Persian language - Wikipedia

Persian language - Wikipedia
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Western Iranian language
"Farsi" redirects here. For other uses, see
Farsi (disambiguation)
Persian
فارسی
Fārsī
Fārsi
written in
Persian calligraphy
Nastaʿlīq
Pronunciation
[fɒːɾˈsiː]
Native to
Iran
Afghanistan
Tajikistan
Uzbekistan
Iraq
Turkmenistan
Azerbaijan
Russia (
Dagestan
Kuwait
Bahrain
Speakers
L1
: 91 million (2023–2024)
L2
: 35 million (2020–2023)
Total: 127 million (2020–2024)
Language family
Indo-European
Indo-Iranian
Iranian
Western
Southwestern
Persian
Early forms
Old Persian
Middle Persian
Early New Persian
Standard forms
Iranian Persian
Dari Persian
Tajik Persian
(Tajik)
Dialects
Iranian (Western)
Dari (Eastern)
Tajik
Bukhori
Pahlavani
Kabuli
Hazaragi
Aimaq
Judeo-Persian
Dehwari
Judeo-Tat
Caucasian Tat
Armeno-Tat
Madaklashti
Indian
Writing system
Arabic
Persian alphabet
) in
Iran
and
Afghanistan
Cyrillic
Tajik alphabet
) in
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
10
Afghanistan
(as
Dari
Tajikistan
(as
Tajik
Russia
Dagestan
; as
Tat
11
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
fas
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
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Persian
also known by its
endonym
Farsi
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
),
12
13
14
Dari Persian
(officially known as
Dari
since 1964),
15
and
Tajiki Persian
(officially known as
Tajik
since 1999).
16
17
It is also spoken natively in the Tajik variety by a significant population within
Uzbekistan
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
Throughout history, Persian was considered prestigious by various empires centered in
West Asia
Central Asia
, and
South Asia
23
Old Persian is attested in
Old Persian cuneiform
on inscriptions from between the 6th and 4th century BCE. 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.
24
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.
23
It was used officially as a language of bureaucracy even by non-native speakers, such as the
Ottomans
in
Anatolia
25
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
Greek
and
Indo-Aryan languages
. It also exerted some influence on Arabic,
26
while borrowing a lot of vocabulary from it in the Middle Ages.
20
27
28
29
30
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.
31
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
Baloches
Tats
Afghan Pashtuns
, and
Aimaqs
. The term
Persophone
might also be used to refer to a speaker of Persian.
32
33
Classification
Persian is a member of the
Western Iranian group
of the
Iranian languages
, which make up a branch of the
Indo-European languages
in their
Indo-Iranian subdivision
. The Western Iranian languages themselves are divided into two subgroups: Southwestern Iranian languages, of which Persian is the most widely spoken, and Northwestern Iranian languages, of which
Kurdish
and
Balochi
are the most widely spoken.
34
Name
The term
Persian
is an English derivation of
Latin
Persiānus
, the adjectival form of
Persia
, itself deriving from
Greek
Persís
Περσίς
),
35
a Hellenized form of
Old Persian
Pārsa
𐎱𐎠𐎼𐎿
),
36
which means "
Persia
" (a region in southwestern Iran, corresponding to modern-day
Fars
). According to the
Oxford English Dictionary
, the term
Persian
as a language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century.
37
Farsi
, which is the Persian word for the Persian language, has also been used widely in English in recent decades, more often to refer to Iran's standard Persian. However, the name
Persian
is still more widely used. The
Academy of Persian Language and Literature
has maintained that the
endonym
Farsi
is to be avoided in foreign languages, and that
Persian
is the appropriate designation of the language in English, 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.
38
Iranian historian and linguist
Ehsan Yarshater
, founder of the
Encyclopædia Iranica
and
Columbia University
's Center for Iranian Studies, mentions the same concern in an academic journal on
Iranology
, rejecting the use of
Farsi
in foreign languages.
39
Etymologically, the term
Farsi
derives from its earlier form
Pārsi
Pārsik
in
Middle Persian
), which in turn comes from the same root as the English term
Persian
40
In the same process, the Middle Persian toponym
Pārs
("Persia") evolved into the modern name Fars.
41
The phonemic shift from
/p/
to
/f/
is due to the
influence of Arabic
in the Middle Ages, from the lack of the phoneme
/p/
in Standard Arabic.
42
43
44
45
Standard varieties' names
The standard Persian of Iran has been called, apart from
Persian
and
Farsi
, by names such as
Iranian Persian
and
Western Persian
, exclusively.
46
47
The official language of Iran is designated simply as
Persian
فارسی
fārsi
).
10
The standard Persian of Afghanistan has been officially named
Dari
دری
dari
) since 1958.
15
Also referred to as
Afghan Persian
in English, it is one of Afghanistan's two official languages, together with
Pashto
. The term
Dari
, meaning "of the court", originally referred to the variety of Persian used in the court of the Sasanian Empire in capital
Ctesiphon
, which spread to the northeast of the empire and gradually replaced the former Iranian dialects of
Parthia
Parthian
).
48
49
Tajik Persian (
форси́и тоҷикӣ́
forsi-i tojikī
), the standard Persian of Tajikistan, has been officially designated as
Tajik
тоҷикӣ
tojikī
) since the time of the
Soviet Union
17
It is the name given to the varieties of Persian spoken in Central Asia in general.
50
ISO codes
The international language-encoding standard
ISO 639-1
uses the code
fa
for the Persian language, as its coding system is mostly based on the native-language designations. The more detailed standard
ISO 639-3
uses the code
fas
for the dialects spoken across Iran and Afghanistan.
51
This consists of the individual languages Dari (
prs
) and Iranian Persian (
pes
). It uses
tgk
for Tajik, separately.
52
History
In general, the Iranian languages are known from three periods: namely Old, Middle, and New (Modern). These correspond to three historical eras of
Iranian history
; Old era being sometime around the
Achaemenid Empire
(i.e., 400–300 BCE), Middle era being the next period most officially around the
Sasanian Empire
, and New era being the period afterward down to present day.
53
According to available documents, the Persian language is "the only Iranian language"
20
for which close philological relationships between all of its three stages are established and so that Old, Middle, and New Persian represent
20
54
one and the same language of Persian; that is, New Persian is a direct descendant of Middle and Old Persian.
54
Gernot Windfuhr considers new Persian as an evolution of the Old Persian language and the Middle Persian language
55
but also states that none of the known Middle Persian dialects is the direct predecessor of Modern Persian.
56
57
Ludwig Paul states: "The language of the Shahnameh should be seen as one instance of continuous historical development from Middle to New Persian."
58
The known history of the Persian language can be divided into the following three distinct periods:
Old Persian
Main article:
Old Persian
An
Old Persian
inscription written in
Old Persian cuneiform
in
Persepolis
, Iran
As a
written language
, Old Persian is attested in royal
Achaemenid
inscriptions. The oldest known text written in Old Persian is from the
Behistun Inscription
, dating to the time of King
Darius I
(reigned 522–486 BCE).
59
citation not found
Examples of Old Persian have been found in what is now
Iran
, Romania (
Gherla
),
60
61
62
Armenia
Bahrain
Iraq
, Turkey, and
Egypt
63
64
Old Persian is one of the earliest attested Indo-European languages.
65
According to certain historical assumptions about the early history and origin of ancient Persians in
Southwestern Iran
(where Achaemenids hailed from), Old Persian was originally spoken by a tribe called
Parsuwash
, who arrived in the
Iranian Plateau
early in the 1st millennium BCE and finally migrated down into the area of present-day Fārs province. Their language, Old Persian, became the official language of the Achaemenid kings.
65
Assyrian records, which in fact appear to provide the earliest evidence for ancient Iranian (Persian and Median) presence on the Iranian Plateau, give a good chronology but only an approximate geographical indication of what seem to be ancient Persians. In these records of the 9th century BCE,
Parsuwash
(along with
Matai
, presumably Medians) are first mentioned in the area of
Lake Urmia
in the records of
Shalmaneser III
66
The exact identity of the Parsuwash is not known for certain, but from a linguistic viewpoint the word matches Old Persian
pārsa
itself coming directly from the older word
pārćwa
66
Also, as Old Persian contains many words from another extinct Iranian language,
Median
, according to
P. O. Skjærvø
it is probable that Old Persian had already been spoken before the formation of the
Achaemenid Empire
and was spoken during most of the first half of the first millennium BCE.
65
Xenophon
, a Greek general serving in some of the Persian expeditions, describes many aspects of Armenian village life and hospitality in around 401 BCE, which is when Old Persian was still spoken and extensively used. He relates that the
Armenian people
spoke a
language
that to his ear sounded like the language of the Persians.
