Persian Language

Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan and has official-language status in these three countries. Modern Persian, which has developed out of Middle Persian, is a Southwestern Iranian language. Middle Persian in turn had developed out of Old Persian dating as far back as the sixth to the third centuries B.C.

There are three modern varieties of standard Persian:

  • The Persian variety spoken in Iran has also been called Iranian Persian or Farsi. The writing system is an extended version of the Arabic script.
  • Dari Persian has been used to refer to the Persian language spoken in Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. It uses the same writing system as Iranian Persian.
  • Tajik or Tajiki Persian is the variety used in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Russia, but unlike the Persian used in Iran and Afghanistan, it is written in an extended version of the Cyrillic script.

    The three mentioned varieties are the official, standard versions of the languages in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. There are also several local dialects that differ slightly from the standard Persian. Lari (in Iran), Hazaragi (in Afghanistan), Darwazi (In Afghanistan and Tajikistan) and Dehwari in Pakistan are examples of these dialects. See the Ethnologue's Iranian languages for a list of dialects.

    Persian or Farsi?

    Here's some opinions by Iranian linguists on the topic:

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