The Taliban held a five-day workshop titled “Reform and Standardization of the Spelling Methods of the Pashto and Dari Languages” at the National Museum of Afghanistan.
Bakhtar News Agency, which is controlled by the Taliban, reported on Sunday, August 23, that the workshop was attended by professors, linguists, researchers, writers, and representatives of academic and cultural institutions.
According to the report, the workshop examined the differences in the written forms of Pashto and Dari and discussed developing standardized orthographies for use in academic, educational, administrative, and cultural sectors.
Abdul Rahman Tayebi, the Taliban’s Deputy Minister for Culture and Arts at the Ministry of Information and Culture, said at the gathering that the group is committed to strengthening and developing all languages of Afghanistan.
This comes as the Taliban have restricted and removed the use of some commonly used Persian Dari words, including “Danishjo” for student, ”Danishkada” for faculty, and ”Danishgah” for university, from several educational institutions over the past five years.
The policy has drawn widespread reactions from citizens of Afghanistan.
Several human rights activists, cultural figures, and civil society activists in Afghanistan have also described the Taliban’s policy toward the Persian Dari language as suppression and elimination of the language, calling it “linguistic apartheid.”