67
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
Main article:
Middle Persian
Middle Persian
text written in
Inscriptional Pahlavi
on the
Paikuli inscription
from between 293 and 297.
Slemani Museum
Iraqi Kurdistan
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
(modern
e/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 BCE. However, Middle Persian is not actually attested until 600 years later when it appears in the Sassanid era (224–651 CE) 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 of
Zoroastrianism
Middle Persian is considered to be a later form of the same dialect as Old Persian.
68
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.
New Persian
Main article:
New Persian
Ferdowsi
's
Shahnameh
"New Persian" (also referred to as Modern Persian) 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.
69
Early New Persian
New Persian texts written in the
Arabic script
first appear in the 9th-century.
70
The language is a direct descendant of Middle Persian, the official, religious, and literary language of the Sasanian Empire (224–651).
71
However, it is not descended from the literary form of Middle Persian (known as
pārsīg
, commonly called Pahlavi), which was spoken by the people of
Fars
and used in
Zoroastrian
religious writings. Instead, it is descended from the dialect spoken by the court of the Sasanian capital
Ctesiphon
and the northeastern Iranian region of
Khorasan
, known as Dari.
70
72
The region, which comprised the present territories of northwestern Afghanistan as well as parts of Central Asia, played a leading role in the rise of New Persian. Khorasan, which was the homeland of the Parthians, was Persianized under the Sasanians. Dari Persian thus supplanted
Parthian language
pahlavānīg
), which by the end of the Sasanian era had fallen out of use.
70
New Persian has incorporated many foreign words, including from
eastern
northern and northern Iranian languages such as
Sogdian
and especially Parthian.
73
Persian notes on
Quranic
booklets, written by a native of
Tus
called Ahmad Khayqani in 292 AH (905 CE)
A page from a manuscript of "Kitab al-Abniya 'an Haqa'iq al-Adwiya" by
Abu Mansur Muwaffaq
, Copied by
Asadi Tusi
in 447 AH (1055 CE).
The transition to 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
(874–999).
74
Abbas of
Merv
is mentioned as being the earliest minstrel to chant verse in the New Persian tongue and after him the poems of
Hanzala Badghisi
were among the most famous between the Persian-speakers of the time.
75
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 are versified fables collected in the
Kalila wa Dimna
23
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 aided due to its relatively simple morphology, and this situation persisted until at least the 19th century.
76
In the late Middle Ages, new Islamic literary languages were created on the Persian model:
Ottoman Turkish
Chagatai Turkic
Dobhashi Bengali
, and Urdu, which are regarded as "structural daughter languages" of Persian.
76
Classical Persian
See also:
List of Persian-language poets and authors
Kalilah va Dimna
, an influential work in Persian literature
"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-Mongol dynasties during the 12th to 15th centuries, and under restored Persian rule during the 16th to 19th centuries.
77
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
Turkmen beyliks of Anatolia
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.
78
79
Use in Asia Minor
Persian on an
Ottoman miniature
A branch of the Seljuks, the
Sultanate of Rum
, took Persian language, art, and letters to Anatolia.
80
They adopted the Persian language as the
official language
of the empire.
81
The
Ottomans
, who can roughly be seen as their eventual successors, inherited this tradition. Persian was the official court language of the empire, and for some time, the official language of the empire.
82
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
83
It was a major literary language in the empire.
84
Some of the noted earlier Persian works during the Ottoman rule are
Idris Bidlisi
's
Hasht Bihisht
, which began in 1502 and covered the reign of the first eight Ottoman rulers, and the
Salim-Namah
, a glorification of Selim I.
83
After a period of several centuries,
Ottoman Turkish
(which was highly Persianised itself) had developed toward a fully accepted language of literature, and which was even able to lexically satisfy the demands of a scientific presentation.
85
However, the number of Persian and Arabic loanwords contained in those works increased at times up to 88%.
85
In the Ottoman Empire, Persian was used at the royal court, for diplomacy, poetry, historiographical works, literary works, and was taught in state schools, and was also offered as an elective course or recommended for study in some
madrasas
86
Use in the Balkans
Persian learning was also widespread in the Ottoman-held
Balkans
Rumelia
), with a range of cities being famed for their long-standing traditions in the study of Persian and its classics, amongst them Saraybosna (modern
Sarajevo
, Bosnia and Herzegovina),
Mostar
(also in Bosnia and Herzegovina), and Vardar Yenicesi (or Yenice-i Vardar, now
Giannitsa
, in northern Greece).
87
Vardar Yenicesi differed from other localities in the Balkans insofar as that it was a town where Persian was also widely spoken.
88
However, the Persian of Vardar Yenicesi and of the rest of the Ottoman-held Balkans was different from formal Persian both in accent and vocabulary.
88
The difference was apparent to such a degree that the Ottomans referred to it as "Rumelian Persian" (
Rumili Farsisi
).
88
As learned people such as students, scholars and literati often frequented Vardar Yenicesi, it soon became the site of a flourishing
Persianate
linguistic and literary culture.
88
The 16th-century Ottoman
Aşık Çelebi
(died 1572), who hailed from
Prizren
in modern-day
Kosovo
, was galvanized by the abundant Persian-speaking and Persian-writing communities of Vardar Yenicesi, and he referred to the city as a "hotbed of Persian".
88
Many Ottoman Persianists who established a career in the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (modern-day
Istanbul
) pursued early Persian training in Saraybosna, amongst them
Ahmed Sudi
89
Use in Indian subcontinent
Main article:
Persian language in the Indian subcontinent
See also:
Persian and Urdu
and
Dobhashi
Persian poem,
Agra Fort
, India, 18th century
Persian poem,
Takht-e Shah Jahan
Agra Fort
, India
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.
90
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.
80
For five centuries prior to the
British colonization
, 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 on the subcontinent and became the sole "official language" under the
Mughal emperors
The
Bengal Sultanate
witnessed an influx of Persian scholars, lawyers, teachers, and clerics. Thousands of Persian books and manuscripts were published in Bengal. The period of the reign of Sultan
Ghiyathuddin Azam Shah
is described as the "golden age of Persian literature in Bengal". Its stature was illustrated by the Sultan's own correspondence and collaboration with the Persian poet
Hafez
; a poem which can be found in the
Divan of Hafez
today.
91
Bengali
dialect emerged among the common
Bengali Muslim
folk, based on a Persian model and known as
Dobhashi
; meaning
mixed language
. Dobhashi Bengali was patronised and given official status under the
Sultans of Bengal
, and was a popular literary form used by Bengalis during the pre-colonial period, irrespective of their religion.
92
Following the defeat of the
Hindu Shahi
dynasty, classical Persian was established as a courtly language in the region during the late 10th century under
Ghaznavid
rule over the northwestern frontier of the
subcontinent
93
Employed by
Punjabis
in literature, Persian achieved prominence in the region during the following centuries.
93
Persian continued to act as a courtly language for various empires in
Punjab
through the early 19th century serving finally as the official state language of the
Sikh Empire
, preceding
British conquest
and the decline of Persian in South Asia.
94
95
96
Beginning in 1843, though, English and
Hindustani
gradually replaced Persian in importance on the subcontinent.
97
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
Hindi
Urdu
(also historically known as
Hindustani
),
Punjabi
Kashmiri
, and
Sindhi
98
There is also a small population of Zoroastrian
Iranis
in India, who migrated in the 19th century to escape religious persecution in
Qajar Iran
and speak a Dari dialect.
Contemporary Persian
Qajar dynasty
Persian dialects
In the 19th century, under the
Qajar dynasty
, the dialect that is spoken in
Tehran
rose to prominence. There was still substantial Arabic vocabulary, but many of these words have been integrated into Persian phonology and grammar. In addition, under the Qajar rule, numerous
Russian
French
, and English terms entered the Persian language, especially vocabulary related to technology.
The first official attentions to the necessity of protecting the Persian language against foreign words, and to the standardization of
Persian orthography
, were under the reign of
Naser ed Din Shah
of the
Qajar dynasty
in 1871.
citation needed
After Naser ed Din Shah,
Mozaffar ed Din Shah
ordered the establishment of the first Persian association in 1903.
38
This association officially declared that it used Persian and
Arabic
as acceptable sources for coining words. The ultimate goal was to prevent books from being printed with wrong use of words. According to the executive guarantee of this association, the government was responsible for wrongfully printed books. Words coined by this association, such as
rāh-āhan
راه‌آهن
) for "railway", were printed in
Soltani Newspaper
; but the association was eventually closed due to inattention.
citation needed
A scientific association was founded in 1911, resulting in a dictionary called
Words of Scientific Association
لغت انجمن علمی
), which was completed later and renamed
Katouzian Dictionary
فرهنگ کاتوزیان
).
