Persian, (local name: Fārsī or Pārsī), is an Indo-European language spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and by minorities in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Southern Russia, neighboring countries, and elsewhere. It is derived from the language of the ancient Persian people. It is part of the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian language family. For other uses of this term see: Persia (disambiguation) The Persian Empire is the name used to refer to a number of historic dynasties that have ruled the country of Persia (Iran). ... A map showing countries commonly considered to be part of the Middle East The Middle East is a region comprising the lands around the southern and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Sea, a territory that extends from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. ... Map of Central Asia showing three sets of possible boundaries for the region Central Asia located as a region of the world Central Asia is a vast landlocked region of Asia. ... The factual accuracy of part of this article is disputed. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families Most languages are known to belong to language families. ... The Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred languages and dialects [1], including most of the major languages of Europe, as well as many in Southwest Asia, Central Asia and South Asia. ... The Indo-Iranian language group constitutes the easternmost extant branch of the Indo-European family of languages. ... task manager disable ---- please help ... The Southwestern Iranian languages include some 16 (SIL estimate) languages and dialects spoken by about many people in Asia; this language family is a part of the Western Iranian language family. ... Irans Academy of Persian Language and Literature (فرهنگستان زبان و ادب فارسی in Persian) is a governmental body presiding the use of the Persian language in Iran. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2:1998 Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 2: Alpha-3 code Twenty-two of the languages have two three-letter codes: a code for bibliographic use (ISO 639-2/B) a code for terminological use (ISO 639-2/T). ... ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. ... Dari is a term used to denote one of several closely related Persian dialects spoken in what used to be Greater Khorasan: The official name for the Persian language in Afghanistan; see Dari (Afghanistan) One name used by Zoroastrians (the others being Gabri and Yazdi) to refer to the Northwestern... Tajik or Tadjik (тоҷикӣ, تاجیکی, tojikí) is a descendant of the Persian language spoken in Central Asia. ... Aimaq is a dialect of the Persian language of Afghanistan spoken in West of the Hazara, central northwest Afghanistan, eastern Iran, and Tajikistan. ... Bukhori, also known as Bukharic or Bukharan, is an Indo-Iranian language. ... Dehwari is a Northwestern Iranian language spoken by over 20,000 people in Balochistan, Pakistan. ... Hazaragi is a dialect of the Persian language, with the main deviation from Farsi and Dari being a larger borrowing of Turkic and Mongolian vocabulary. ... Dzhidi, or Judæo-Persian, is the Jewish language spoken by the Jews living in Iran. ... The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation devised by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) used in spoken human language. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone = sound/voice) is the study of sounds (voice). ... Because of technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... This is a concise version of the International Phonetic Alphabet for English sounds. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... The Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred languages and dialects [1], including most of the major languages of Europe, as well as many in Southwest Asia, Central Asia and South Asia. ... Southern Federal District (Russian: Ю́жный федера́льный о́круг; tr. ... The Persians are an Iranian people who speak the Persian language and share a common culture and history. ... The Indo-Iranian language group constitutes the easternmost extant branch of the Indo-European family of languages. ...

Persian and its dialects have official-language status in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. According to CIA World Factbook, based on old data, there are 71 million native speakers of Persian in Iran [1], Afghanistan [2], Tajikistan [3] and Uzbekistan [4] and there are about the same number other peoples who can speak Persian throughout the world. It belongs to the Indo-European language family, and is of the Subject Object Verb type. UNESCO was asked to select Persian as one of its languages in 2006.[5] World Factbook 2004 cover The World Factbook is an annual publication by the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States with basic almanac-style information about the various countries of the world. ... The Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred languages and dialects [1], including most of the major languages of Europe, as well as many in Southwest Asia, Central Asia and South Asia. ... In linguistic typology, Subject Object Verb (SOV) is the type of languages in which the subject, object, and verb of a sentence appear (usually) in that order. ... UNESCO logo UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) is a specialized agency of the United Nations established in 1945. ...

Persian is a literary and scientific language of the Islamic world and has influenced neighbouring languages immensly, including the Turkic languages of Central Asia, Caucasus, and Anatolia, as well as the Indo-Aryan languages of Punjab. It had also smaller influence on Arabic and other languages of Mesopotamia. The Islamic world is the world-wide community of those who identify with Islam, known as Muslims, and who number approximately one-and-a-half billion people. ... The Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken across a vast area from Eastern Europe to Siberia and Western China with an estimated 140 million native speakers and tens of millions of second-language speakers. ... Map of Central Asia showing three sets of possible boundaries for the region Central Asia located as a region of the world Central Asia is a vast landlocked region of Asia. ... The Entholinguistic patchwork of the modern Caucasus - CIA map The Caucasus, a region bordering Asia Minor, is located between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea which includes the Caucasus Mountains and surrounding lowlands. ... Anatolia lies east of the Bosphorus, between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Anatolia (or Anatolian Peninsula) is a region of Southwest Asia which corresponds today to the Asiatic portion of Turkey, as opposed to the European portion, the Thrace. ... The Indo-Aryan languages form a subgroup of the Indo-Iranian languages, thus belonging to the Indo-European family of languages. ... Punjab, 1903 Punjab Province, 1909 Punjab (meaning: Land of the five Rivers) (c. ... The Arabic language ( ), or simply Arabic ( ), is the largest member of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family (classification: South Central Semitic) and is closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic. ... Mesopotamia refers to the region now occupied by modern Iraq, eastern Syria, southeastern Turkey, and Southwest Iran. ...

