Persian language

Persian (/ˈpɜːrʒən, -ʃən/), also known by its endonym

Farsi[9][10] (‫ﻓﺎرﺳﯽ‬, fārsi, [fɒːɾˈsiː] ( listen)), is one of the
Persian
Western Iranian languageswithin the Indo-Iranian branch of fārsi
the Indo-European language family. It is a pluricentric ‫ﻓﺎرﺳﯽ‬
language primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan (officially
known as Dari since 1958)[11] and Tajikistan (officially
known as Tajiki since the Soviet era),[12]
Uzbekistan[13][14][15] and some other regions which
Fārsi written in Persian (Nastaʿlīq script)
historically were Persianate societies and considered part of
Greater Iran. It is written right to left in thePersian alphabet, Pronunciation [fɒːɾˈsiː] ( listen)
a modified variant of theArabic script. Native to Iran[1] · Afghanistan[1] (as Dari)
Tajikistan[1] (as Tajik) · Uzbekistan (as
The Persian language is classified as a continuation of Tajik) · Iraq[2] · Russia[3][4] ·
Middle Persian, the official religious and literary language Azerbaijan[5]
of the Sasanian Empire, itself a continuation of Old Persian, Native 70 million[6]
the language of the Achaemenid Empire.[16][17][18] Its speakers (110 million total speakers)[5]
grammar is similar to that of many contemporary European Language Indo-European
languages.[19] A Persian-speaking person may be referred to family
Indo-Iranian
as Persophone.[20]
Iranian
There are approximately 110 million Persian speakers Western Iranian
worldwide, with the language holding official status in Iran,
Southwestern Iranian
Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. For centuries, Persian has also
been a prestigious cultural language in other regions of Persian
Western Asia, Central Asia, and South Asia by the various Early forms Old Persian
empires based in the regions.[21]
Middle Persian
Persian has had a considerable (mainly lexical) influence on Standard Western Persian
neighboring languages, particularly the Turkic languages in forms Dari
Central Asia, Caucasus, and Anatolia, neighboring Iranian Tajik
languages, as well as Armenian, Georgian, and Indo-Aryan Dialects Western Persian · Dari · Tajik · Bukhori ·
languages, especially Urdu (a register of Hindustani). It also Pahlavani · Hazaragi · Aimaq · Judeo-
exerted some influence on Arabic, particularly Bahrani Persian · Dehwari · Judeo-Tat[5] ·
Arabic,[22] while borrowing much vocabulary from it after Caucasian Tat[5] · Armeno-Tat[5]
the Arab conquest of Iran.[16][19][23][24][25][26][27] Writing Persian alphabet (Iran and Afghanistan)
system
Tajik alphabet (Tajikistan)
With a long history of literature in the form of Middle
Hebrew · Persian Braille
Persian before Islam, Persian was the first language in the
Muslim world to break through Arabic's monopoly on Official status
writing, and the writing of poetry in Persian was established Official Iran (as Persian)[7]
as a court tradition in many eastern courts.[21] Some of the language in
Afghanistan (as Dari)
famous works of Persian literature are the Shahnameh of Tajikistan (as Tajik)
Ferdowsi, the works of Rumi, the Rubaiyat of Omar
Regulated by Academy of Persian Language and
Literature (Iran)
Language codes
Khayyam, the Panj Ganj of Nizami Ganjavi, the Divān of ISO 639-1 fa
Hafez and the two miscellanea of prose and verse by Saadi ISO 639-2 per (B)
Shirazi, the Gulistan and the Bustan. fas (T)

ISO 639-3 fas – inclusive code

Individual codes:
Contents pes – Western Persian
prs – Dari language (Afghan Persian)
Classification tgk – Tajiki
Name of the language aiq – Aimaq dialect
Persian language name in Persian bhh – Bukhori dialect
Persian language name in English haz – Hazaragi dialect
History jpr – Judeo-Persian
Old Persian phv – Pahlavani
Middle Persian deh – Dehwari
New Persian jdt – Judeo-Tat
Early New Persian
ttt – Caucasian Tat
Classical Persian
Use in Asia Minor Glottolog fars1254[8]

Use in South Asia Linguasphere 58-AAC (Wider Persian)

> 58-AAC-c (Central Persian)
Contemporary Persian

Varieties
Phonology
Vowels
Consonants
Grammar
Morphology
Syntax
Areas with significant numbers of Persian speakers
Vocabulary (including dialects)
Native word formation
Influences
Orthography
Persian alphabet
Additions
Variations
Latin alphabet
Countries where Persian is an official language
Tajik alphabet
Examples
See also
References
Sources
Further reading
External links

Classification
Persian is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-European family. Other Western Iranian languages are the Kurdish
languages, Gilaki, Mazanderani, Talysh, and Balochi. Persian is classified as a member of the Southwestern subgroup within Western
Iranian along with Lari, Kumzari, and Luri.[28]
Name of the language

Persian language name in Persian

In Persian, the language is known by several names:

