Persian Language

Persian (Farsi) is a language belonging to the Indo-European family, in the Iranian branch. It is the official language of Iran and one of the official languages of Afghanistan and Tajikistan. The number of speakers is approximately fifty million, including many who use it as a second language.

The language has three major standard forms recognized officially by different states: Farsi (Iran), Dari (Afghanistan), and Tajiki (Tajikistan). These three are largely mutually intelligible, but differ in pronunciation, vocabulary, and script.

History

Scholars divide the history of the language into three periods: Old Persian (inscriptions from the Achaemenid Empire written on stone), Middle Persian (during the Sassanid period), and Modern Persian, which began after the early centuries of Islam. Modern Persian has absorbed a large number of Arabic words, particularly in the domains of religion, law, and science.

Script

Iran and Afghanistan use a modified Arabic script with added letters such as پ, چ, ژ, گ. Tajikistan uses the Cyrillic script, which dates from the Soviet period. The difference in scripts means that texts from the three countries cannot be read directly by each other, even though the spoken language is mutually intelligible.

Grammar

Persian has no grammatical gender (masculine and feminine are not distinguished), and lacks the declensional noun cases found in languages like German. The standard word order is subject-object-verb, with the verb typically appearing at the end of the clause. Verbs are marked for aspect and tense, and there is a systematic tense system.

Literature and Influence

Persian has a long literary heritage, including poets such as Ferdowsi, Saadi, Hafez, and Rumi. For centuries it served as the language of administration and literature in eastern Islam, notably in India under the Mughal Empire, in the Ottoman Turkish realm, and in Central Asia. For this reason, many Persian words have entered Urdu, Turkish, Hindi, and other languages.