Prior to British colonization of south Asia, Persian was widely used as a second language in the Indian subcontinent; it took prominence as the language of culture and education in several Muslim courts in the subcontinent throughout the Middle Ages and became the "official language" under the Mughal emperors. Only in 1843 did the British force the subcontinent to begin conducting business in English instead of the traditional Persian.^[1] Evidence of its former rank in the region can still be seen by the extent of its influence on Hindi, Bengali, Sindhi language, and Urdu, as well as the popularity that Persian literature still enjoys in the region. Map of South Asia (see note on Kashmir) South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is a southern geopolitical region of the Asian continent comprising territories on and in proximity to the Indian subcontinent. ... Satellite image of the Indian subcontinent Map of South Asia (see note) This article deals with the geophysical region in Asia. ... The Mughal Empire (alternative spelling Mogul, which is the origin of the word Mogul) of India was founded by Babur in 1526, when he defeated Ibrahim Lodi, the last of the Delhi Sultans at the First Battle of Panipat. ... Hindi (हिन्दी or हिंदी in Devanagari; pronunciation: ), an Indo-European language spoken mainly in northern and central India, is the official language of the Union government of India [1][2]. It is part of a dialect continuum of the Indic family, bounded on the northwest and west by Punjabi, Sindhi, Urdu, and... Bangla (বাংলা, IPA: ) or Bengali is an Indo-Aryan language of East South Asia, evolved from Sanskrit and Prakrit. ... Sindhi (سنڌي، سندھی ، सिन्धी sindhī) is the language of the Sindh region of South Asia, which is now a province of Pakistan. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Persian literature (in Persian: ) spans two and a half millennia, though much of the pre-Islamic material has been lost. ...

Local names

Persian language is locally known as

• فارسی‎ (transliteration: Fārsi) or پارسی‎ (Pārsi), local name in Iran, Afghanistan (where it is officially known as Darī) and Tajikistan (where it is known as Tājik or Tāzhik in addition to Fārsi),
• Tajik, local name in Central Asia.
• Dari, name given to classical Persian poetry and court language, as well as to Persian dialects spoken in Tajikistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Though there has never been an official sensus made in Afghanistan, after pashtoons 65% of the population, Tajiks make the second largest ethnic group in Afghanistan with an estimated 15% of the total population. The following link provides a very good insight about some of the unofficial sensus that has been made over the years in Afghanistan: http://www.hewad.com/ethnic.htm Transliteration is the practice of transcribing a word or text written in one writing system into another writing system. ... Tajik or Tadjik (тоҷикӣ, تاجیکی, tojikí) is a descendant of the Persian language spoken in Central Asia. ... Map of Central Asia showing three sets of possible boundaries for the region Central Asia located as a region of the world Central Asia is a vast landlocked region of Asia. ... Dari (دری) is the local written name for the Persian language in Afghanistan used mainly in official papers. ...

History

Main article: History of the Persian language

Persian is an Iranian tongue belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Persian is one of the oldest languages of the world. The Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred languages and dialects [1], including most of the major languages of Europe, as well as many in Southwest Asia, Central Asia and South Asia. ...

The known history of the Persian language can be divided into the following three distinct periods;

Template:Old Persian

Old Persian supposedly evolved from Proto-Indo-Iranian on the western wing in the Iranian plateau. The first known written evidence of Persian appears with the rise of the Persian Empire under Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid dynasty in 550 BC. Old Persian was the main official language of the Persian Empire at the time of the Achaemenids and with their rise, its domain extended to Lybia to the west, present-day Ukraine to the north, the Indus river to the east and Yemen to the south, to be used as a lingua franca for over 200 years. The majority of inscriptions in Old Persian were found in Iran, Egypt and present-day Turkey. During this period, Persian was influenced by Aramaic, Elamite, Babylonian, Akkadian, Greek, Sanskrit, Hebrew, etc. Under the Achaemenid, Persian was written in cuneiform with its own distinct script. This period ends with the fall of the Achaemenid. See Aryan Language or Old Persian For more information visit: *[Ancient Iranian Languages & Literature The Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies (CAIS) ... The name Cyrus (or Kourosh in Persian) may refer to: [[Cyrus I of Anshan]], King of Persia around 650 BC [[Cyrus II of Persia | Cyrus the Great]], King of Persia 559 BC - 529 BC — See also Cyrus in the Judeo-Christian tradition Cyrus the Younger, brother to the Persian king... Achaemenid Empire The Achaemenid Dynasty was a dynasty in the ancient Persian Empire, including Cyrus II the Great, Darius I and Xerxes I. At the height of their power, the Achaemenid rulers of Persia ruled over territories roughly emcompassing some parts of todays Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon... See Aryan Language or Old Persian For more information visit: *[Ancient Iranian Languages & Literature The Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies (CAIS) ... This article is about Libya, the country in North Africa. ... The Indus is a river; the Indus River. ... Aramaic is a group of Semitic languages with a 3,000-year history. ... Elamite is an extinct language, which was spoken in the ancient Elamite Empire. ... Babylonia was an ancient state in Iraq), combining the territories of Sumer and Akkad. ... Akkadian language city of Akkad or Agad Akkadian Empire Sargon of Akkad the Amarna letters and Amarna Letters EA 296(Yahtiru) This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... The Sanskrit language ( , ) is a classical language of India, a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and one of the 22 official languages of India. ... The word Hebrew most likely means to cross over, referring to the Semitic people crossing over the Euphrates River. ...