Western Persian, Farsi (‫ ﻓﺎرﺳﯽ‬fārsi or ‫ زﺑﺎن ﻓﺎرﺳﯽ‬zabān-e fārsi), the Arabic form of Parsi (‫ﭘﺎرﺳﯽ‬
pārsi),[29][30][31][32] is the name used by native speakers of the language. In recent decades some authors writing in
English have referred to the variety of Persian spoken in Iran asFarsi;[9][10] although the name Persian is also still
widely used.[33][34][35]
Eastern Persian, Dari (‫ دری‬darī) or Dari Persian (‫ ﻓﺎرﺳﯽ دری‬fārsi-ye dari) was originally a synonym forFarsi but
since the latter decades of the 20th century has become the name for the variety of Persian spoken Afghanistan,
in
where it is one of the two official languages; it is sometimes called Afghan Persian in English.[36]
Tajiki (тоҷикӣ, ‫ ﺗﺎﺟﯿﮑﯽ‬tojikī or забони тоҷикӣ / ‫ زﺑﺎن ﺗﺎﺟﯿﮑﯽ‬zabon-i tojiki) or форси́ и тоҷикӣ́ / forsi-i tojikī, is the
variety of Persian spoken inTajikistan and Uzbekistan by the Tajiks.

Persian language name in English

Persian, the historically more widely used name of the language in English, is an anglicized form derived from Latin *Persianus <
Latin Persia < Greek Περσίς (Persís) "Persia",[37] a Hellenized form of Old Persian Pārsa.[38] According to the Oxford English
.[39]
Dictionary, the term Persian as a language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century

Farsi is the Arabicized form of Pārsi, subsequent to Arab conquest of Iran, due to a lack of the phoneme /p/ in Standard Arabic (i.e.,
the /p/ was replaced with an /f/).[40][41][42] The name Farsi, and the language as a whole, originated in the Fars Province, which
itself is the Arabicized form of Pārs.[40][41][42] Farsi is encountered in some linguistic literature as a name for the language, used
both by Iranian and by foreign authors.[43]

The Academy of Persian Language and Literature, however, has declared that the name Persian is more appropriate, as it has the
longer tradition in western languages and better expresses the role of the language as a mark of cultural and national continuity.[44]
Some Persian language scholars such as Ehsan Yarshater, editor of Encyclopædia Iranica, and University of Arizona professor
[45][46]
Kamran Talattof, have also rejected the usage of "Farsi" in their articles.

The international language-encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code fa, as its coding system is mostly based on the local names.
The more detailed standard ISO 639-3 uses the name "Persian" (code fas) for the dialect continuum spoken across Iran and
Afghanistan. This consists of the individual languagesDari (Afghan Persian) and Iranian Persian.[47]

Currently, Voice of America, BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty use "Persian Service" for
their broadcasts in the language. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty also includes a Tajik service and an Afghan (Dari) service. The
American Association of Teachers of Persian, and the Centre for Promotion of Persian Language and Literature also use the name
"Persian".

History
Persian is an Iranian language which belongs to the Indo-Iranian branch of History of the
the Indo-European family of languages. In general, Iranian languages are Persian language
known from three periods, usually referred to as Old, Middle, and New
Proto-Indo-European(c. 3000 BCE)
(Modern) periods. These correspond to three eras in Iranian history; Old
Indo-Iranian languages
era being the period from sometime before Achaemenids, the Achaemenid
era and sometime after Achaemenids (that is to 400–300 BC), Middle era
being the next period most officially Sassanid era and sometime in post- Proto-Indo-Iranian (c. 2000 BCE)
Sassanid era, and the New era being the period afterwards down to present Iranian languages

day.[48]
According to available documents, the Persian language is "the only Proto-Iranian (c. 1500 BCE)
Iranian language"[16] for which close philological relationships between Western Iranian languages
all of its three stages are established and so that Old, Middle, and New
Persian represent[16][49] one and the same language of Persian; that is,
Old Persian (c. 525 – 300 BCE)
[49]
New Persian is a direct descendant of Middle and Old Persian.
Old Persian cuneiform

The known history of the Persian language can be divided into the
following three distinct periods: Middle Persian (c. 300 BCE – 800 CE)
Pahlavi scripts • Manichaean alphabet • Avestan alphabet

Old Persian
As a written language, Old Persian is attested in royal Achaemenid
Modern Persian (from 800)
inscriptions. The oldest known text written in Old Persian is from the Persian alphabet • Tajiki Cyrillic alphabet

Behistun Inscription, dating to the time of king Darius I (reigned 522-486

BC).[50] Examples of Old Persian have been found in what is now Iran,
Romania (Gherla),[51][52][53] Armenia, Bahrain, Iraq, Turkey and
Egypt.[54][55] Old Persian is one of the oldest Indo-European languages which
is attested in original texts.[56]

Related to Old Persian, but from a different branch of the Iranian language
family, was Avestan, the language of the Zoroastrian liturgical texts.

Middle Persian
Old Persian
The complex grammatical conjugation and declension of Old Persian yielded
to the structure of Middle Persian in which the dual number disappeared,
leaving only singular and plural, as did gender. Middle Persian developed the ezāfe construction, expressed through ī (modern ye), to
indicate some of the relations between words that have been lost with the simplification of the earlier grammatical system.

Although the "middle period" of the Iranian languages formally begins with the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, the transition from
Old to Middle Persian had probably already begun before the 4th century BC. However, Middle Persian is not actually attested until
600 years later when it appears in the Sassanid era (224–651) inscriptions, so any form of the language before this date cannot be
described with any degree of certainty. Moreover, as a literary language, Middle Persian is not attested until much later, in the 6th or
7th century. From the 8th century onward, Middle Persian gradually began yielding to New Persian, with the middle-period form
only continuing in the texts ofZoroastrianism.