99
Pahlavi dynasty
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The first academy for the Persian language was founded on 20 May 1935, under the name
Academy of Iran
. It was established by the initiative of
Reza Shah Pahlavi
, and mainly by
Hekmat e Shirazi
and
Mohammad Ali Foroughi
, all prominent names in the nationalist movement of the time.
The academy was a key institution in the struggle to re-build Iran as a nation-state after the collapse of the Qajar dynasty. During the 1930s and 1940s, the academy led massive campaigns to replace the many
Arabic
Russian
French
, and
Greek
loanwords whose widespread use in Persian during the centuries preceding the foundation of the Pahlavi dynasty had created a literary language considerably different from the spoken Persian of the time.
citation needed
This became the basis of what is now known as "Contemporary Standard Persian".
Varieties
There are three standard varieties of modern Persian:
Iranian Persian
Persian
Western Persian
, or
Farsi
) is spoken in
Iran
, and by minorities in
Iraq
and the
Persian Gulf
states.
Eastern Persian
Dari Persian
Afghan Persian
, or
Dari
) is spoken in
Afghanistan
Tajiki
Tajik Persian
) is spoken in
Tajikistan
and
Uzbekistan
. It is written in the
Cyrillic script
All 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 Afghanistan),
Herati
(in Western Afghanistan), Darwazi (in Afghanistan and Tajikistan),
Basseri
(in Southern Iran), and the
Tehrani accent
(in Iran, the basis of standard Iranian Persian) are examples of these dialects. Persian-speaking peoples of Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan can understand one another with a relatively high degree of
mutual intelligibility
100
Nevertheless, the
Encyclopædia Iranica
notes that the Iranian, Afghan, and Tajiki varieties comprise distinct branches of the Persian language, and within each branch a wide variety of local dialects exist.
101
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 of
Lorestan
Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad
Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari
some western parts of
Fars province
, and some parts of
Khuzestan province
Achomi
(or
Lari
), spoken mainly in southern Iranian provinces of Fars and
Hormozgan
, unlike
New Persian
and its variants like
Dari
Standard Persian
, and
Iranian Persian
, this is a branch of
Middle Persian
102
103
104
Tat
, spoken in parts of Azerbaijan, Russia, and Transcaucasia. It is classified as a variety of Persian.
105
106
107
108
109
(This dialect is not to be confused with the
Tati language
of northwestern Iran, which is a member of a different branch of the Iranian languages.)
Judeo-Tat
. Part of the Tat-Persian continuum, spoken in Azerbaijan, Russia, as well as by immigrant communities in Israel and New York.
More distantly related branches of the
Iranian language family
include Kurdish and
Balochi
The
Glottolog
database proposes the following phylogenetic classification:
Farsic–Caucasian Tat
Caucasian Tat
Judeo-Tat
Muslim Tat
(including Armeno-Tat)
Farsic
Eastern Farsic
Aimaq
Dari
Dehwari
Hazaragi
Pahlavani
Tajikic
Bukharic
Tajik
Judeo-Persian
Western Farsi
Phonology
Main article:
Persian phonology
Iranian Persian and Tajik have six vowels; Dari has eight. Iranian Persian has twenty-three consonants, but both Dari and Tajiki have twenty-four consonants, due to the phonemic merger of
/q/
and
/ɣ/
in Iranian Persian.
110
Persian spoken by an Iranian, recorded in the United States in 2018
Vowels
Tehrani Persian vowel chart
Front
Back
Close
Mid
Open
Dari vowel chart
Front
Back
long
short
short
long
Close
iː
mid
Open
Tajik vowel chart
Front
Central
Back
Close
ɵ̞
mid
Open
The vowel phonemes of modern Tehran Persian
Historically, Persian distinguished length. Early New Persian had a series of five long vowels (
iː
uː
ɑː
oː
, and
eː
) along with three short vowels
, and
. 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
شیر
shēr
"lion" vs.
شیر
shīr
"milk", and
زود
zūd
"quick" vs
زور
zōr
"strength" were lost. However, there are exceptions to this rule, and in some words,
and
are 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
روشن
[roʊʃæn]
(bright). Numerous other instances exist.
However, in Dari, the archaic distinction of
/eː/
and
/iː/
(respectively known as
یای مجهول
Yā-ye majhūl
and
یای معروف
Yā-ye ma'rūf
) is still preserved as well as the distinction of
/oː/
and
/uː/
(known as
واو مجهول
Wāw-e majhūl
and
واو معروف
Wāw-e ma'rūf
). On the other hand, in standard Tajik, the length distinction has disappeared, and
/iː/
merged with
/i/
and
/uː/
with
/u/
111
Therefore, contemporary Afghan Dari dialects are the closest to the vowel inventory of Early New Persian.
112
According to most studies on the subject, the three vowels traditionally considered long (
/i/
/u/
/ɒ/
) are currently distinguished from their short counterparts (
/e/
/o/
/æ/
) by position of articulation rather than by length. However, there are studies 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.
113
There are also some studies that consider quality and quantity to be both active in the Iranian system. 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.
113
Consonants
Labial
Alveolar
Post-alv.
Palatal
Velar
Uvular
Glottal
Nasal
Stop
t͡ʃ
d͡ʒ
Fricative
Tap
Approximant
Notes:
in
Iranian Persian
and
have merged into
, as a voiced velar fricative
[ɣ]
when positioned
intervocalically
and unstressed, and as a voiced uvular stop
[ɢ]
otherwise.
114
115
116
/n/
is realized as
before velar consonants.
citation needed
Grammar
Main article:
Persian grammar
Morphology
Suffixes predominate Persian
morphology
, though there are a small number of prefixes.
117
Verbs can express tense and
aspect
, and they agree with the subject in person and number.
118
While Old Persian had
grammatical gender
119
120
there is no
grammatical gender
in modern Persian, and pronouns are not marked for
natural gender
. In other words, in Persian, pronouns are gender-neutral. When referring to a masculine or a feminine subject, the same pronoun
او
is used (pronounced "ou", ū).
121
Syntax
Persian adheres mainly to subject–object–verb (
SOV
) word order. But case endings (e.g. for subject, object, etc.) expressed via suffixes may allow users to vary word order. Verbs agree with the subject in person and number. Normal declarative sentences are structured as
(S) (PP) (O) V
: sentences have optional
subjects
prepositional phrases
, and
objects
followed by a compulsory
verb
. If the object is specific, the object is followed by the word
rā
and precedes prepositional phrases:
(S) (O +
rā
) (PP) V
118
Vocabulary
Main article:
Persian 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.
Influences
See also:
List of English words of Persian origin
List of French loanwords in Persian
, and
Iranian languages § Comparison table
While having a lesser influence from
Arabic
28
and other languages of
Mesopotamia
and its core vocabulary being of
Middle Persian
origin,
122
New Persian contains a considerable number of Arabic lexical items,
20
27
29
which were Persianized
30
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.
123
John R. Perry
, in his article "Lexical Areas and Semantic Fields of Arabic", estimates that about 20 percent of everyday vocabulary in current Persian, and around 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.
124
According to another source, about 40% of everyday Persian literary vocabulary is of Arabic origin.
125
Among the Arabic loan words, relatively few (14 percent) are from the semantic domain of material culture, while a larger number are from domains of intellectual and spiritual life.
126
Most of the Arabic words used in Persian are either synonyms of native terms or could be glossed in Persian.
126
The inclusion of
Mongolic
and
Turkic
elements in the Persian language should also be mentioned,
127
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.).
128
New military and political titles were coined based partially on Middle Persian (e.g.