Template:Middle Persian

Middle Persian can be divided in several periods within two remarkable different eras; the Persian used at the time the Parthian Empire(250 BCE– 226 CE) and the Persian of the Sassanid (226–650 AD). Middle Persian is often referred to as Pahlavi which was written in the script of the same name. Over this period, the morphology of the language was simplified from the complex conjugation and declension system of Old Persian to the almost completely regularized morphology and rigid syntax of Middle Persian. Pahlavi coexisted with several other Iranian languages spoken throughout the Iranian plateau, Central Asia & the Indian sub-continent. These languages included Avestan,Sogdian,Bactrian, Sogdian, Khwarezmian, Saka, and Old Ossetic (Scytho-Sarmatian) Much of the literature in Middle Persian was lost in the Arab invasion. Morphology is a subdiscipline of linguistics that studies word structure. ... In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection (regular alteration according to rules of grammar). ... In linguistics, declension is a paradigm of inflected nouns and adjectives. ... For other uses, see Syntax (disambiguation). ... Yasna 28. ... The Sogdians were an ancient people of Central Asia, who inhabited the region known to the West as Sogdiana. ... Bactria (Bactriana) was the ancient Greek name of the country between the range of the Hindu Kush (Caucasus Indicus) and the Amu Darya (Oxus), with the capital Bactra (now Balkh). ... The Sogdians were an ancient people of Central Asia, who inhabited the region known to the West as Sogdiana. ... Chorasmian, also known as Khwarezmian or Khwarazmian, is the name of an extinct northeastern Iranian language closely related to Sogdian. ... The Sakas are a peoples that lived in what is now Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and parts of Iran, Ukraine, and Altay Mountains and Siberia in Russia, in the centuries before 300 AD. They are considered to be a branch of Scythians by most scholars. ... Scythian and Sarmatian are the names of the East Iranian dialects spoken by the Scythian/Sarmatian tribes of the nomadic cattlebreeders in Southern Russia between 8th century BC and 5th century AD. Sometimes, the Scythian and Sarmatian languages are combined into one name: Scytho-Sarmatian languages. ...

Template:Modern Persian

Arab conquest of Persia marks the beginning of the modern history of Persian language and literature. It is known as the golden era of Persian. Through its long way into the modern times, Persian developed a very large number of idioms, expressions and provebs. It's the time that Persian was inriched and became musical, descriptive. It saw world-famous poets and it came to be known as one of the most romantic languages of all times. Persian was for a long time the lingua franca of the western parts of Islamic world and of the Indian subcontinent. It was also the official and cultural language of many Islamic dynasties, inlcuding Samanids, the Mughal Empires, Timurids, Ghaznavid, Seljuq, Safavid, Ottomans, etc. The influence of Persian on other languages can still be witnessed across the Islamic world, and it is still appreciated as a literary and prestigious language among the educated elite, especially in fields of music (for example Qawwali) and art (Persian literature). Lingua franca, literally Frankish language in Italian, was originally a mixed language consisting largely of Italian plus a vocabulary drawn from Turkish, Persian, French, Greek and Arabic and used for communication throughout the Middle East. ... The Islamic world is the world-wide community of those who identify with Islam, known as Muslims, and who number approximately one-and-a-half billion people. ... Satellite image of the Indian subcontinent Map of South Asia (see note) This article deals with the geophysical region in Asia. ... The Samanid dynasty (819-999) was a Persian dynasty in Central Asia, named after its founder Saman Khuda. ... The Mughal Empire at its greatest extent. ... Timurids Map The Timurids were a Turkic-Mongol dynasty of Iran established by the Mongol Timur (Tamerlane). ... The Ghaznavid Empire was a state in the region of todays Afghanistan that existed from 977 to 1186. ... The Seljuk Turks (Turkish: Selçuk; Arabic: سلجوق Saljūq, السلاجقة al-Salājiqa; Persian: سلجوقيان Saljūqiyān; also Seldjuk, Seldjuq, Seljuq) were a major branch of... The Safavids were a long-lasting Turkic-speaking Iranian dynasty that ruled from 1501 to 1736 and first established Shiite Islam as Persias official religion. ... The Ottoman Empire at the height of its power Imperial motto El Muzaffer Daima The Ever Victorious (as written in tugra) Official language Ottoman Turkish Capital İstanbul ( Constantinople/Asitane/Konstantiniyye ) Sovereigns Sultans of the Osmanli Dynasty Population ca 40 million Area 12+ million km² Establishment 1299 Dissolution October 29... Qawwali (Arabic: قوٌالی ) is the devotional music of the Sufis. ... Persian literature (in Persian: ) spans two and a half millennia, though much of the pre-Islamic material has been lost. ...