[57]
Middle Persian is "essentially, though not in every detail, a later form of the same dialect as Old Persian".

The native name of Middle Persian was Parsig or Parsik, after the name of the ethnic group of the southwest, that is, "of Pars", Old
Persian Parsa, New Persian Fars. This is the origin of the name Farsi as it is today used to signify New Persian. Following the
collapse of the Sassanid state, Parsik came to be applied exclusively to (either Middle or New) Persian that was written in the Arabic
script. From about the 9th century onward, as Middle Persian was on the threshold of becoming New Persian, the older form of the
language came to be erroneously called Pahlavi, which was actually but one of the writing systems used to render both Middle
Persian as well as various other Middle Iranian languages. That writing system had previously been adopted by the Sassanids (who
were Persians, i.e. from the southwest) from the preceding Arsacids (who were Parthians, i.e. from the northeast). While Ibn al-
Muqaffa' (eighth century) still distinguished between Pahlavi (i.e. Parthian) and Persian (in Arabic text: al-Farisiyah) (i.e. Middle
Persian), this distinction is not evident in Arab commentaries written after that date.

Gernot Windfuhr considers new Persian as an evolution of the Old Persian language and the Middle Persian language[58] but also
states that none of the known Middle Persian dialects is the direct predecessor of Modern Persian.[59][60] Ludwig Paul states: "The
[61]
language of the Shahnameh should be seen as one instance of continuous historical development from Middle to New Persian."
New Persian
"New Persian" (Modern) is conventionally divided into three stages:

Early New Persian (8th/9th centuries)

Classical Persian (10th–18th centuries)
Contemporary Persian (19th century to present)
Early New Persian remains largely intelligible to speakers of Contemporary
Persian, as the morphology and, to a lesser extent, the lexicon of the
language have remained relatively stable.[62]

Early New Persian

"New Persian" is taken to replace Middle Persian in the course of the 8th to
9th centuries, under Abbasid rule.[63] With the decline of the Abbasids began
the re-establishment of Persian national life and Persians laid the foundations
for a renaissance in the realm of letters. New Persian as an independent
literary language first emerges in Bactria through the adaptation of the
spoken form of Sassanian Middle Persian court language called Pārsi-ye
Dari. The cradle of the Persian literary renaissance lay in the east of Greater
Iran in Greater Khorasan and Transoxiana close to the Amu Darya (modern
day Afghanistan, Tajikstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan).[64] The
vocabulary of the New Persian language was thus heavily influenced by Ferdowsi's Shahnameh
other Eastern Iranian languages, particularly Sogdian.[65]

The mastery of the newer speech having now been transformed from Middle into New Persian was already complete by the era of the
three princely dynasties of Iranian origin, the Tahirid dynasty (820–872), Saffarid dynasty (860–903) and Samanid Empire (874–
[64]
999), and could develop only in range and power of expression.

Abbas of Merv is mentioned as being the earliest minstrel to chant verse in the newer Persian tongue and after him the poems of
[66]
Hanzala Badghisi were among the most famous between the Persian-speakers of the time.

The first poems of the Persian language, a language historically called Dari, emerged in Afghanistan.[67] The first significant Persian
poet was Rudaki. He flourished in the 10th century, when the Samanids were at the height of their power. His reputation as a court
poet and as an accomplished musician and singer has survived, although little of his poetry has been preserved. Among his lost works
is versified fables collected in theKalila wa Dimna.[21]

The language spread geographically from the 11th century on and was the medium through which among others, Central Asian Turks
became familiar with Islam and urban culture. New Persian was widely used as a trans-regional lingua franca, a task for which it was
particularly suitable due to its relatively simple morphological structure and this situation persisted until at least 19th century.[63] In
the late Middle Ages, new Islamic literary languages were created on the Persian model: Ottoman Turkish, Chagatai and Urdu, which
[63]
are regarded as "structural daughter languages" of Persian.

Classical Persian
"Classical Persian" loosely refers to the standardized language of medieval Persia used in literature and poetry. This is the language
of the 10th to 12th centuries, which continued to be used as literary language and lingua franca under the "Persianized" Turko-
[68]
Mongol dynasties during the 12th to 15th centuries, and under restored Persian rule during the 16th to 19th centuries.

Persian during this time served as lingua franca of Greater Persia and of much of the Indian subcontinent. It was also the official and
cultural language of many Islamic dynasties, including the Samanids, Buyids, Tahirids, Ziyarids, the Mughal Empire, Timurids,
Ghaznavids, Karakhanids, Seljuqs, Khwarazmians, the Sultanate of Rum, Delhi Sultanate, the Shirvanshahs, Safavids, Afsharids,
Zands, Qajars, Khanate of Bukhara, Khanate of Kokand, Emirate of Bukhara, Khanate of Khiva, Ottomans and also many Mughal
successors such as the Nizam of Hyderabad. Persian was the only non-
European language known and used by Marco Polo at the Court of Kublai
Khan and in his journeys through China.[69]