ارتش
arteš
for "army", instead of the Uzbek
قؤشین
qoʻshin
سرلشکر
sarlaškar
دریابان
daryābān
; etc.) in the 20th century. Persian has likewise influenced the vocabularies of other languages, especially other
Indo-European languages
such as
Armenian
129
Urdu, Bengali, and Hindi; the latter three through conquests of Persianized Central Asian Turkic and Afghan invaders;
130
Turkic languages
such as
Ottoman Turkish
Chagatai
Tatar
Turkish
131
Turkmen
Azeri
132
Uzbek
, and
Karachay-Balkar
133
Caucasian languages
such as
Georgian
134
and, to a lesser extent,
Avar
and
Lezgin
135
Afro-Asiatic languages like
Assyrian
List of loanwords in Assyrian Neo-Aramaic
) and
Arabic
, particularly
Bahrani Arabic
26
136
and even
Dravidian languages
indirectly especially
Malayalam
Tamil
Telugu
, and
Brahui
; as well as
Austronesian languages
such as
Indonesian
and
Malaysian
Malay
. Persian has also had a significant lexical influence, via Turkish, on
Albanian
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
مرسی
merci
(stressed, however, on the first syllable), the hybrid Persian-Arabic phrase
متشکّرَم
motešakkeram
متشکّر
motešakker
being "thankful" in Arabic, commonly pronounced
moččakker
in Persian, and the verb
ـَم
am
meaning "I am" in Persian), or by the pure Persian phrase
سپاسگزارم
sepās-gozāram
Orthography
Example showing Nastaʿlīq's (Persian) proportion rules
137
citation not found
Ali-Akbar Dehkhoda
's personal handwriting, a typical
cursive
Persian script
The word "Persian" in the
Book Pahlavi
script
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
111
138
is written with the
Cyrillic script
in
Tajikistan
(see
Tajik alphabet
). There also exist several
romanization systems for Persian
Persian alphabet
Main article:
Persian alphabet
Modern Iranian Persian and Afghan Persian are written using the
Persian alphabet
, which is a modified variant of the
Arabic alphabet
, using different pronunciation and additional letters not found in the Arabic language. After the
Arab conquest of Persia
, it took approximately 200 years before Persians adopted the Arabic script in place of the older alphabet. Previously, two 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 the
Avestan
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: Iranian Persian
kerm
"worm",
karam
"generosity",
kerem
"cream", and
krom
"chrome" are all spelled
krm
کرم
) in Persian. The reader must determine the word from context. The Arabic system of vocalization marks known as
harakat
is also used in Persian, although 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.
Persian typewriter keyboard layout
A variant of the Iranian standard ISIRI 9147 keyboard layout for Persian
There are several letters generally only used in Arabic loanwords. These letters are pronounced the same as similar Persian letters. For example, there are four functionally identical letters for
ز ذ ض ظ
), three letters for
س ص ث
), two letters for
ط ت
), two letters for
ح ه
).
On the other hand, there are four letters that do not exist in Arabic
پ چ ژ گ
Additions
The
Persian alphabet
adds four letters to the Arabic alphabet:
Sound
Isolated form
Final form
Medial form
Initial form
Name
/p/
ـپ
ـپـ
پـ
pe
/tʃ/
ـچ
ـچـ
چـ
če (che)
/ʒ/
ـژ
ـژ
že (zhe or jhe)
/ɡ/
ـگ
ـگـ
گـ
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/
, e.g. archaic
زڤان
/zaβaːn/
زبان
/zæbɒn/
'language'
139
Sound
Isolated form
Final form
Medial form
Initial form
Name
/β/
ـڤ
ـڤـ
ڤـ
βe
Variations
The Persian alphabet also modifies some letters of the Arabic alphabet. For example,
alef with hamza below
) changes to
alef
); words using various
hamzas
get spelled with yet another kind of hamza (so that
مسؤول
becomes
مسئول
) even though the latter has been accepted in Arabic since the 1980s; and
teh marbuta
) changes to
heh
) or
teh
).
The letters different in shape are:
Arabic style letter
Persian style letter
Name
ke
(kāf)
ye
However,
in shape and form is the traditional Arabic style that continues in the Nile Valley, namely,
Egypt
Sudan
, and
South Sudan
Latin alphabet
Main article:
Romanization of Persian
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"
140
but the transliteration scheme is not in widespread use.
Another Latin alphabet, based on the
New Turkic Alphabet
, was used in
Tajikistan
in the 1920s and 1930s. The alphabet was phased out in favor of
Cyrillic
in the late 1930s.
111
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
Main article:
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 in the country.
111
141
Tajiki advertisement for an academy
Examples
The following text is from Article 1 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Iranian Persian (
Nastaʿlīq
همه‌ی افراد بشر آزاد به دنیا می‌آیند و حیثیت و حقوق‌شان با هم برابر است، همه اندیشه و وجدان دارند و باید در برابر یکدیگر با روح برادری رفتار کنند.
Iranian Persian (
Naskh
همه‌ی افراد بشر آزاد به دنیا می‌آیند و حیثیت و حقوق‌شان با هم برابر است، همه اندیشه و وجدان دارند و باید در برابر یکدیگر با روح برادری رفتار کنند.
Iranian Persian
transliteration
Hame-ye afrād-e bashar āzād be donyā mi āyand o heysiyat o hoquq-e shān bā ham barābar ast, hame andishe o vejdān dārand o bāyad dar barābare yekdigar bā ruh-e barādari raftār konand.
Iranian Persian
IPA
[hæmeje
æfrɒde
bæʃær
ɒzɒd
be
donjɒ
miɒjænd
hejsijæt
hoɢuɢe
ʃɒn
bɒ
hæm
bærɒbær
æst
hæme
ʃɒn
ændiʃe
vedʒdɒn
dɒrænd
bɒjæd
dær
bærɒbære
jekdiɡær
bɒ
ruhe
bærɒdæri
ræftɒr
konænd]
Tajiki
Ҳамаи афроди башар озод ба дунё меоянд ва ҳайсияту ҳуқуқашон бо ҳам баробар аст, ҳамаашон андешаву виҷдон доранд ва бояд дар баробари якдигар бо рӯҳи бародарӣ рафтор кунанд.
Tajiki
transliteration
Hamai afrodi bashar ozod ba dunjo meoyand va haysiyatu huquqashon bo ham barobar ast, hamaashon andeshavu vijdon dorand va boyad dar barobari yakdigar bo rūhi barodarī raftor kunand.
English translation
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act toward one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
See also
Academy of Persian Language and Literature
Indo-European copula
Iranian languages
Iranian Persian
, Western Persian
List of countries and territories where Persian is an official language
List of English words of Persian origin
List of French loanwords in Persian
Middle Persian
Parthian language
Persian Braille
Persian metres
Persian name
Romanization of Persian
List of link languages
Dialect continuum
Geolinguistics
Language geography
Notes
as
Dari
as
Tajik
as Tajik
as
Tat
as Tat
ɜːr
ən
ən
PUR
-zhən, -⁠shən
فارسی
, Fārsī
[fɒːɾˈsiː]
or
پارسی
, Pārsī
[pʰɒːɾˈsiː]
Citations
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
Foltz, Richard (1996). "The Tajiks of Uzbekistan".
Central Asian Survey
15
(2):
213–
216.
doi
10.1080/02634939608400946
ISSN
0263-4937
"IRAQ"
Encyclopædia Iranica
Archived
from the original on 17 November 2014
. Retrieved
7 November
2014
Akiner, Shirin (1986).
Islamic Peoples of the Soviet Union
. London: Routledge. p. 362.
ISBN
0-7103-0188-X
Windfuhr, Gernot:
The Iranian Languages
, Routledge 2009, p. 417–418.
"Kuwaiti Persian"
UNESCO
. Archived from
the original
on 29 October 2023
. Retrieved
27 October
2023
"What Languages Are Spoken in Bahrain?"
WorldAtlas
. 5 September 2019
. Retrieved
24 September
2025
Persian language
at
Ethnologue
(28th ed., 2025)
Windfuhr, Gernot:
The Iranian Languages
, Routledge 2009, p. 418.
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."
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."
"Persian, Iranian"
Ethnologue
Archived
from the original on 5 January 2022
. Retrieved
25 February
2021
"639 Identifier Documentation: fas"
. Sil.org.
Archived
from the original on 16 February 2022
. Retrieved
25 February
2021
"The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran"
Islamic Parliament of Iran
. Archived from
the original
on 27 October 2016
. Retrieved
18 January
2022
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.
Siddikzoda, S. "Tajik Language: Farsi or not Farsi?" in
Media Insight Central Asia #27
, August 2002.
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.
Jonson, Lena (2006).
Tajikistan in the new Central Asia
. p. 108.
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).
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."
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).
Skjærvø, Prods Oktor (2006).
"Iran, vi. Iranian languages and scripts"
Encyclopædia Iranica
. Vol. XIII. pp.
344–
377.
Archived
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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.).
de Bruijn, J.T.P. (14 December 2015).
"Persian literature"
Encyclopædia Britannica
Archived
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Skjærvø, Prods Oktor.
"Iran vi. Iranian languages and scripts (2) Documentation"
Encyclopædia Iranica
. Vol. XIII. pp.
348–
366.
Archived
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2012
Egger, Vernon O. (16 September 2016).
A History of the Muslim World since 1260: The Making of a Global Community
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ISBN
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Archived
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Holes, Clive (2001).
Dialect, Culture, and Society in Eastern Arabia: Glossary
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ISBN
90-04-10763-0
Archived
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2013
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.
Namazi, Nushin (24 November 2008).
"Persian Loan Words in Arabic"
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2009
Classe, Olive (2000).
Encyclopedia of literary translation into English
. Taylor & Francis. p. 1057.
