Persian language

Persian (/ˈpɜːrʒən, -ʃən/), also known by its endonym Farsi (فارسی, Fārsī, [fɒːɾˈsiː] (listen)), is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and used officially within Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan in three mutually intelligible standard varieties, namely Iranian Persian (officially known as Persian),[11][12][13] Dari Persian (officially known as Dari since 1964)[14] and Tajiki Persian (officially known as Tajik since 1999).[15][16] It is also spoken natively in the Tajik variety by a significant population within Uzbekistan,[17][18][19] as well as within other regions with a Persianate history in the cultural sphere of Greater Iran. It is written officially within Iran and Afghanistan in the Persian alphabet, a derivation of the Arabic script, and within Tajikistan in the Tajik alphabet, a derivation of the Cyrillic script.

Persian
فارسی (fārsi)
Fārsi written in Persian calligraphy (Nastaʿlīq)
Pronunciation	[fɒːɾˈsiː] (listen)
Native to	Iran[1] Afghanistan[1] (as Dari) Tajikistan[1] (as Tajik) Uzbekistan (as Tajik) [2] Iraq[3] Turkmenistan[4] Russia[5][6] Azerbaijan[7]
Speakers	Native: 81 million (2022)[8] Total (L1+L2): 130 million[7]
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Western Iranian Southwestern Iranian Persian
Early forms	Old Persian Middle Persian Early New Persian
Standard forms	Iranian Persian Dari Tajik
Dialects	Iranian Persian Dari Tajik Bukhori Pahlavani Hazaragi Aimaq Judeo-Persian Dehwari Judeo-Tat[7] Caucasian Tat[7] Armeno-Tat[7] Madaklashti
Writing system	Persian alphabet (Iran and Afghanistan) Tajik alphabet (Tajikistan) Old Persian cuneiform (525 BC – 330 BC) Pahlavi scripts (2nd century BC to 7th century AD) Persian Braille
Official status
Official language in	Iran (as Persian)[9] Afghanistan (as Dari) Tajikistan (as Tajik) Russia Dagestan (as Tat)[10]
Regulated by	Academy of Persian Language and Literature (Iran) Academy of Sciences of Afghanistan (Afghanistan) Rudaki Institute of Language and Literature (Tajikistan)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	fa
ISO 639-2	per (B) fas (T)
ISO 639-3	fas – inclusive code Individual codes: pes – Iranian Persian prs – Dari tgk – Tajik language aiq – Aimaq dialect bhh – Bukhori dialect haz – Hazaragi dialect jpr – Judeo-Persian phv – Pahlavani deh – Dehwari jdt – Judeo-Tat ttt – Caucasian Tat
Glottolog	fars1254
Linguasphere	58-AAC (Wider Persian) > 58-AAC-c (Central Persian)
Areas with significant numbers of people whose first language is Persian (including dialects)
Persian linguasphere Legend   Official language   More than 1,000,000 speakers   Between 500,000 and 1,000,000 speakers   Between 100,000 and 500,000 speakers   Between 25,000 and 100,000 speakers   Fewer than 25,000 speakers to none
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

This article contains Persian text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols.

Modern Persian is a continuation of Middle Persian, an official language of the Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE), itself a continuation of Old Persian, which was used in the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BCE).[20][21] It originated in the region of Pars (Persia) in southwestern Iran.[22] Its grammar is similar to that of many European languages.[23]

Throughout history, Persian was considered prestigious by various empires centered in Western Asia, Central Asia, and South Asia.[24] Old Persian is attested in Old Persian cuneiform on inscriptions from between the 6th and 4th century BC. Middle Persian is attested in Aramaic-derived scripts (Pahlavi and Manichaean) on inscriptions and in Zoroastrian and Manichaean scriptures from between the third to the tenth centuries (see Middle Persian literature). New Persian literature was first recorded in the ninth century, after the Muslim conquest of Persia, since then adopting the Perso-Arabic script.[25]

Persian was the first language to break through the monopoly of Arabic on writing in the Muslim world, with Persian poetry becoming a tradition in many eastern courts.[24] As British scholar David G. Hogarth stated, "Never has captor more swiftly and subtly been captured by his captive than Arabic by Persia".[26] It was used officially as a language of bureaucracy even by non-native speakers, such as the Ottomans in Anatolia,[27] the Mughals in South Asia, and the Pashtuns in Afghanistan. It influenced languages spoken in neighboring regions and beyond, including other Iranian languages, the Turkic, Armenian, Georgian, and Indo-Aryan languages. It also exerted some influence on Arabic,[28] while borrowing a lot of vocabulary from it in the Middle Ages.[20][23][29][30][31][32]

Some of the world's most famous pieces of literature from the Middle Ages, such as the Shahnameh by Ferdowsi, the works of Rumi, the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, the Panj Ganjcode: fas promoted to code: fa of Nizami Ganjavi, The Divān of Hafez, The Conference of the Birds by Attar of Nishapur, and the miscellanea of Gulistan and Bustan by Saadi Shirazi, are written in Persian.[33] Some of the prominent modern Persian poets were Nima Yooshij, Ahmad Shamlou, Simin Behbahani, Sohrab Sepehri, Rahi Mo'ayyeri, Mehdi Akhavan-Sales, and Forugh Farrokhzad.

There are approximately 110 million Persian speakers worldwide, including Persians, Lurs, Tajiks, Hazaras, Iranian Azeris, Iranian Kurds, Balochs, Tats, and Aimaqs. The term Persophone might also be used to refer to a speaker of Persian.[34][35]