Persian language

"Farsi" redirects here. For other uses, see Farsi (disambiguation).

Persian
فارسی
fārsī
Fārsi written in Persian calligraphy (Nastaʿlīq)
Pronunciation[fɒːɾˈsiː] ⓘ
Native to
SpeakersL1: 72 million (2017–2021)[7]
L2: 38 million (2021–2022)[7]
Total (L1+L2): 130 million[8]
Early forms
Standard forms
Dialects
Official status
Official language in

Russia

Regulated by
Language codes
ISO 639-1fa
ISO 639-2per (B)
fas (T)
ISO 639-3fas – 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
Glottologfars1254
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
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This article contains Persian text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols.

Persian (/ˈpɜːrʒən, -ʃən/ PUR-zhən, -⁠shən), also known by its endonym Farsi (فارسی, Fārsī [fɒːɾˈsiː] ⓘ), 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, respectively 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 derivative of the Arabic script, and within Tajikistan in the Tajik alphabet, a derivative of the Cyrillic script.

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 Fars (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 West 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] It was used officially as a language of bureaucracy even by non-native speakers, such as the Ottomans in Anatolia,[26] 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, & Indo-Aryan languages. It also exerted some influence on Arabic,[27] while borrowing a lot of vocabulary from it in the Middle Ages.[20][23][28][29][30][31]

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 Ganj 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.[32] 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 130 million Persian speakers worldwide, including Persians, Lurs, Tajiks, Hazaras, Iranian Azeris, Iranian Kurds, Balochs, Tats, Afghan Pashtuns, and Aimaqs. The term Persophone might also be used to refer to a speaker of Persian.[33][34]