ISBN
1-884964-36-2
Archived
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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.
Lambton, Ann K. S. (1953).
Persian grammar
. Cambridge University Press.
The Arabic words incorporated into the Persian language have become Persianized.
Vafa, A; Abedinifard, M; Azadibougar, O (2021).
Persian Literature as World Literature
. US: Bloomsbury Publishing. pp.
2–
14.
ISBN
978-1-501-35420-5
Perry 2005
, p. 284.
Green, Nile (2012).
Making Space: Sufis and Settlers in Early Modern India
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12–
13.
ISBN
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Windfuhr, Gernot (1987). Comrie, Berard (ed.).
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ISBN
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Περσίς
Liddell, Henry George
Scott, Robert
A Greek–English Lexicon
at the
Perseus Project
Harper, Douglas.
"Persia"
Online Etymology Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary
online
, s.v. "Persian", draft revision June 2007.
Jazayeri, M. A. (15 December 1999).
"Farhangestān"
Encyclopædia Iranica
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"Zaban-i Nozohur".
Iran-Shenasi: A Journal of Iranian Studies
IV
(I):
27–
30. 1992.
Spooner, Brian; Hanaway, William L. (2012).
Literacy in the Persianate World: Writing and the Social Order
. University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 6, 81.
ISBN
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Archived
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Spooner, Brian (2012).
"Dari, Farsi, and Tojiki"
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Language Policy and Language Conflict in Afghanistan and Its Neighbors: The Changing Politics of Language Choice
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ISBN
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Archived
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Campbell, George L.; King, Gareth, eds. (2013).
"Persian"
Compendium of the World's Languages
(3rd ed.). Routledge. p. 1339.
ISBN
9781136258466
Archived
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Perry, John R. "Persian morphology." Morphologies of Asia and Africa 2 (2007): 975–1019.
Seraji, Mojgan, Beáta Megyesi, and Joakim Nivre. "A basic language resource kit for Persian." Eight International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2012), 23–25 May 2012, Istanbul, Turkey. European Language Resources Association, 2012.
Sahranavard, Neda, and Jerry Won Lee. "The Persianization of English in multilingual Tehran." World Englishes (2020).
Richardson, Charles Francis (1892).
The International Cyclopedia: A Compendium of Human Knowledge
. Dodd, Mead. p. 541.
Strazny, Philipp (2013).
Encyclopedia of Linguistics
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ISBN
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Lazard, Gilbert (17 November 2011).
"Darī"
Encyclopædia Iranica
. Vol. VII. pp.
34–
35.
Archived
from the original on 24 November 2020
. Retrieved
22 July
2019
It is derived from the word for
dar
(court, lit., "gate").
Darī
was thus the language of the court and of the capital, Ctesiphon. On the other hand, it is equally clear from this passage that
darī
was also in use in the eastern part of the empire, in Khorasan, where in the course of the Sasanian period Persian gradually supplanted Parthian and no dialect that was not Persian survived. The passage thus suggests that
darī
was actually a form of Persian, the common language of Persia. (...) Both were called
pārsī
(Persian), but it is very likely that the language of the north, that is, the Persian used on former Parthian territory and also in the Sasanian capital, was distinguished from its congener by a new name,
darī
([language] of the court).
Paul, Ludwig (19 November 2013).
"Persian Language: i: Early New Persian"
Encyclopædia Iranica
Archived
from the original on 17 March 2019
. Retrieved
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2019
Northeast
. Khorasan, the homeland of the Parthians (called
abaršahr
"the upper lands" in MP), had been partly Persianized already in late Sasanian times. Following Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ, the variant of Persian spoken there was called
Darī
and was based upon the one used in the Sasanian capital Seleucia-Ctesiphon (Ar.
al-Madāʾen
). (...) Under the specific historical conditions that have been sketched above, the Dari (Middle) Persian of the 7th century was developed, within two centuries, to the Dari (New) Persian that is attested in the earliest specimens of NP poetry in the late 9th century.
Perry, John (20 July 2009).
"Tajik ii. Tajik Persian"
Encyclopædia Iranica
Archived
from the original on 1 February 2020
. Retrieved
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2019
"639 Identifier Documentation: fas"
. Sil.org.
Archived
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2021
"639 Identifier Documentation: tgk"
. Sil.org.
Archived
from the original on 2 March 2021
. Retrieved
5 March
2021
Skjærvø 2006
vi(2). Documentation.
cf.
Skjærvø 2006
vi(2). Documentation. Excerpt 1: "Only the official languages Old, Middle, and New Persian represent three stages of one and the same language, whereas close genetic relationships are difficult to establish between other Middle and Modern Iranian languages. Modern Yaḡnōbi belongs to the same dialect group as Sogdian, but is not a direct descendant; Bactrian may be closely related to modern Yidḡa and Munji (Munjāni); and Wakhi (Wāḵi) belongs with Khotanese.
Excerpt 2:
New Persian, the descendant of Middle Persian and official language of Iranian states for centuries."
Comrie, Bernard (2003).
The Major Languages of South Asia, the Middle East and Africa
. Routledge.
ISBN
978-1-134-93257-3
, p. 82. "The evolution of Persian as the culturally dominant language of major parts of the Near East, from Anatolia and Iran, to Central Asia, to northwest India until recent centuries, began with the political domination of these areas by dynasties originating in southwestern province of Iran, Pars, later Arabicised to Fars: first the Achaemenids (599–331 BC) whose official language was Old Persian; then the Sassanids (c. AD 225–651) whose official 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)" derives from Old Iranian aryanam (Khshathra)' (the realm) of Aryans'. The dominance of these two dynasties 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 documented by the Middle Persian texts of the Manichean found in the oasis city of Turfan in Chinese Turkistan (
Sinkiang
). This led to certain degree of regionalisation".
Comrie, Bernard (1990)
The major languages of South Asia, the Middle East and Africa
, Taylor & Francis, p. 82
Barbara M. Horvath, Paul Vaughan,
Community languages
, 1991, p. 276
L. Paul (2005), "The Language of the Shahnameh in historical and dialectical perspective", p. 150: "The language of the Shahnameh should be seen as one instance of continuous historical development from Middle to New Persian.",
in
Weber, Dieter; MacKenzie, D. N. (2005).
Languages of Iran: Past and Present: Iranian Studies in Memoriam David Neil MacKenzie
. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag.
ISBN
978-3-447-05299-3
Archived
from the original on 17 November 2016
. Retrieved
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2015
Schmitt 2008
, pp. 80–1.
Kuhrt 2013
, p. 197.
Frye 1984
, p. 103.
Schmitt 2000
, p. 53.
"Roland G. Kent, Old Persian, 1953"
Archived
from the original on 19 July 2017
. Retrieved
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2015
Kent, R. G.: "Old Persian: Grammar Texts Lexicon", page 6. American Oriental Society, 1950.
Skjærvø 2006
, vi(2). Documentation. Old Persian.
Skjærvø 2006
, vi(1). Earliest Evidence
Xenophon
Anabasis
. pp. IV.v.2–9.
Nicholas Sims-Williams, "The Iranian Languages", in Steever, Sanford (ed.) (1993),
The Indo-European Languages
, p. 129.
Jeremias, Eva M. (2004). "Iran, iii. (f). New Persian".
Encyclopaedia of Islam
. Vol. 12 (New Edition, Supplement ed.). p. 432.
ISBN
90-04-13974-5
Paul 2000
sfn error: no target: CITEREFPaul2000 (
help
Lazard 1975
, p. 596.
Perry 2011
Lazard 1975
, p. 597.
Jackson, A. V. Williams. 1920. Early Persian poetry, from the beginnings down to the time of Firdausi. New York: The Macmillan Company. pp.17–19. (in
Public Domain
Jackson, A. V. Williams.pp.17–19.
Johanson, Lars, and Christiane Bulut. 2006.
Turkic-Iranian contact areas: historical and linguistic aspects
Archived
2 October 2011 at the
Wayback Machine
. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
according to
iranchamber.com
Archived
29 June 2018 at the
Wayback Machine
"the language (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 chosen 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."
Yazıcı, Tahsin (2010).
"Persian authors of Asia Minor part 1"
Encyclopaedia Iranica
Archived
from the original on 17 November 2020
. Retrieved
6 July
2021
Persian language and culture were actually so popular and dominant in this period that in the late 14th century, Moḥammad (Meḥmed) Bey, the founder and the governing head of the Qaramanids, published an official edict to end this supremacy, saying that: "The Turkish language should be spoken in courts, palaces, and at official institutions from now on!"
John Andrew Boyle,
Some thoughts on the sources for the Il-Khanid period of Persian history
, in
Iran
: Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, British Institute of Persian Studies, vol. 12 (1974), p. 175.
de Laet, Sigfried J. (1994).