Use in Asia Minor

Kalilah va Dimna, an influential work in

Persian on an Ottoman miniature.
Persian literature

Despite Anatolia having been ruled at various times prior to the Middle Ages
by various Persian-speaking dynasties originating in Iran, the language lost its traditional foothold there with the demise of the
Sasanian Empire. Centuries later however, the practise and usage of Persian in the region would be strongly revived. A branch of the
Seljuks, the Sultanate of Rum, took Persian language, art and letters to Anatolia.[70] They adopted Persian language as the official
language of the empire.[71] The Ottomans, which can roughly be seen as their eventual successors, took this tradition over. Persian
was the official court language of the empire, andfor some time, the official language of the empire.[72] The educated and noble class
of the Ottoman Empire all spoke Persian, such as Sultan Selim I, despite being Safavid Iran's archrival and a staunch opposer of Shia
Islam.[73] It was a major literary language in the empire.[74] Some of the noted earlier Persian works during the Ottoman rule are
Idris Bidlisi's Hasht Bihisht, which begun in 1502 and covered the reign of the first eight Ottoman rulers, and the Salim-Namah, a
glorification of Selim I.[73] After a period of several centuries, Ottoman Turkish (which was highly Persianised itself) had developed
towards a fully accepted language of literature, which was even able to satisfy the demands of a scientific presentation.[75] However,
[75]
the number of Persian and Arabic loanwords contained in those works increased at times up to 88%.

Use in South Asia

The Persian language influenced the formation of many modern languages in West
Asia, Europe, Central Asia, and South Asia. Following the Turko-Persian Ghaznavid
conquest of South Asia, Persian was firstly introduced in the region by Turkic
Central Asians.[76] The basis in general for the introduction of Persian language into
the subcontinent was set, from its earliest days, by various Persianized Central Asian
Turkic and Afghan dynasties.[70] For five centuries prior to the British colonization,
Persian was widely used as a second language in the Indian subcontinent, due to the
admiration the Mughals (who were of Turco-Mongol origin) had for the foreign
language. It took prominence as the language of culture and education in several Persian poem, Agra Fort, India, 18th
Muslim courts on the subcontinent and became the sole "of
ficial language" under the century
Mughal emperors. Beginning in 1843, though, English and Hindustani gradually
replaced Persian in importance on the subcontinent.[77] Evidence of Persian's
historical influence there can be seen in the extent of its influence on certain languages of the Indian subcontinent. Words borrowed
from Persian are still quite commonly used in certain Indo-Aryan languages, especially Urdu, also historically known as Hindustani.
There is also a small population of Zoroastrian Iranis in India, who migrated in the 19th century to escape religious execution in
Qajar Iran and speak a Dari dialect.
Contemporary Persian
In the 19th century, under the Qajar dynasty, the dialect spoken in Tehran rose to
prominence. This became the basis of what is now known as "Contemporary
Standard Persian".

There is still substantial Arabic vocabulary, but many of these words have been
integrated into Persian phonology and grammar. In addition, since the 19th century
numerous Russian, French, and English terms have been borrowed, especially
vocabulary related to technology. The Iranian National Academy of Persian
Language and Literature is responsible for evaluating neologisms in order to devise Persian poem, Takht-e Shah Jahan,
Agra Fort, India
their Persian equivalents.

Varieties
There are three modern varieties of standard Persian:

Western Persian (Persian, Iranian Persian, or Farsi) is spoken in Iran,

and by minorities in Iraq and the Persian Gulf states. A variant of the Iranian standard
Dari (Dari Persian, Afghan Persian, or Dari) is spoken in Afghanistan. ISIRI 9147 keyboard layout for
Tajiki (Tajik Persian) is spoken in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. It is written Persian
in the Cyrillic script.
All these three varieties are based on the classic Persian literature and its literary
tradition. There are also several local dialects from Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan which slightly differ from the standard Persian.
The Hazaragi dialect (in Central Afghanistan and Pakistan), Herati (in Western Afghanistan), Darwazi (in Afghanistan and
Tajikistan), and the Tehrani accent (in Iran, the basis of standard Iranian Persian) are examples of these dialects. Persian-speaking
ee of mutual intelligibility.[78]
peoples of Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan can understand one another with a relatively high degr

The following are some languages closely related to Persian, or in some cases are considered dialects:

Luri (or Lori), spoken mainly in the southwestern Iranian provinces ofLorestan, Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad
Province, some western parts ofFars Province and some parts of Khuzestan Province.
Lari (in southern Iran)
Tat, spoken in parts of Azerbaijan, Russia, and T [79][80][81][82][83]
ranscaucasia. It is classified as a variety of Persian.
(This dialect is not to be confused with theTati language of northwestern Iran, which is a member of a dif ferent
branch of the Iranian languages.)
Judeo-Tat. Part of the Tat-Persian continuum, spoken inAzerbaijan, Russia, as well as by immigrant communities in
Israel and New York.
For other more distantly related branches of the Iranian language family
, such as Kurdish and Balochi, seeIranian languages.

Phonology
Iranian Persian has six vowels and twenty-three consonants.