Modern Persian is largely influenced by Arabic in term of vocabulary but also grammatical rules. After the mongol invasion, borrow words from Turkish and Mongolian poured in. In more recent times, European words have found their way into modern Persian (notably from French, English and Russian). The Arabic language ( ), or simply Arabic ( ), is the largest member of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family (classification: South Central Semitic) and is closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

Nomenclature

Persian, the more widely used name of the language in English, is an Anglicized form derived from Latin *Persianus < Latin Persia < Greek Πέρσις Pérsis, a Hellenized form of Old Persian Parsa. Farsi is the Arabicized form of Parsi, due to a lack of the /p/ phoneme in Standard Arabic. Native Persian speakers typically call it "Fārsi" in modern usage. In English, however, the language continued to be known as "Persian". According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term 'Farsi' seems to have been first used in English in the mid-20th century, but has been condemned by some critics as an affectation.^[2] According to Pejman Akbarzadeh, "... many Persians migrating to the West (particularly to the USA) after the 1979 revolution continued to use 'Farsi' to identify their language in English and the word became commonplace in English-speaking countries." ^[3] The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ... The Oxford English Dictionary print set The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a dictionary published by the Oxford University Press (OUP), and is generally regarded as the most comprehensive and scholarly dictionary of the English language. ... Pejman Akbarzadeh (Persian پژمان اكبرزاده, born 1980) is a Persian (Iranian) musician and researcher. ...

The Academy of Persian Language and Literature has argued in an official pronouncement [6] that the name "Persian" is more appropriate, as it has the longer tradition in the western languages and better expresses the role of the language as a mark of cultural and national continuity. On the other hand, "Farsi" is also encountered frequently in the linguistic literature as a name for the language, used both by Iranian and by foreign authors.^[4] Irans Academy of Persian Language and Literature (&#1601;&#1585;&#1607;&#1606;&#1711;&#1587;&#1578;&#1575;&#1606; &#1586;&#1576;&#1575;&#1606; &#1608; &#1575;&#1583;&#1576; &#1601;&#1575;&#1585;&#1587;&#1740; in Persian) is a governmental body presiding the use of the Persian language in Iran. ...

The international language encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code "fa", as its coding system is based on the local names. The more detailed draft ISO 639-3 uses the name "Persian" (code "fas") for the larger unit ("macrolanguage") spoken across Iran and Afghanistan, but "Eastern Farsi" and "Western Farsi" for two of its subdivisions (roughly coinciding with the varieties in Afghanistan and those in Iran, respectively) [7]. Ethnologue, in turn, includes "Farsi, Eastern" and "Farsi, Western" as two separate entries and lists "Persian" and "Parsi" as alternative names for each, besides "Irani" for the western and "Dari" for the eastern form ([8], [9]). ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. ... Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics), a Christian linguistic service organization which studies lesser-known languages primarily to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language. ...

A similar terminology, but with even more subdivisions, is also adopted by the "Linguist List", where "Persian" appears as a subgrouping under "Southwest Western Iranian" ([10]). Currently, all International broadcasting radios with services in the Persian language (e.g. VOA, BBC, DW, RFE/RL, etc.) use "Persian Service", in lieu of "Farsi Service." This is also the case for the American Association of Teachers of Persian, The Centre for Promotion of Persian Language and Literature, and many of the leading scholars of Persian language. [11] [12] task manager disable ---- please help ... Voice of America logo Voice of America (VOA) is the official international radio and television broadcasting service of the United States federal government. ... The British Broadcasting Corporation, invariably known as the BBC (and also informally known as the Beeb or Auntie) is the largest broadcasting corporation in the world, employing 26,000 staff in the UK alone and with a budget of £4 billion. ... DW can stand for: Data Warehouse Deutsche Welle Drum Workshop, more commonly known as DW Drums Doctor Who Dreamweaver, as in Macromedia Dreamweaver Darkwing, as in Darkwing Duck Discworld Dont worry, used in Instant Messaging culture Doomworld, a Doom-related website Dora Winifred, a character in the Arthur TV... Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) is a radio and communications organization which is funded by the United States Congress. ... The American Association of Teachers of Persian is a non-profit, professional organization whose objective is be to advance and improve the study and teaching Persian language; to promote research in the field of Persian language, linguistics, and literature; to further the common interests of teachers in the field; and...

Dialects and close languages

Main article: Persian dialects and varieties

The region where Persian (green) and other Iranian languages are spoken.

Communication is generally mutually intelligible between Iranians, Tajiks, and Persian-speaking Afghans; however, by popular definition: It has been suggested that Persian language#Arabic Alphabet be merged into this article or section. ... The coat of arms of the Tajik Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic circa 1929. ...

• Dari is the local name for the eastern dialect of Persian, one of the two official languages of Afghanistan, including Hazaragi — spoken by the Hazara people of central Afghanistan.
• Tajik could also be considered an eastern dialect of Persian, but, unlike Iranian and Afghan Persian, it is written in the Cyrillic script.