History of Humanity: From the seventh to the sixteenth century
. UNESCO.
ISBN
978-92-3-102813-7
Archived
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, p 734
Ágoston, Gábor; Masters, Bruce Alan (2010).
Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire
. Infobase Publishing. p. 322.
ISBN
978-1-4381-1025-7
Archived
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. Retrieved
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2016
Wastl-Walter, Doris (2011).
The Ashgate Research Companion to Border Studies
. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 409.
ISBN
978-0-7546-7406-1
Archived
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. Retrieved
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2019
Spuler 2003
, p. 68.
Lewis, Franklin D. (2014).
Rumi – Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teachings, and Poetry of Jalâl al-Din Rumi
. Oneworld Publications. p. 340.
ISBN
978-1-78074-737-8
Archived
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. Retrieved
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2019
Spuler 2003
, p. 69.
Chapter "Imperial Ambitions, Mystical Aspirations: Persian Learning in the Ottoman World" by Inan, Murat Umut. In Green, Nile (ed.), 2019, The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca. University of California Press. pp. 88–89. "As the Ottoman Turks learned Persian, the language and the culture it carried seeped not only into their court and imperial institutions but also into their vernacular language and culture. The appropriation of Persian, both as a second language and as a language to be steeped together with Turkish, was encouraged notably by the sultans, the ruling class, and leading members of the mystical communities."
Chapter "Ottoman Historical Writing" by Tezcan, Baki. In Rabasa, José (ed.), 2012, The Oxford History of Historical Writing: Volume 3: 1400–1800 The Oxford History of Historical Writing: Volume 3: 1400–1800. Oxford University Press. pp. 192–211. "Persian served as a 'minority' prestige language of culture at the largely Turcophone Ottoman court."
Learning to Read in the Late Ottoman Empire and the Early Turkish Republic
, B. Fortna, page 50;"
Although in the late Ottoman period Persian was taught in the state schools....
Persian Historiography and Geography
, Bertold Spuler, page 68, "
On the whole, the circumstance in Turkey took a similar course: in Anatolia, the Persian language had played a significant role as the carrier of civilization.[..]..where it was at time, to some extent, the language of diplomacy...However Persian maintained its position also during the early Ottoman period in the composition of histories and even Sultan Salim I, a bitter enemy of Iran and the Shi'ites, wrote poetry in Persian. Besides some poetical adaptations, the most important historiographical works are: Idris Bidlisi's flowery "Hasht Bihist", or Seven Paradises, begun in 1502 by the request of Sultan Bayazid II and covering the first eight Ottoman rulers..
Picturing History at the Ottoman Court
, Emine Fetvacı, page 31, "
Persian literature, and belles-lettres in particular, were part of the curriculum: a Persian dictionary, a manual on prose composition; and Sa'dis "Gulistan", one of the classics of Persian poetry, were borrowed. All these title would be appropriate in the religious and cultural education of the newly converted young men.
Persian Historiography: History of Persian Literature A, Volume 10
, edited by Ehsan Yarshater, Charles Melville, page 437;"...Persian held a privileged place in Ottoman letters. Persian historical literature was first patronized during the reign of Mehmed II and continued unabated until the end of the 16th century.
Chapter
Imperial Ambitions, Mystical Aspirations: Persian learning in the Ottoman World
, Murat Umut Inan, page 92 (note 27), edited by
Nile Green
, (title:
The Persianate World The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca
); "Though Persian, unlike Arabic, was not included in the typical curriculum of an Ottoman madrasa, the language was offered as an elective course or recommended for study in some madrasas. For those Ottoman madrasa curricula featuring Persian, see Cevat İzgi, Osmanlı Medreselerinde İlim, 2 vols. (Istanbul: İz, 1997),1: 167–69."
Inan, Murat Umut (2019). "Imperial Ambitions, Mystical Aspirations: Persian learning in the Ottoman World". In
Green, Nile
(ed.).
The Persianate World The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca
. University of California Press. pp.
85–
86.
Inan, Murat Umut (2019). "Imperial Ambitions, Mystical Aspirations: Persian learning in the Ottoman World". In
Green, Nile
(ed.).
The Persianate World The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca
. University of California Press. p. 86.
Inan, Murat Umut (2019). "Imperial Ambitions, Mystical Aspirations: Persian learning in the Ottoman World". In
Green, Nile
(ed.).
The Persianate World The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca
. University of California Press. p. 85.
Bennett, Clinton; Ramsey, Charles M. (2012).
South Asian Sufis: Devotion, Deviation, and Destiny
. A&C Black. p. 18.
ISBN
978-1-4411-5127-8
Archived
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2019
Abu Musa Mohammad Arif Billah (2012).
"Persian"
. In
Sirajul Islam
; Miah, Sajahan;
Khanam, Mahfuza
; Ahmed, Sabbir (eds.).
Banglapedia: the National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh
(Online ed.). Dhaka, Bangladesh: Banglapedia Trust,
Asiatic Society of Bangladesh
ISBN
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OCLC
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OL
30677644M
. Retrieved
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Sarah Anjum Bari (12 April 2019).
"A Tale of Two Languages: How the Persian language seeped into Bengali"
The Daily Star (Bangladesh)
Archived
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Mir, F. (2010).
The Social Space of Language: Vernacular Culture in British Colonial Punjab
. University of California Press. p. 35.
ISBN
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Archived
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Chisholm, Hugh
, ed. (1911).
"Ranjit Singh"
Encyclopædia Britannica
. Vol. 22 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 892.
Grewal, J. S. (1990).
The Sikhs of the Punjab, Chapter 6: The Sikh empire (1799–1849)
. The New Cambridge History of India. Cambridge University Press. p. 112.
ISBN
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Archived
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The continuance of Persian as the language of administration.
Fenech, Louis E. (2013).
The Sikh Zafar-namah of Guru Gobind Singh: A Discursive Blade in the Heart of the Mughal Empire
. Oxford University Press (USA). p. 239.
ISBN
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Archived
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We see such acquaintance clearly within the Sikh court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, for example, the principal language of which was Persian.
Clawson, Patrick (2004).
Eternal Iran
. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 6.
ISBN
1-4039-6276-6
Menon, A.S.; Kusuman, K.K. (1990).
A Panorama of Indian Culture: Professor A. Sreedhara Menon Felicitation Volume
. Mittal Publications. p. 87.
ISBN
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نگار داوری اردکانی (1389).
برنامه‌ریزی زبان فارسی
. روایت فتح. p. 33.
ISBN
978-600-6128-05-4
{{
cite book
}}
ISBN / Date incompatibility (
help
Beeman, William.
"Persian, Dari and Tajik"
(PDF)
Brown University
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 25 October 2012
. Retrieved
30 March
2013
Aliev, Bahriddin; Okawa, Aya (2010).
"TAJIK iii. COLLOQUIAL TAJIKI IN COMPARISON WITH PERSIAN OF IRAN"
Encyclopaedia Iranica
Archived
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. Retrieved
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2021
Talei, Maryam; Rovshan, Belghis (24 October 2024).
"Semantic Network in Lari Language"
Persian Language and Iranian Dialects
(1):
31–
61.
doi
10.22124/plid.2024.27553.1673
ISSN
2476-6585
Archived
from the original on 28 November 2024.
This descriptive-analytical research examines sense relations between the lexemes of the Lari language, the continuation of the
Middle Persian
and one of the endangered Iranian languages spoken in Lar, Fars province
"Western Iranian languages History"
Destination Iran
. 16 June 2024.
Archived
from the original on 28 November 2024
. Retrieved
28 November
2024
Achomi or Khodmooni (Larestani) is a southwestern Iranian language spoken in southern Fars province and the Ajam (non-arab) population in Persian Gulf countries such as UAE, Bahrain, and Kuwait. It is a descendant of Middle Persian and has several dialects including Lari, Evazi, Khoni, Bastaki, and more.
Taherkhani, Neda; Ourang, Muhammed (2013).
"A Study of Derivational Morphemes in Lari & Tati as Two Endangered Iranian Languages: An Analytical Contrastive Examination with Persian"
(PDF)
Journal of American Science
ISSN
1545-1003
Lari is of the SW branch of Middle Iranian languages, Pahlavi, in the Middle period of Persian Language Evolution and consists of nine dialects, which are prominently different in pronunciation (Geravand, 2010). Being a branch of Pahlavi language, Lari has several common features with it as its mother language. The ergative structure (the difference between the conjugation of transitive and intransitive verbs) existing in Lari can be mentioned as such an example. The speech community of this language includes Fars province, Hormozgan Province and some of the Arabic-speaking countries like the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman (Khonji, 2010, p. 15).
