshābi” will ever make up for. Source: https://srouzbeh.com/en/posts/archive-5342ace3-7184-ffff-c248-8d8f276af7da Please credit the author and link to this edition.