Ethnologue offers another classification for dialects of Persian language. According to this source, dialects of this language include the following:[13] Dari (دری) is the local written name for the Persian language in Afghanistan used mainly in official papers. ... Hazaragi is a dialect of the Persian language, with a significant deviation from it to be on the borderline of being a separate language. ... The Hazara are an ethnic group who reside mainly in the central Afghanistan mountain region called Hazarajat or Hazaristan. ... Tajik or Tadjik (тоҷикӣ, تاجیکی, tojikí) is a descendant of the Persian language spoken in Central Asia. ... The Cyrillic alphabet (or azbuka, from the old name of the first letters) is an alphabet used to write six natural Slavic languages (Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian, and Ukrainian) and many other languages of the former Soviet Union, Asia and Eastern Europe. ... Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics), a Christian linguistic service organization which studies lesser-known languages primarily to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language. ...

• Western Persian (in Iran)
• Eastern Persian (in Afghanistan)
• Tajik (in Tajikistan)
• Hazaragi (in Afghanistan)
• Aimaq (in Afghanistan)
• Bukharic (in Israel, Uzbekistan)
• Dehwari (in Pakistan)
• Darwazi (in Afghanistan)
• Dzhidi (in Israel)
• Pahlavani (in Afghanistan)

The following are some of the closely related dialects of various Iranian peoples within modern Iran proper: Dari (دری) is the local written name for the Persian language in Afghanistan used mainly in official papers. ... Tajik or Tadjik (тоҷикӣ, تاجیکی, tojikí) is a descendant of the Persian language spoken in Central Asia. ... Hazaragi is a dialect of the Persian language, with a significant deviation from it to be on the borderline of being a separate language. ... This article is about the Aimaq people. ... Bukhori, also known as Bukharic or Bukharan, is an Indo-Iranian language. ... Dehwari is a Northwestern Iranian language spoken by over 20,000 people in Balochistan, Pakistan. ... Judeo-Persian was a language spoken by the Jews living in Persia. ...

• Mazandarani, spoken in northern Iran mainly in the province of Mazandaran.
• Gileki (or Gilaki), spoken in the province of Guilan.
• Luri (or Lori), spoken mainly in the southwestern Iranian province of Lorestan and Khuzestan.
• Talysh (or Talishi), spoken in northern Iran and southern parts of the Republic of Azerbaijan.
• Tat (also Tati or Eshtehardi), spoken in parts of the Iranian provinces of East Azarbaijan, Zanjan and Qazvin.
• Dari or Gabri, spoken originally in Yazd and Kerman by the Zoroastrians of Iran. Also called Yazdi by some.

(Note: Lori, Gilaki and Mazandarani are not different languages, but dialects.) Mazandarani or Tabari is an ancient Iranian language of the northwestern branch. ... Mazandaran (Persian: مازندران) is a province in northern Iran, bordering the Caspian (Mazandaran) Sea in the north. ... Gileki or Giliki (Gilaki in Persian) is a northwestern Iranian language and is spoken in Irans Gilan province. ... Guilan or Gilan (گیلان in Persian) is one of the 30 provinces of Iran, known during ancient times as part of Hyrcania, with a population of approximately 2 million and an area of 14,700 sq. ... Luri is a dialect of Persian language. ... Falak-ol-aflak, built by the Sassanids, is almost 1800 years old. ... Map showing Khuzestan in Iran Domes like this are quite common in Khuzestan province. ... Talysh (also Talishi, Taleshi or Talyshi) are an Iranian people who speak one of the Northwestern Iranian languages. ... The Tat language is an Indo-Iranian language spoken by the Tat ethnic group. ... East Azarbaijan province enjoys some of Irans most favorable climatic conditions. ... Zanjan (زنجان in Persian) is one of the 30 provinces of Iran. ... Qazvin province contains fine examples of Iranian architecture from various ages. ... The main Zoroastrian fire temple in Yazd, Iran. ... Dari is the language of the Zoroastrians of Iran. ... The city of Yazd, as seen from the tall minarets of its 12th century mosque. ... Map of Iran and surrounding countries, showing location of Kerman Kerman (in Persian: کرمان ) is a city in Iran. ... Dari is the language of the Zoroastrians of Iran. ...

Orthography

Dehkhoda's personal handwriting; a typical cursive Persian script.

The vast majority of modern Persian text is written in a form of the Arabic alphabet. In recent years the Latin alphabet has been used by some for technological or internationalization reasons. Tajik, which is considered by many linguists to be a Persian dialect influenced by Russian, is written with the Cyrillic alphabet in Tajikistan. Image File history File linksMetadata Dehkhoda_note. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Dehkhoda_note. ... Ali Akbar Dekhoda (علی‌اکبر دهخدا in Persian; 1879–March 9, 1959) was a prominent Iranian linguist, and author of the most extensive dictionary of the Persian language ever published. ... Cursive is any style of handwriting in which all the letters in a word are connected, making a word one single (complicated) stroke. ... The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... Tajik or Tadjik (тоҷикӣ, تاجیکی, tojikí) is a descendant of the Persian language spoken in Central Asia. ... The Cyrillic alphabet (pronounced , also called azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters) is an alphabet used for several East and South Slavic languages—Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Rusyn, Serbian, and Ukrainian—and many other languages of the former Soviet Union, Asia and Eastern Europe. ...