Windfuhr 1979
, p. 4: "Tat-Persian spoken in the East Caucasus"
V. Minorsky, "Tat" in M. Th. Houtsma et al., eds., The Encyclopædia of Islam: A Dictionary of the Geography, Ethnography and Biography of the Muhammadan Peoples, 4 vols. and Suppl., Leiden: Late E.J. Brill and London: Luzac, 1913–38.
V. Minorsky, "Tat" in M. Th. Houtsma et al., eds., The Encyclopædia of Islam: A Dictionary of the Geography, Ethnography and Biography of the Muhammadan Peoples, 4 vols. and Suppl., Leiden: Late E.J. Brill and London: Luzac, 1913–38. Excerpt: "Like most Persian dialects, Tati is not very regular in its characteristic features"
C Kerslake, Journal of Islamic Studies (2010) 21 (1): 147–151. excerpt: "It is a comparison of the verbal systems of three varieties of Persian—standard Persian, Tat, and Tajik—in terms of the 'innovations' that the latter two have developed for expressing finer differentiations of tense, aspect, and modality..."
[1]
Archived
17 September 2013 at the
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Borjian, Habib (2006). "Tabari Language Materials from Il'ya Berezin's Recherches sur les dialectes persans".
Iran & the Caucasus
10
(2):
243–
258.
doi
10.1163/157338406780346005
It embraces Gilani, Talysh, Tabari, Kurdish, Gabri, and the Tati Persian of the Caucasus, all but the last belonging to the north-western group of Iranian language.
Miller, Corey (January 2012).
"Vowel system of Contemporary Iranian Persian"
Variation in Persian Vowel Systems
. Retrieved
7 May
2022
– via ResearchGate.
Perry 2005
Okati 2012
, p. 93.
Okati 2012
, p. 92.
International Phonetic Association (1999).
Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.
124–
125.
ISBN
978-0-521-63751-0
Jahani, Carina (2005).
"The Glottal Plosive: A Phoneme in Spoken Modern Persian or Not?"
. In Éva Ágnes Csató; Bo Isaksson; Carina Jahani (eds.).
Linguistic Convergence and Areal Diffusion: Case studies from Iranian, Semitic and Turkic
. London: RoutledgeCurzon. pp.
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96.
ISBN
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Thackston, W. M. (1 May 1993).
"The Phonology of Persian"
An Introduction to Persian
(3rd Rev ed.). Ibex Publishers. p. xvii.
ISBN
0-936347-29-5
Megerdoomian, Karine (2000).
"Persian computational morphology: A unification-based approach"
(PDF)
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. p. 1. Archived from the original on 2 September 2013
. Retrieved
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Persian
. London: Routledge.
ISBN
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Archived
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Schmitt, Rüdiger (2008). "Old Persian". In Woodard, Roger D. (ed.).
The Ancient Languages of Asia and the Americas
. Cambridge University Press. p. 86.
ISBN
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Johnson, Edwin Lee (1917).
Historical Grammar of the Ancient Persian Language
. New York: American Book Company. p. 198.
Yousef, Saeed; Torabi, Hayedeh (2013).
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. New York: Routledge. p. 37.
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Davis, Richard (2006). "Persian". In Meri, Josef W.; Bacharach, Jere L. (eds.).
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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.
John R. Perry, "Lexical Areas and Semantic Fields of Arabic" in Éva Ágnes Csató, Eva Agnes Csato, Bo Isaksson, Carina Jahani,
Linguistic convergence and areal diffusion: case studies from Iranian, Semitic and Turkic
, Routledge, 2005. pg 97: "It is generally understood that the bulk of the Arabic vocabulary in the central, contiguous Iranian, Turkic, and Indic languages was originally borrowed into literary Persian between the ninth and thirteenth centuries"
John R. Perry, "Lexical Areas and Semantic Fields of Arabic" in Éva Ágnes Csató, Eva Agnes Csato, Bo Isaksson, Carina Jahani,
Linguistic convergence and areal diffusion: case studies from Iranian, Semitic and Turkic
, Routledge, 2005. p.97
Owens, Jonathan (2013).
The Oxford Handbook of Arabic Linguistics
. OUP USA. p. 352.
ISBN
978-0-19-976413-6
Perry 2005
, p. 99.
e.g. The role of Azeri–Turkish in Iranian Persian, on which see John Perry, "The Historical Role of Turkish in Relation to Persian of Iran",
Iran & the Caucasus
, Vol. 5 (2001), pp. 193–200.
Xavier Planhol, "Land of Iran",
Encyclopedia Iranica
. "The Turks, on the other hand, posed a formidable threat: their 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 victorious. Several reasons may be offered."
"ARMENIA AND IRAN iv. Iranian influences in Armenian Language"
Encyclopaedia Iranica
Archived
from the original on 17 November 2017
. Retrieved
2 January
2015
Bennett, Clinton; Ramsey, Charles M. (March 2012).
South Asian Sufis: Devotion, Deviation, and Destiny
. A&C Black.
ISBN
9781441151278
Archived
from the original on 10 March 2021
. Retrieved
23 April
2015
Andreas Tietze, Persian loanwords in Anatolian Turkish, Oriens, 20 (1967) pp- 125–168.
Archived
11 September 2007 at the
Wayback Machine
(accessed August 2016)
L. Johanson, "Azerbaijan: Iranian Elements in Azeri Turkish" in
Encyclopedia Iranica
Iranica.com
George L. Campbell; Gareth King (2013).
Compendium of the World Languages
. Routledge.
ISBN
978-1-136-25846-6
Archived
from the original on 27 September 2015
. Retrieved
23 May
2014
"Georgia v. Linguistic Contacts With Iranian Languages"
Encyclopaedia Iranica
Archived
from the original on 18 March 2021
. Retrieved
2 January
2015
"DAGESTAN"
Encyclopaedia Iranica
Archived
from the original on 29 April 2011
. Retrieved
2 January
2014
Pasad.
"Bashgah.net"
. Bashgah.net. Archived from
the original
on 23 July 2011
. Retrieved
13 July
2010
Smith 1989
sfn error: no target: CITEREFSmith1989 (
help
Lazard, Gilbert (1956). "Charactères distinctifs de la langue Tadjik".
Bulletin de la Société Linguistique de Paris
52
117–
186.
"PERSIAN LANGUAGE i. Early New Persian"
Iranica Online
Archived
from the original on 17 March 2019
. Retrieved
18 March
2019
"ISO 233-3:1999"
. International Organization for Standardization. 14 May 2010.
Archived
from the original on 6 June 2011
. Retrieved
13 July
2010
"Smallwars.quantico.usmc.mil"
. Archived from
the original
on 22 January 2010
. Retrieved
13 December
2012
Works cited
Frye, Richard Nelson (1984).
Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft: Alter Orient-Griechische Geschichte-Römische Geschichte. Band III,7: The History of Ancient Iran
. C.H. Beck.
ISBN
978-3-406-09397-5
Kuhrt, A. (2013).
The Persian Empire: A Corpus of Sources from the Achaemenid Period
. Routledge.
ISBN
978-1-136-01694-3
Lazard, G. (1975).
"The Rise of the New Persian Language"
. In
Frye, Richard N.
(ed.).
The Cambridge History of Iran: From the Arab Invasion to the Saljuqs
. Vol. 4. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press
. pp.
595–633
ISBN
0-521-20093-8
Okati, Farideh (2012).
The Vowel Systems of Five Iranian Balochi Dialects
. Sweden.
ISBN
978-91-554-8536-8
. Retrieved
2 April
2025
{{
cite book
}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (
link
Perry, John R. (2005).
A Tajik Persian Reference Grammar: Handbook of Oriental Studies
. Vol. 2. Boston: Brill.
ISBN
90-04-14323-8
Perry, John R. (2011).
"Persian"
. In Edzard, Lutz; de Jong, Rudolf (eds.).
Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics
. Brill Online.
Schmitt, Rüdiger (2000).
The Old Persian Inscriptions of Naqsh-i Rustam and Persepolis
. Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum by School of Oriental and African Studies.
ISBN
978-0-7286-0314-1
Skjærvø, Prods Oktor (2006). "Iran, vi. Iranian languages and scripts".
Encyclopaedia Iranica
. Vol. XIII.
Spuler, Bertold (2003).
Persian Historiography and Geography: Bertold Spuler on Major Works Produced in Iran, the Caucasus, Central Asia, India, and Early Ottoman Turkey
. Pustaka Nasional Pte Ltd.
ISBN
978-9971774882
Windfuhr, Gernot (1979).
Persian Grammar: History and State of its Study
. Walter de Gruyter.