Spoken Persian
Vowels
Historically, Persian distinguished length. Early New Persian had a series of five
long vowels (/iː/, /uː/, /ɒː/, /oː/ and /eː/) along with three short vowels /æ/, /i/ and /u/. At some point prior to the 16th century in the
general area now modern Iran, /eː/ and /iː/ merged into /iː/, and /oː/ and /uː/ merged into /uː/. Thus, older contrasts such as ‫ ﺷﯿﺮ‬shēr
"lion" vs. ‫ ﺷﯿﺮ‬shīr "milk", and ‫ زود‬zūd "quick" vs ‫ زور‬zōr "strong" were lost. However, there are exceptions to this rule, and in some
words, ē and ō are preserved or merged into the diphthongs [eɪ] and [oʊ] (which are descendants of the diphthongs [æɪ] and [æʊ] in
Early New Persian), instead of merging into /iː/ and /uː/. Examples of the exception can be found in words such as ‫[ روﺷﻦ‬roʊʃæn]
(bright).
However, in Dari, the archaic distinction of /eː/ and /iː/ (respectively
known as ‫ ﯾﺎی ﻣﺠﻬﻮل‬Yā-ye majhūl and ‫ ﯾﺎی ﻣﻌﺮوف‬Yā-ye ma'rūf) is
still preserved as well as the distinction of /oː/ and /uː/ (known as ‫واو‬
‫ ﻣﺠﻬﻮل‬Wāw-e majhūl and ‫ واو ﻣﻌﺮوف‬Wāw-e ma'rūf). On the other
hand, in standard Tajik, the length distinction has disappeared, and /iː/
merged with /i/ and /uː/ with /u/.[84] Therefore, contemporary Afghan
Dari dialects are the closest to the vowel inventory of Early New
Persian.

According to most studies on the subject (e.g. Samareh 1977, Pisowicz

1985, Najafi 2001), the three vowels traditionally considered long (/i/,
/u/, /ɒ/) are currently distinguished from their short counterparts (/e/, The vowel phonemes of modern Tehran Persian
/o/, /æ/) by position of articulation rather than by length. However,
there are studies (e.g. Hayes 1979, Windfuhr 1979) that consider vowel
length to be the active feature of the system, with /ɒ/, /i/, and /u/ phonologically long or bimoraic and /æ/, /e/, and /o/ phonologically
short or monomoraic.

There are also some studies that consider quality and quantity to be both active in the Iranian system (such as Toosarvandani 2004).
That offers a synthetic analysis including both quality and quantity, which often suggests that Modern Persian vowels are in a
transition state between the quantitative system of Classical Persian and a hypothetical future Iranian language, which will eliminate
all traces of quantity and retain quality as the only active feature.

The length distinction is still strictly observed by careful reciters of classic-style poetry for all varieties (includingajik).
T

Consonants

Labial Alveolar Postalveolar Palatal Velar Uvular Glottal

Nasal m n ŋ
Plosive pb td kɡ (q) ɢ
Affricate tʃ dʒ
Fricative fv sz ʃʒ xɣ h
Flap or Tap ɾ
Approximant l j

Notes:

in Iranian Persian /ɣ/ and /q/ have merged into [ɣ~ɢ], as a voiced velar fricative[ɣ] when positioned intervocalically
and unstressed, and as a voiced uvular stop[ɢ] otherwise.[85][86][87]

Grammar

Morphology
Suffixes predominate Persian morphology, though there are a small number of prefixes.[88] Verbs can express tense and aspect, and
they agree with the subject in person and number.[89] There is no grammatical gender in Persian, and pronouns are not marked for
natural gender.

Syntax
Normal declarative sentences are structured as (S) (PP) (O) V: sentences have optional subjects, prepositional phrases, and objects
followed by a compulsoryverb. If the object is specific, the object is followed by the word rā and precedes prepositional phrases: (S)
(O + rā) (PP) V.[89]

Vocabulary

Native word formation

Persian makes extensive use of word building and combining affixes, stems, nouns and adjectives. Persian frequently uses
derivational agglutination to form new words from nouns, adjectives, and verbal stems. New words are extensively formed by
compounding – two existing words combining into a new one, as is common inGerman.

Influences
While having a lesser influence on Arabic[24] and other languages of Mesopotamia and its core vocabulary being of Middle Persian
origin,[19] New Persian contains a considerable amount of Arabic lexical items,[16][23][25] which were Persianized[26] and often took
a different meaning and usage than the Arabic original. Persian loanwords of Arabic origin especially include Islamic terms. The
Arabic vocabulary in other Iranian, Turkic and Indic languages is generally understood to have been copied from New Persian, not
from Arabic itself.[90]

John R. Perry, in his article Lexical Areas and Semantic Fields of Arabic, estimates that about 24 percent of an everyday vocabulary
of 20,000 words in current Persian, and more than 25 percent of the vocabulary of classical and modern Persian literature, are of
Arabic origin. The text frequency of these loan words is generally lower and varies by style and topic area. It may approach 25
percent of a text in literature.[91] According to another source, about 40% of everyday Persian literary vocabulary is of Arabic
origin.[92] Among the Arabic loan words, relatively few (14 percent) are from the semantic domain of material culture, while a larger
[93] Most of the Arabic words used in Persian are either synonyms of native
number are from domains of intellectual and spiritual life.
terms or could be glossed in Persian.[94]