Persian alphabet

Main article: Persian alphabet

Modern Persian is normally written using a modified variant of the Arabic alphabet with different pronunciation and fewer letters. It has been suggested that Persian language#Arabic Alphabet be merged into this article or section. ... The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ...

Script adoption

After the conversion of Persia to Islam (see Islamic conquest of Iran), it took approximately 150 years before Persians adopted the Arabic alphabet as a replacement for the older alphabet. Previously, two different alphabets were used for the Persian language (Middle Persian, or Pahlavi, at that time): one was also called Pahlavi and was a modified version of the Aramaic alphabet, and the other was a native Iranian alphabet called Dîndapirak>Din Dabire (literally: religion script). The Persian Empire was a series of historical empires that ruled over the Iranian plateau (Irān - Land of the Aryans) and beyond. ... For other uses, including people named Islam, see Islam (disambiguation). ... The Islamic conquest of Iran (637-651 CE) destroyed the Sassanid Empire and led to the eventual decline of the Zoroastrian religion in Iran. ... Pahlavi is a term that refers: (1) to a script used in Iran derived from the Aramaic script, and (2) more broadly, to Middle Persian, the Middle Iranian language written in this script. ... The Pahlavi script was used broadly in the Sasanid Persian Empire to write down Middle Persian for secular, as well as religious purposes. ... The Aramaic alphabet is an abjad alphabet designed for writing the Aramaic language. ... The Avestan alphabet was created in the 3rd century AD for writing the hymns of Zarathustra (a. ...

Additions

The Persian alphabet adds four letters to the Arabic alphabet, due to the fact that four sounds that exist in Persian do not exist in Arabic, as they come from separate language families. Some people call this modified alphabet the Perso-Arabic alphabet. The additional four letters are: The Arabic language ( ), or simply Arabic ( ), is the largest member of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family (classification: South Central Semitic) and is closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic. ... The Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing the Arabic language, which is the language of the Quran, the holy book of Islam. ...

Variations

Many Persian words with an Arabic root are spelled differently from the original Arabic word. Alef with hamza below ( إ ) always changes to alef ( ا ); teh marbuta ( ة ) usually, but not always, changes to teh ( ت ) or heh ( ه ); and words using various hamzas get spelled with yet another kind of hamza (so that مسؤول becomes مسئول). For Hamza, the letter in the Arabic alphabet, representing the glottal stop . ...

The letters different in shape are:

The diacritical marks used in the Arabic script, a.k.a. harakat, are also used in Persian, although some of them have different pronunciations. For example, an Arabic Damma is pronounced /u/, while in Persian it is pronounced /o/. In Arabic orthography, harakat are the diacritic marks used to represent vowel sounds. ... In Arabic orthography, harakat are the diacritic marks used to represent vowel sounds. ...

The Persian variant also adds the notion of a pseudo-space to the Arabic script, called a Zero-width non-joiner (ZWNJ) by the Unicode Standard. It acts like a space in disconnecting two otherwise-joining adjacent letters, but does not have a visual width. The zero-width non-joiner (ZWNJ) is a non-printing character used in the computerized typesetting of some cursive scripts, such as the Arabic script or the Korean hangul script. ... In computing, Unicode is the international standard whose goal is to provide the means to encode the text of every document people want to store in computers. ...

Word boundaries

In written text, words are usually separated by a space. Compounds and detachable morphemes (i.e., morphemes following a word ending in final form character), however, are written without a space separating them. In other words, the two parts of a compound appear next to each other but the first element in the compound will usually end in a final form character, hence it would be possible to recognize the two parts of the compound. This format is not very consistent, however, and sometimes words can appear without a space between them. If the first word ends in a character that has a final form, then we can easily distinguish the word boundary. But if the first word ends in one of the characters that have only one form, the end of the word is not clear. Although this latter case is usually avoided in written text, it is not rare. Furthermore, a space is sometimes inserted between a word and the morpheme. In such cases, the morpheme needs to be reattached (or the space eliminated) before proceeding to the morphological analysis of the text. In morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest lingual unit that carries a semantic interpretation. ...

Extensions to other languages

The features of the Persian variant have been taken for other languages, such as Pashto or Urdu, and have sometimes been further extended with new letters or punctuation. Pashto (پښتو; also known as Afghan, Pathan, Pushto, Pashtoe, Pashtu, Pushtu, and Pukhto) is the language spoken by the ethnic Afghan otherwise known as the Pashtun people who inhabit Afghanistan and the western provinces of Pakistan. ... The phrase Zaban-e Urdu-e Mualla written in Urdu Urdu () is an Indo-European language of the Indo-Aryan family that developed under Persian, Turkish, Arabic, Hindi, and Sanskrit influence in South Asia during the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire (1200-1800). ...

Latin alphabet

The Universal Persian (UniPers / Pârsiye Jahâni) Alphabet is a Latin-based alphabet created over 50 years ago in Iran and popularized by Mohamed Keyvan, who used it in a number of Persian textbooks for foreigners and travellers. It sidesteps the difficulties of the traditional Arabic-based alphabet, with its multiple letter shapes and ambiguous spellings, and fits particularly well in contemporary electronically written media. UniPers (Pârsiye Jahâni) is a simple Latin-based alphabet uniquely designed to facilitate the reading and writing of the Persian language. ...