  1. ^ a b c Samadi, Habibeh; Nick Perkins (2012). Martin Ball; David Crystal; Paul Fletcher (eds.). Assessing Grammar: The Languages of Lars. Multilingual Matters. p. 169. ISBN 978-1-84769-637-3.
  2. ^ Foltz, Richard (1996). "The Tajiks of Uzbekistan". Central Asian Survey. 15 (2): 213–216. doi:10.1080/02634939608400946. ISSN 0263-4937.
  3. ^ "IRAQ". Encyclopædia Iranica. Archived from the original on 17 November 2014. Retrieved 7 November 2014.
  4. ^ Akiner, Shirin (1986). Islamic Peoples of the Soviet Union. London: Routledge. p. 362. ISBN 0-7103-0188-X.
  5. ^ a b Windfuhr, Gernot: The Iranian Languages, Routledge 2009, p. 417–418.
  6. ^ "Kuwaiti Persian". UNESCO.
  7. ^ a b Persian at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Closed access icon
    Iranian Persian at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Closed access icon
    Dari at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Closed access icon
    Tajik language at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Closed access icon
    Aimaq dialect at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Closed access icon
    Bukhori dialect at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Closed access icon
    (Additional references under 'Language codes' in the information box)
  8. ^ a b c d Windfuhr, Gernot: The Iranian Languages, Routledge 2009, p. 418.
  9. ^ Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran: Chapter II, Article 15: "The official language and script of Iran, the lingua franca of its people, is Persian. Official documents, correspondence, and texts, as well as text-books, must be in this language and script. However, the use of regional and tribal languages in the press and mass media, as well as for teaching of their literature in schools, is allowed in addition to Persian."
  10. ^ Constitution of the Republic of Dagestan: Chapter I, Article 11: "The state languages of the Republic of Dagestan are Russian and the languages of the peoples of Dagestan."
  11. ^ "Persian, Iranian". Ethnologue. Archived from the original on 5 January 2022. Retrieved 25 February 2021.
  12. ^ "639 Identifier Documentation: fas". Sil.org. Archived from the original on 16 February 2022. Retrieved 25 February 2021.
  13. ^ "The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran". Islamic Parliament of Iran. Archived from the original on 27 October 2016. Retrieved 18 January 2022.
  14. ^ Olesen, Asta (1995). Islam and Politics in Afghanistan. Vol. 3. Psychology Press. p. 205. There began a general promotion of the Pashto language at the expense of Farsi – previously dominant in the educational and administrative system (...) — and the term 'Dari' for the Afghan version of Farsi came into common use, being officially adopted in 1958.
  15. ^ Siddikzoda, S. "Tajik Language: Farsi or not Farsi?" in Media Insight Central Asia #27, August 2002.
  16. ^ Baker, Mona (2001). Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. Psychology Press. p. 518. ISBN 978-0-415-25517-2. Archived from the original on 2 October 2022. Retrieved 20 June 2015. All this affected translation activities in Persian, seriously undermining the international character of the language. The problem was compounded in modern times by several factors, among them the realignment of Central Asian Persian, renamed Tajiki by the Soviet Union, with Uzbek and Russian languages, as well as the emergence of a language reform movement in Iran which paid no attention to the consequences of its pronouncements and actions for the language as a whole.
  17. ^ Foltz, Richard (1996). "The Tajiks of Uzbekistan". Central Asian Survey. 15 (2): 213–216. doi:10.1080/02634939608400946. ISSN 0263-4937.
  18. ^ Jonson, Lena (2006). Tajikistan in the new Central Asia. p. 108.
  19. ^ Cordell, Karl (1998). Ethnicity and Democratisation in the New Europe. Routledge. p. 201. ISBN 0415173124. Consequently the number of citizens who regard themselves as Tajiks is difficult to determine. Tajiks within and outside of the republic, Samarkand State University (SamGU) academics and international commentators suggest that there may be between six and seven million Tajiks in Uzbekistan, constituting 30 per cent of the republic's twenty-two million population, rather than the official figure of 4.7 per cent (Foltz 1996:213; Carlisle 1995:88).
  20. ^ a b Lazard 1975: "The language known as New Persian, which usually is called at this period (early Islamic times) by the name of Dari or Farsi-Dari, can be classified linguistically as a 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 Persian, and New Persian represent one and the same language at three states of its history. It had its origin in Fars (the true Persian country from the historical point of view) and is differentiated by dialectical features, still easily recognizable from the dialect prevailing in north-western and eastern Iran."
  21. ^ Ammon, Ulrich; Dittmar, Norbert; Mattheier, Klaus J.; Trudgill, Peter (2006). Sociolinguistics: An International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society. Vol. 3 (2nd ed.). Walter de Gruyter. p. 1912. The Pahlavi language (also known as Middle Persian) was the official language of Iran during the Sassanid dynasty (from 3rd to 7th century A. D.). Pahlavi is the direct continuation of old Persian, and was used as the written official language of the country. However, after the Moslem conquest and the collapse of the Sassanids, Arabic became the dominant language of the country and Pahlavi lost its importance, and was gradually replaced by Dari, a variety of Middle Persian, with considerable loan elements from Arabic and Parthian (Moshref 2001).
  22. ^ Skjærvø, Prods Oktor (2006). "Iran, vi. Iranian languages and scripts". Encyclopædia Iranica. Vol. XIII. pp. 344–377. Archived from the original on 23 April 2020. Retrieved 10 July 2019. (...) Persian, the language originally spoken in the province of Fārs, which is descended from Old Persian, the language of the Achaemenid empire (6th–4th centuries B.C.E.), and Middle Persian, the language of the Sasanian empire (3rd–7th centuries C.E.).
  23. ^ a b Davis, Richard (2006). "Persian". In Meri, Josef W.; Bacharach, Jere L. (eds.). Medieval Islamic Civilization. Taylor & Francis. pp. 602–603. Similarly, the core vocabulary of Persian continued to be derived from Pahlavi, but Arabic lexical items predominated for more abstract or abstruse subjects and often replaced their Persian equivalents in polite discourse. (...) The grammar of New Persian is similar to that of many contemporary European languages.
  24. ^ a b de Bruijn, J.T.P. (14 December 2015). "Persian literature". Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on 10 June 2019. Retrieved 10 July 2019.
  25. ^ Skjærvø, Prods Oktor. "Iran vi. Iranian languages and scripts (2) Documentation". Encyclopædia Iranica. Vol. XIII. pp. 348–366. Archived from the original on 17 November 2016. Retrieved 30 December 2012.
  26. ^ Egger, Vernon O. (16 September 2016). A History of the Muslim World since 1260: The Making of a Global Community. Routledge. ISBN 9781315511078. Archived from the original on 2 October 2022. Retrieved 12 June 2020.
  27. ^ Holes, Clive (2001). Dialect, Culture, and Society in Eastern Arabia: Glossary. BRILL. p. XXX. ISBN 90-04-10763-0. Archived from the original on 17 November 2016. Retrieved 4 September 2013.
  28. ^ Lazard, Gilbert (1971). "Pahlavi, Pârsi, dari: Les langues d'Iran d'apès Ibn al-Muqaffa". In Frye, R.N. (ed.). Iran and Islam. In Memory of the late Vladimir Minorsky. Edinburgh University Press.
  29. ^ Namazi, Nushin (24 November 2008). "Persian Loan Words in Arabic". Archived from the original on 20 May 2011. Retrieved 1 June 2009.
  30. ^ Classe, Olive (2000). Encyclopedia of literary translation into English. Taylor & Francis. p. 1057. ISBN 1-884964-36-2. Archived from the original on 10 March 2021. Retrieved 28 September 2020. Since the Arab conquest of the country in 7th century AD, many loan words have entered the language (which from this time has been written with a slightly modified version of the Arabic script) and the literature has been heavily influenced by the conventions of Arabic literature.
  31. ^ Lambton, Ann K. S. (1953). Persian grammar. Cambridge University Press. The Arabic words incorporated into the Persian language have become Persianized.
  32. ^ Vafa, A; Abedinifard, M; Azadibougar, O (2021). Persian Literature as World Literature. US: Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 2–14. ISBN 978-1-501-35420-5.
  33. ^ Perry 2005, p. 284.
  34. ^ Green, Nile (2012). Making Space: Sufis and Settlers in Early Modern India. Oxford University Press. pp. 12–13. ISBN 9780199088751. Archived from the original on 13 February 2020. Retrieved 10 July 2019.