The inclusion of Mongolian and Turkic elements in the Persian language should also be mentioned,[95] not only because of the
political role a succession of Turkic dynasties played in Iranian history, but also because of the immense prestige Persian language
and literature enjoyed in the wider (non-Arab) Islamic world, which was often ruled by sultans and emirs with a Turkic background.
The Turkish and Mongolian vocabulary in Persian is minor in comparison to that of Arabic and these words were mainly confined to
military, pastoral terms and political sector (titles, administration, etc.).[96] New military and political titles were coined based
partially on Middle Persian (e.g.‫ ارﺗﺶ‬arteš for "army", instead of the Uzbek ‫ ﻗﺆﺷﯿﻦ‬qoʻshin; ‫ ﺳﺮﻟﺸﮑﺮ‬sarlaškar; ‫ درﯾﺎﺑﺎن‬daryābān;
etc.) in the 20th century. Persian has likewise influenced the vocabularies of other languages, especially other Indo-European
languages such as Armenian,[97] Urdu, Bengali and (to a lesser extent) Hindi; the latter three through conquests of Persianized
Central Asian Turkic and Afghan invaders;[98] Turkic languages such as Ottoman Turkish, Chagatai, Tatar, Turkish,[99] Turkmen,
Azeri,[100] Uzbek, and Karachay-Balkar;[101] Caucasian languages such as Georgian,[102] and to a lesser extent, Avar and
Lezgin;[103] Afro-Asiatic languages likeAssyrian (List of loanwords in Assyrian Neo-Aramaic) and Arabic;[104] and even Dravidian
languages indirectly especially Telugu and Brahui; as well as Austronesian languages such as Indonesian and Malay. Persian has also
had a significant lexical influence, via Turkish, on Albanian, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Serbo-Croatian, particularly as spoken
in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Use of occasional foreign synonyms instead of Persian words can be a common practice in everyday communications as an
alternative expression. In some instances in addition to the Persian vocabulary, the equivalent synonyms from multiple foreign
languages can be used. For example, in Iranian colloquial Persian (not in Afghanistan or Tajikistan), the phrase "thank you" may be
expressed using the French word ‫ ﻣﺮﺳﯽ‬merci (stressed, however, on the first syllable), the hybrid Persian-Arabic phrase ‫ﻣﺘﺸﮑّﺮ ام‬
motešakker am (‫ ﻣﺘﺸﮑّﺮ‬motešakker being "thankful" in Arabic, commonly pronounced motčakker in Persian, and the verb ‫ ام‬am
meaning "I am" in Persian), or by the pure Persian phrase‫ ﺳﭙﺎسﮔﺰار ام‬sepās-gozār am.
Orthography
The vast majority of modern Iranian Persian and Dari text is written with the Arabic
script. Tajiki, which is considered by some linguists to be a Persian dialect influenced by
Russian and the Turkic languages of Central Asia,[105][106] is written with the Cyrillic
script in Tajikistan (see Tajik alphabet). There also exist several romanization systems
for Persian.

Persian alphabet
Modern Iranian Persian and Afghan Persian are written using a modified variant of the
Arabic alphabet, which uses different pronunciation and additional letters not found in
Arabic. After the Muslim conquest of Persia, it took approximately 150 years before
Example showing Nastaʿlīq's
Persians adopted the Arabic script in place of the older alphabet. Previously, two
(Persian) proportion rules.[ 1 ]
different scripts were used, Pahlavi, used for Middle Persian, and the Avestan alphabet
(in Persian, Dīndapirak or Din Dabire—literally: religion script), used for religious
purposes, primarily for theAvestan but sometimes for Middle Persian.

In the modern Persian script, historically short vowels are usually not written, only
the historically long ones are represented in the text, so words distinguished from
each other only by short vowels are ambiguous in writing: Western Persian kerm
"worm", karam "generosity", kerem "cream", and krom "chrome" are all spelled krm
(‫ )ﮐﺮم‬in Persian. The reader must determine the word from context. The Arabic Ali-Akbar Dehkhoda's personal
handwriting, a typical cursive Persian
system of vocalization marks known as harakat is also used in Persian, although
script.
some of the symbols have different pronunciations. For example, a ḍammah is
pronounced [ʊ~u], while in Iranian Persian it is pronounced [o]. This system is not
used in mainstream Persian literature; it is primarily used for teaching and in some (but not all)
dictionaries.

There are several letters generally only used in Arabic loanwords. These letters are pronounced the The word Persian in
same as similar Persian letters. For example, there are four functionally identical letters for /z/ (‫ز ذ‬ the Book Pahlavi script
‫)ض ظ‬, three letters for /s/ (‫)س ص ث‬, two letters for /t/ (‫)ط ت‬, two letters for /h/ (‫)ح ه‬. On the
other hand, there are four letters that don't exist in Arabic‫پ چ ژ گ‬.

Additions
The Persian alphabet adds four letters to the Arabic alphabet:

Persian typewriter keyboard layout

Sound Isolated form Name

/p/ ‫پ‬ pe

/tʃ/ ‫چ‬ če (che)

/ʒ/ ‫ژ‬ že (zhe or jhe)

/ɡ/ ‫گ‬ ge (gāf)

Historically, there was also a special letter for the sound /β/. This letter is no longer used, as the /β/-sound changed to /b/, i.e. archaic
‫ زﭬﺎن‬/zaβān/ > ‫ زﺑﺎن‬/zæbɒn/ 'language'[107]

Sound Isolated form Name

/β/ ‫ڤ‬ βe
Variations
The Persian alphabet also modifies some letters of the Arabic alphabet. For example, alef with hamza below( ‫ ) إ‬changes to alef ( ‫;) ا‬
words using various hamzas get spelled with yet another kind of hamza (so that ‫ ﻣﺴﺆول‬becomes ‫ )ﻣﺴﺌﻮل‬even though the latter is
also correct in Arabic; andteh marbuta ( ‫ ) ة‬changes to heh ( ‫ ) ه‬or teh ( ‫) ت‬.