The "International Persian Alphabet" (IPA2)[14], commonly called Pársik, is another Latin-based alphabet developed in recent years mainly by A. Moslehi, a comparative linguist, as a project defined and maintained under the authority of Persian Linguistics Association. It is claimed to be the most accurate and regular one among Latin-based Persian alphabets in which many linguistic aspects of Modern Persian have been observed; however, its rules are not as simple as those of UniPers. IPA, here, stands for International Persian Alphabet and 2 is both to differentiate this abbreviation from that of the renowned International Phonetic Alphabet and to accitentally indicate version 2. ...

Fingilish, or Penglish, is the name given to texts written in Persian using the Basic Latin alphabet. It is most commonly used in chat, emails and SMS applications. Fingilish (Farsi + English) (also Penglish or Pinglish, Finglish, Pingilish) is a term used to describe the way Persian words are written in Latin alphabet. ... Variants of the Latin alphabet are used by the writing systems of many languages throughout the world. ... Online chat can refer to any kind of communication over the internet, but is primarily meant to refer to direct 1 on 1 chat or chat rooms, using tools such as instant messenger applications—computer programs, Internet Relay Chat, talkers and possibly MUDs, MUCKs, MUSHes and MOOes. ... E-mail, or email, is short for electronic mail and is a method of composing, sending, and receiving messages over electronic communication systems. ... SMS arrival notification on a Siemens phone Short Message Service (SMS) is a service available on most digital mobile phones (and other mobile devices, e. ...

Cyrillic alphabet

Main article: Tajik alphabet

Text detail from the reverse of the former Tajik 1 ruble note.

Tajik language written in the Cyrillic alphabet was introduced in the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic in the late 1930s, replacing the Latin alphabet that had been used since the Bolshevik revolution. After 1939, materials published in Persian in the Perso-Arabic script were banned from the country. ^[5] The coat of arms of the Tajik Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic circa 1929. ... Image File history File links Tajik_rouble_reverse_detail. ... Image File history File links Tajik_rouble_reverse_detail. ... Tajikmay refer to: Tajiks, an ethnic group living in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and China The Tajik language, the official language of Tajikistan The Arabic-schooled, ethnically Persian administrative caste of the Turco-Persian society. ... The ruble was the currency of Tajikistan between 1995 and 2001. ... Tajik or Tadjik (тоҷикӣ, تاجیکی, tojikí) is a descendant of the Persian language spoken in Central Asia. ... The Cyrillic alphabet (pronounced , also called azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters) is an alphabet used for several East and South Slavic languages—Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Rusyn, Serbian, and Ukrainian—and many other languages of the former Soviet Union, Asia and Eastern Europe. ... State motto: Tajik: Пролетарҳои ҳамаи мамлакатҳо, як шавед! Translation: Workers of the world, unite! Capital Dushanbe Official language None. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... The October Revolution, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was the second phase of the Russian Revolution, the first having been instigated by the events around the February Revolution. ...

Phonology

Main article: Persian phonology

The Persian language has six vowels and twenty-three consonants, including two affricates /ʧ/ (ch) and /ʤ/ (j). Historically, Persian distinguished length: the long vowels /iː/, /uː/, /ɒː/ contrasting with the short vowels /e/, /o/, /æ/ respectively. Modern spoken Persian, however, generally does not make this distinction anymore. The Persian language has six vowels and twenty-three consonants, including one glide //, and two affricates // and //. Vowels Diachronically, Persian possessed a distinction of length in its underlying vowel inventory, contrasting the long vowels , , with the short vowels , , . In Modern Persian, this distinction of quantity is neutralized in most environments...

Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ...

Note that /ʧ/ and /ʤ/ are affricates, not stops.

Grammar

Main article: Persian grammar

Suffixes predominate Persian morphology, though there are a small number of prefixes. Verbs can express tense and aspect, and they agree with the subject in person and number. There is no grammatical gender for nouns, nor are pronouns marked for natural gender. Persian grammar is similar to many other Indo-European languages, especially those in the Indo-Iranian family. ... It has been suggested that natural gender be merged into this article or section. ...

Normal declarative sentences are structured as “(S) (PP) (O) V”. This means sentences can be comprised of optional subjects, prepositional phrases, and objects, followed by a required verb. If the object is specific, then the object is followed by the word rɑ: and precedes prepositional phrases: “(S) (O + “rɑ:”) (PP) V”. ^[6] The subject of a sentence is one of the two main parts of a sentence, the other being the predicate. ... A prepositional phrase (PP) is a linguistic term for a phrase whose head is a preposition. ... An object in grammar is a sentence element and part of the sentence predicate. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...

Vocabulary

Main article: Persian vocabulary

There are many loanwords in the Persian language, mostly coming from Arabic, English, French, and the Turkic languages. There are many loanwords in the Persian language, mostly coming from Arabic, English, French, and the Turkic languages. ... A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one language from another with little or no translation. ... The Arabic language ( ), or simply Arabic ( ), is the largest member of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family (classification: South Central Semitic) and is closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... The Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken across a vast area from Eastern Europe to Siberia and Western China with an estimated 140 million native speakers and tens of millions of second-language speakers. ...