General references
Bosworth, C. E. & Crowe, Yolande (1995).
"Sāmānids"
. In
Bosworth, C. E.
van Donzel, E.
Heinrichs, W. P.
Lecomte, G.
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Volume VIII:
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. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
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Bosworth, C. E. (1998).
"Esmāʿīl, b. Aḥmad b. Asad Sāmānī, Abū Ebrāhīm"
. In
Yarshater, Ehsan
(ed.).
Encyclopædia Iranica
. Vol. VIII/6: Eršād al-zerāʿa–Eʿteżād-al-Salṭana. London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul. pp.
636–
637.
ISBN
978-1-56859-055-4
Crone, Patricia (2012).
The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran: Rural Revolt and Local Zoroastrianism
. Cambridge University Press.
ISBN
978-1107642386
de Blois, Francois (2004).
Persian Literature – A Bio-Bibliographical Survey: Poetry of the Pre-Mongol Period (Volume V)
. Routledge.
ISBN
978-0947593476
de Bruijn, J.T.P. (1978).
"Iran, vii.—Literature"
. In
van Donzel, E.
Lewis, B.
Pellat, Ch.
Bosworth, C. E.
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Volume IV:
Iran–Kha
. Leiden: E. J. Brill. pp.
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75.
OCLC
758278456
Frye, R. N. (2004).
"Iran v. Peoples of Iran (1) A General Survey"
. In
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(ed.).
Encyclopædia Iranica
. Vol. XIII/3: Iran II. Iranian history–Iran V. Peoples of Iran. London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul. pp.
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326.
ISBN
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Jeremiás, Éva (2011).
"Iran"
. In Edzard, Lutz; de Jong, Rudolf (eds.).
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. Brill Online.
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Litvinsky, B. A., ed. (1996).
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ISBN
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Rypka, Jan
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History of Iranian Literature
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ISBN
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Further reading
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
23 May
2010
Bleeck, Arthur Henry (1857).
A concise grammar of the Persian language
(Oxford University ed.).
Archived
from the original on 10 March 2021
. Retrieved
6 July
2011
Dahlén, Ashk (April 2014) [1st edition October 2010].
Modern persisk grammatik
(2nd ed.). Ferdosi International Publication.
ISBN
9789197988674
. Archived from the original on 11 October 2017
. Retrieved
18 February
2011
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.
Archived
from the original on 23 July 2016
. 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.
Archived
from the original on 10 March 2021
. 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.
Archived
from the original on 10 March 2021
. Retrieved
6 July
2011
Doctor, Sorabshaw Byramji (1875).
A new grammar of the Persian tongue for the use of schools and colleges
. Irish Presbyterian Mission Press. p.
84
. Retrieved
6 July
2011
Forbes, Duncan (1844).
A grammar of the Persian language: To which is added, a selection of easy extracts for reading, together with a copious vocabulary
(2nd ed.). Printed for the author, sold by Allen & co. p. 114 & 158
. Retrieved
6 July
2011
Forbes, Duncan (1869).
A grammar of the Persian language: to which is added, a selection of easy extracts for reading, together with a vocabulary, and translations
(4th ed.). Wm. H. Allen & Co. p. 238.
Archived
from the original on 10 March 2021
. Retrieved
6 July
2011
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.
Archived
from the original on 10 March 2021
. Retrieved
6 July
2011
Ibrâhîm, Muḥammad (1841).
A grammar of the Persian language
. Retrieved
6 July
2011
Jones, Sir William
(1783).
A grammar of the Persian language
(3 ed.).
Archived
from the original on 10 March 2021
. Retrieved
6 July
2011
Jones, Sir William (1797).
A grammar of the Persian language
(4 ed.).
Archived
from the original on 10 March 2021
. Retrieved
6 July
2011
Jones, Sir William (1801).
A grammar of the Persian language
(5 ed.). Murray and Highley, J. Sewell. p. 194.
Archived
from the original on 10 March 2021
. Retrieved
6 July
2011
Jones, Sir William (1823). Samuel Lee (ed.).
A grammar of the Persian language
(8 ed.). Printed by W. Nicol, for Parbury, Allen, and co. p. 230
. Retrieved
6 July
2011
Jones, Sir William (1828). Samuel Lee (ed.).
A grammar of the Persian language
(9 ed.). Printed by W. Nicol, for Parbury, Allen, and Co. p.
283
. Retrieved
6 July
2011
Lazard, Gilbert (January 2006).
Grammaire du persan contemporain
. Institut Français de Recherche en Iran.
ISBN
978-2909961378
. Archived from
the original
on 3 May 2012
. Retrieved
18 February
2011
Lumsden, Matthew (1810).
A grammar of the Persian language; comprising a portion of the elements of Arabic inflexion [etc.]
. Vol. 2. Calcutta: T. Watley.
Archived
from the original on 10 March 2021
. Retrieved
6 July
2011
Mace, John (18 October 2002).
Persian Grammar: For Reference and Revision
(illustrated ed.). RoutledgeCurzon.
ISBN
0-7007-1695-5
Moises, Edward (1792).
The Persian interpreter: in three parts: A grammar of the Persian language. Persian extracts, in prose and verse. A vocabulary: Persian and English
. Printed by L. Hodgson. p. 143.
Archived
from the original on 10 March 2021
. Retrieved
6 July
2011
Palmer, Edward Henry
(1883). Guy Le Strange (ed.).
A concise dictionary, English-Persian: together with a simplified grammar of the Persian language
. London: Trübner & Co. p.
42
. Retrieved
6 July
2011
Platts, John Thompson (1894).
A grammar of the Persian language ...
Vol. Part I.—Accidence. London & Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate.
Archived
from the original on 10 March 2021
. Retrieved
6 July
2011
Ranking, George Speirs Alexander (1907).
A primer of Persian: containing selections for reading and composition with the elements of syntax
. The Clarendon Press. p.
72
. Retrieved
6 July
2011
Richardson, John (1810). Sir Charles Wilkins; David Hopkins (eds.).
A vocabulary, Persian, Arabic, and English: abridged from the quarto edition of Richardson's dictionary
. Printed for F. and C. Rivingson. p.
643
. Retrieved
6 July
2011
Rosen, Friedrich; Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh (Shah of Iran) (1898).
Modern Persian colloquial grammar: containing a short grammar, dialogues and extracts from Nasir-Eddin shah's diaries, tales, etc., and a vocabulary
. Luzac & C.̊. p. 400.
Archived
from the original on 10 March 2021
. Retrieved
6 July
2011
Schmitt, Rüdiger (1989).
Compendium linguarum Iranicarum
. L. Reichert.
ISBN
3-88226-413-6
Sen, Ramdhun (1841). Madhub Chunder Sen (ed.).
A dictionary in Persian and English, with pronunciation (ed. by M.C. Sen)
(2 ed.).
Archived
from the original on 3 April 2013
. Retrieved
6 July
2011
Sen, Ramdhun (1829).
A dictionary in Persian and English
. Printed for the author at the Baptist Mission Press. p. 226.
Archived
from the original on 10 March 2021
. Retrieved
6 July
2011
Sen, Ramdhun (1833).
A dictionary in English and Persian
. Printed at the Baptist Mission Press. p. 276.
Archived
from the original on 3 December 2020
. Retrieved
6 July
2011
Sen, Ramdhun (1833).
A dictionary in English and Persian
Archived
from the original on 10 March 2021
. Retrieved
6 July
2011
Thackston, W. M. (1 May 1993).
An Introduction to Persian
(3rd Rev ed.). Ibex Publishers.
ISBN
0-936347-29-5
Tucker, William Thornhill (1801).
A pocket dictionary of English and Persian
Archived
from the original on 3 April 2013
. Retrieved
6 July
2011
Tucker, William Thornhill (1850).
A pocket dictionary of English and Persian
. J. Madden. p. 145
. Retrieved
6 July
2011
Windfuhr, Gernot L. (15 January 2009). "Persian". In Bernard Comrie (ed.).
The World's Major Languages
(2nd ed.). Routledge.
ISBN
978-0-415-35339-7
Wollaston, (Sir) Arthur Naylor (1882).
An English-Persian dictionary
. W. H. Allen
. Retrieved
6 July
2011
External links
Persian
at Wikipedia's
sister projects
Definitions
from Wiktionary
Media
from Commons
Quotations
from Wikiquote
Textbooks
from Wikibooks
Phrasebook
from Wikivoyage
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Persian language Resources
(in Persian)
(archived 9 December 2012)
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 (archived 20 July 2006)
How Persian Alphabet Transits into Graffiti
, Persian Graffiti
Basic Persian language course (book + audio files)
– USA Foreign Service Institute (FSI)
Persian language
History
Proto-Indo-European
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