The letters different in shape are:

Arabic Style letter Persian Style letter name

‫ك‬ ‫ک‬ ke (kāf)

‫ي‬ ‫ی‬ ye

Latin alphabet
The International Organization for Standardization has published a standard for simplified transliteration of Persian into Latin, ISO
233-3, titled "Information and documentation – Transliteration of Arabic characters into Latin characters – Part 3: Persian language –
Simplified transliteration"[108] but the transliteration scheme is not in widespread use.

Another Latin alphabet, based on the Common Turkic Alphabet, was used in Tajikistan in the 1920s and 1930s. The alphabet was
phased out in favor ofCyrillic in the late 1930s.[105]

Fingilish is Persian using ISO basic Latin alphabet. It is most commonly used in chat, emails and SMS applications. The orthography
is not standardized, and varies among writers and even media (for example, typing 'aa' for the [ɒ] phoneme is easier on computer
keyboards than on cellphone keyboards, resulting in smaller usage of the combination on cellphones).

Tajik alphabet
The Cyrillic script was introduced for writing the Tajik language under the Tajik
Soviet Socialist Republic in the late 1930s, replacing the Latin alphabet that had
been used since the October Revolution and the Persian script that had been used
earlier. After 1939, materials published in Persian in the Persian script were banned
from the country.[105][109]

Tajiki advertisement for an academy

Examples
The following text is from Article 1 of theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights.

Western ‫ ﻫﻤﻪ اﻧﺪﯾﺸﻪ و وﺟﺪان دارﻧﺪ و ﺑﺎﯾﺪ‬،‫ﻫﻤﻪی اﻓﺮاد ﺑﺸﺮ آزاد ﺑﻪ دﻧﯿﺎ ﻣﯽآﯾﻨﺪ و ﺣﯿﺜﯿﺖ و ﺣﻘﻮقﺷﺎن ﺑﺎ ﻫﻢ ﺑﺮاﺑﺮ اﺳﺖ‬
Persian .‫در ﺑﺮاﺑﺮ ﯾﮑﺪﯾﮕﺮ ﺑﺎ روح ﺑﺮادری رﻓﺘﺎر ﮐﻨﻨﺪ‬
Western
Hamaye afrâd bašâr âzâd be donyâ miâyand o heysiyat o hoğuğe šân bâ ham barâbar ast hame
Persian
šân andiše o vejdân dârand o bâjad dar barâbare yekdigar bâ ruhe barâdari raftâr konand.
transliteration
[hæmeje æfrɒde bæʃær ɒzɒd be donjɒ miɒjænd o hejsijæt o hoɢuɢe ʃɒn bɒ hæm bærɒbær æst
Western
hæme ʃɒn ændiʃe o vedʒdɒn dɒrænd o bɒjæd dær bærɒbære jekdiɡær bɒ ruhe bærɒdæri ræftɒr
Persian IPA
konænd]
Ҳамаи афроди башар озод ба дунё меоянд ва ҳайсияту ҳуқуқашон бо ҳам баробар аст,
Tajiki ҳамаашон андешаву виҷдон доранд ва бояд дар баробари якдигар бо рӯҳи бародарӣ рафтор
кунанд.
English All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and
translation conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
See also
The existential "be" and copula in Persian
Academy of Persian Language and Literature
Pahlavi (disambiguation)
List of English words of Persian origin
List of French loanwords in Persian
Persian alphabet
Persian Braille
Persian grammar
Persian name
Persian phonology
Persian metres
Persianate society
Romanization of Persian
Western Iranian languages

