Farsi (
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Introduction
Persian is a member of the Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is spoken by an estimated 71 million people, primarily in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. The language has several names which will be explained below:
- Persian is the more widely used name of the language in English, from Latin Persia 'Persia,' from Greek Persis. The Academy of Persian Language and Literature calls the language Persian.
- Farsi is the Arabicized form of Parsi from Pars, the name of the region where the language evolved. Pars is called Fars in Arabic which lacks the sound [p].
- Dari is the local name used for the Persian language in Afghanistan. There are several competing theories regarding the origin of the name.
- Tajik (Tajiki) is the local name used for Persian in Tajikistan.
Old Persian and its descendant, Middle Persian, are thought to have originated in Parsa (or Fars), the center of the Persian Empire in southwest Iran. Old Persian is attested from the inscriptions left by the Achaemenid Dynasty (559 to 331 B.C.) which ruled the territory that is now Iran until the conquest of Alexander the Great. Middle Persian, also known as Pahlavi, after the Parthians who ruled Persia after the collapse of Alexander's Empire, is attested by pre-Islamic Zoroastrian religious writings. There is no conclusive evidence that these languages are the ancestors of Modern Persian.
The bulk of the surviving Persian literature comes from the times following the Islamic conquest of Iran in the 7th-8th centuries AD when the Persians, who wrote in both Persian and Arabic, became the scribes and bureaucrats, as well as writers and poets of the Islamic empire. Persian poets such as Saadi, Hafez, Omar Khayyam and Rumi have left a significant mark on the literature of many countries.
- Western Farsi is spoken as a 1st language by over 22 million people in Iran, a multilingual country, out of a total population of 68 million. It is the official language of Iran. It is also spoken in a number of countries in the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, Europe, Australia, and North America. It is estimated that there are 24.5 million speakers of Western Farsi worldwide (Ethnologue).
- Eastern Farsi (Dari) is the mother tongue of about 7.6 million people in Afghanistan, the Khorasan Province of Iran, and in Pakistan (Ethnologue). It is the co-official language of Afghanistan, along with Pashto.
- Tajik is spoken by 4.5 million people in the Republics of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, former Soviet republics in Central Asia (Ethnologue). Tajik is the official language of Tajikistan.
Click on the MLA Interactive Language Map to find out where Persian is spoken in the U.S.
Dialects
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Persian is usually divided into the three major dialects which are more or less mutually intelligible. They are treated as separate languages primarily for political reasons. They have diverged in their sound systems, especially in the vowels, and to some extent in the verb systems. Their vocabulary shows differential influences of Arabic (in Iran), Pashto (in Afghanistan), and Russian (in Tajikistan).
When Teheran became the capital of Persia in 1787, its dialect became the basis of Contemporary Standard Persian. The literary language is virtually identical in Iran and Afghanistan, with very minor lexical differences. |
Structure
Sound System
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The sound system of Contemporary Standard Persian has 29 phonemes, i.e., sounds that make a difference in word meaning. Vowels Consonants
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Persian is an inflected language, i.e., it adds prefixes and suffixes to roots to express grammatical categories and to form words. Unlike many other Iranian languages, Persian has lost most of its noun and verb inflections. |
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Noun phrase
Verb phrase
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Persian contains a large number of Arabic loan words, more common in the written than in the spoken language. Since the beginning of the 20th century, Farsi, Dari,and Tajik have experienced different influences on their vocabulary. Pashto words have been introduced into Dari in Afghanistan, and Russian words have entered Tajik in Tajikistan. Farsi, in particular, has borrowed a significant number of words from French, German, and most recently from English, especially in science and technology. |
Below are a few common Persian phrases and words (in transliteration).
Below are the Persian numerals 1-10.
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Writing
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Writing
In recent years, renewed efforts have been made to introduce alternative alphabets for writing Persian. One such proposed alphabet is UniPers given below with equivalents in Perso-Arabic.
Take a look Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Perso-Arabic script and in transliteration.
 Click here to listen to a recording of the text of Article 1 in Persian. |
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Persian words in English
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Resources |
Click here to find out where Persian (Farsi, Dari, Tajik) are taught in the United States. Online resources for the study of Persian language and culture |
Interesting Facts
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Omar Khayyam (1048-1123 AD) All Persian-speaking people in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan claim the same literary masters. Among them is Omar Khayyam who left a lasting legacy as a mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and poet. Khayyam means 'tent maker.' He compiled astronomical tables, contributed to calendar reform, and discovered a geometrical method of solving cubic equation. In the English-speaking world, he is best known for The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (rubaiyat means 'quatrains'). |
 | How difficult is it to learn Persian? Persian, Dari and Tajik are Category II languages in terms of difficulty for speakers of English. |
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