Persian has likewise influenced the vocabularies of other languages, especially Indo-Iranian languages and Turkic languages. Many Persian words have also found their way into the English language. The Indo-Iranian language group constitutes the easternmost extant branch of the Indo-European family of languages. ... The Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken across a vast area from Eastern Europe to Siberia and Western China with an estimated 140 million native speakers and tens of millions of second-language speakers. ...

See also: List of English words of Persian origin As fellow Indo-European languages, English and Persian have many words which share a common Proto-Indo-European origin, and many of these cognate words often have similar forms. ...

Trivia

• There are currently 5 presidents in the world who speak Persian as their native language, namely the presidents of Iran, Israel, Afghanistan, Iraq and Tajikistan. Though there has never been an official sensus made in Afghanistan, after pashtoons 65% of the population, Tajiks make the second largest ethnic group in Afghanistan with an estimated 15% of the total population. The following link provides a very good insight about some of the unofficial sensus that has been made over the years in Afghanistan:

http://www.hewad.com/ethnic.htm

• The word "Farsi" comes from "Parsi", from the fact that Persians (of Pars origins) used to call their language Parsi; as such, the Greek were calling it "Persian". Arabs do not have the letter "p" in their language, thus after Arab invasion of Iran (around 600 a.c.), they started calling the language "Farsi" and the name stuck. Nowadays, even Iranians (and other native speakers) call the language Farsi.

See also

• Academy of Persian Language and Literature
• Dzhidi language
• History of Urdu
• List of common phrases in various languages
• List of Persian poets and authors
• Persian literature
• Middle Persian literature
• Persian mythology

Irans Academy of Persian Language and Literature (&#1601;&#1585;&#1607;&#1606;&#1711;&#1587;&#1578;&#1575;&#1606; &#1586;&#1576;&#1575;&#1606; &#1608; &#1575;&#1583;&#1576; &#1601;&#1575;&#1585;&#1587;&#1740; in Persian) is a governmental body presiding the use of the Persian language in Iran. ... Dzhidi, or Judæo-Persian, is the Jewish language spoken by the Jews living in Iran. ... The history of Urdu (اردو) is a fascinating story involving history, linguistics, ethnicity, religion, and national identity. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... A Meeting of Some Iranian Poets: (L to R) Morteza Keyvan, Ahmad Shamlou, Nima Yooshij, Siavash Kasraie, and Hushang Ebtehaj. ... Persian literature (in Persian: ) spans two and a half millennia, though much of the pre-Islamic material has been lost. ... This article needs to be wikified. ... The beliefs and practices of the culturally and linguistically related group of ancient peoples who inhabited the Iranian Plateau and its borderlands, as well as areas of Central Asia from the Black Sea to Khotan (modern Ho-tien, China), form Persian mythology. ...

References

1. ^ Clawson, Patrick. Eternal Iran, 2004, ISBN 1-4039-6246-6, Palgrave Macmillan, p.6
2. ^ Article "Farsi", in Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, ed. John Simpson and Edmund Weiner, Clarendon Press, 1989. ISBN 0-19-861186-2.
3. ^ "FARSI" or "PERSIAN"?
4. ^ For example: A. Gharib, M. Bahar, B. Fooroozanfar, J. Homaii, and R. Yasami. Farsi Grammar. Jahane Danesh, 2nd edition, 2001.
5. ^ Perry, J. R. (2005). A Tajik Persian Reference Grammar. Boston: Brill, 34. ISBN 90-04-14323-8.
6. ^ Mahootian, Shahrzad (1997). Persian. London: Routledge, 6. ISBN 0-415-02311-4.

The Oxford English Dictionary print set The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a dictionary published by the Oxford University Press (OUP), and is generally regarded as the most comprehensive and scholarly dictionary of the English language. ...

Further reading

1. Mace, John (2003), Persian Grammar: For reference and revision, London: Routledge-Curzon.
2. Schmitt, Rüdiger (1989), Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum, Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert Verlag.
3. Windfuhr, Gernot L. (1987), "Persian" in Bernard Comrie, ed., The World's Major Languages, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

London (pronounced ) is the capital city of England and the United Kingdom(coming from Roman Londinium ). An important settlement for around two millennia, London is today one of the worlds most important business and financial centres, [1] and its involvement in politics, culture, education, entertainment, media, fashion, sport and... Wiesbaden is a city in central Germany. ... Bernard Comrie (1947-05-23 - ) is a professor at and the director of the Max Planck Institute for evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. ... Oxford is a city and local government district in Oxfordshire, England, with a population of 134,248 (2001 census). ...

External links

Persian language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• AriaDic Persian / English Dictionary with pronunciation
• New Persian Project: Persian
• UCLA Language Materials Project: Persian
• FarsiNet - Information about origin of Persian language, etc.
• Persian to English and English to Persian Dictionary
• Learn Persian
• Easypersian.com
• Persian Linguistics Association
• Persian Fonts