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continuation of Middle Persian, the official religious and literary language of Sassanian Iran, itself a continuation of
Old Persian, the language of the Achaemenids. Unlike the other languages and dialects, ancient and modern, of the
Iranian group such as Avestan, Parthian, Soghdian, Kurdish, Balochi, Pashto, etc., Old Persian, Middle and New
Persian represent one and the same language at three states of its history . It had its origin in Fars (the true Persian
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Khotanese."
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ficial languages Old, Middle, and New Persian
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dif to establish
between other Middle and Modern Iranian languages. Modern aḡnōbi
Y belongs to the same dialect group as
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dominant language of major parts of the Near East, from Anatolia and Iran, to Central Asia, to northwest India until
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of language was Old Persian;
then the Sassanids (c. AD 225–651) whose of ficial language was Middle Persian. Hence, the entire country used to
be called Perse by the ancient Greeks, a practice continued to this day . The more general designation 'Iran(-shahr)"
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resulted in Old and Middle-Persian colonies throughout the empire, most importantly for the course of the
development of Persian, in the north-east i.e., what is now Khorasan, northern Afghanistan and Central Asia, as
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(ninth to thirteenth centuries), preserved in the literature of the Empire, is known as Classical Persian, due to the
eminence and distinction of poets such as Roudaki, Ferdowsi, and Khayyam. During this period, Persian was
adopted as the lingua franca of the eastern Islamic nations. Extensive contact with Arabic led to a large influx of Arab
vocabulary. In fact, a writer of Classical Persian had at one's disposal the entire Arabic lexicon and could use Arab
terms freely either for literary effect or to display erudition. Classical Persian remained essentially unchanged until
the nineteenth century, when the dialect of Teheran rose in prominence, having been chos en as the capital of Persia
by the Qajar Dynasty in 1787. This Modern Persian dialect became the basis of what is now called Contemporary
Standard Persian. Although it still contains a large number of Arab terms, most borrowings have been nativized, with
a much lower percentage of Arabic words in colloquial forms of the language."
69. John Andrew Boyle, Some thoughts on the sources for the Il-Khanid period of Persian history , in Iran: Journal of the
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m/books?id=PvlthkbFU1UC&pg=PA734). UNESCO. ISBN 978-92-3-102813-7., p 734
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82. C Kerslake, Journal of Islamic Studies (2010) 21 (1): 147–151. excerpt: "It is a comparison of the verbal systems of
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84. Perry, J. R. (2005) A Tajik Persian Reference Grammar(Boston : Brill) ISBN 90-04-14323-8
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penetration into Iranian lands was considerable, to such an extent that vast regions adapted their language. This
process was all the more remarkable since, in spite of their almost uninterrupted political domination for nearly 1,500
years, the cultural influence of these rough nomads on Iran's refined civilization remained extremely tenuous. This is
demonstrated by the mediocre linguistic contribution, for which exhaustive statistical studies have been made
(Doerfer). The number of Turkish or Mongol words that entered Persian, though not negligible, remained limited to
2,135, i.e., 3 percent of the vocabulary at the most. These new words are confined on the one hand to the military
and political sector (titles, administration, etc.) and, on the other hand, to technical pastoral terms. The contrast with
Arab influence is striking. While cultural pressure of the Arabs on Iran had been intense, they in no way infringed
upon the entire Iranian territory, whereas with the Turks, whose contributions to Iranian civilization were modest, vast
regions of Iranian lands were assimilated, notwithstanding the fact that resistance by the latter was ultimately
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Asatrian, Garnik (2010).Etymological Dictionary of Persian. Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series,
12. Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 978-90-04-18341-4. Archived from the original on 27 December 2010. Retrieved
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Bleeck, Arthur Henry (1857).A concise grammar of the Persian language. Retrieved 6 July 2011.
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and a vocabulary: together with a new plan for facilitating the study of languages . B. Quaritch. p. 206. Retrieved
6 July 2011.
Bleeck, Arthur Henry (1857).A concise grammar of the Persian language(Oxford University ed.). Retrieved 6 July
2011.
Dahlén, Ashk (April 2014) [1st edition October 2010].Modern persisk grammatik(2nd ed.). Ferdosi International
Publication. ISBN 9789197988674.
Delshad, Farshid (September 2007).Anthologia Persica. Logos Verlag. ISBN 978-3-8325-1620-8.
Doctor, Sorabshaw Byramji (1880).The student's Persian and English dictionary , pronouncing, etymological, &
explanatory. Irish Presbyterian Mission Press. p. 558. Retrieved 6 July 2011.
Doctor, Sorabshaw Byramji; Saʻdī (1880). Second book of Persian, to which are added the Pandnámah of Shaikh
Saádi and the Gulistán, chapter 1, together with vocabulary and short notes (2 ed.). Irish Presbyterian Mission
Press. p. 120. Retrieved 6 July 2011.
Doctor, Sorabshaw Byramji (1879).The Persian primer, being an elementary treatise on grammar, with exercises.
Irish Presbyterian Mission Press. p. 94. Retrieved 6 July 2011.
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Presbyterian Mission Press. p. 84. Retrieved 6 July 2011.
Forbes, Duncan (1844).A grammar of the Persian language: T o which is added, a selection of easy extracts for
reading, together with a copious vocabulary(2 ed.). Printed for the author, sold by Allen & co. p. 158. Retrieved
6 July 2011.
Forbes, Duncan (1844).A grammar of the Persian language: T o which is added, a selection of easy extracts for
reading, together with a copious vocabulary(2 ed.). Printed for the author, sold by Allen & co. p. 114. Retrieved
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Forbes, Duncan (1876).A grammar of the Persian language: to which is added, a selection of easy extracts for
reading, together with a vocabulary, and translations. W.H. Allen. p. 238. Retrieved 6 July 2011.
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Ibrâhîm, Muḥammad (1841). A grammar of the Persian language. Retrieved 6 July 2011.
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grammar of the Persian language. Trübner. p. 42. Retrieved 6 July 2011.
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External links
Academy of Persian Language and Literature of ficial website (in Persian)
Assembly for the Expansion of the Persian Language of ficial website (in Persian)
Persian language Resources(in Persian)
Persian Language Resources, parstimes.com
Persian language tutorial books for beginners
Haim, Soleiman. New Persian–English dictionary. Teheran: Librairie-imprimerie Beroukhim, 1934–1936.
uchicago.edu
Steingass, Francis Joseph. A Comprehensive Persian–English dictionary. London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1892.
uchicago.edu
UCLA Language Materials Project:Persian, ucla.edu
How Persian Alphabet Transits into Graffiti, Persian Graffiti
Basic Persian language course (book + audio files)USA Foreign Service Institute (FSI)

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