Persian (local names: فارسی, Farsi IPA: [fɒːɾˈsi]; or پارسی, Parsi IPA: [pɒːɾˈsi], see Nomenclature) is an Iranian language The Iranian languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family and its subfamily, Indo-Iranian. They are spoken by the Iranian peoples. Old Persian is the oldest recorded Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian The Indo-Iranian language group constitutes the easternmost extant branch of the Indo-European family of languages. It consists of three language groups: the Indo-Aryan, Iranian and Nuristani. The term Aryan languages is occasionally still used to refer to the Indo-Iranian languages. The speakers of the Proto-Indo-Iranian language, the branch of the Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and Southern Asia, and historically also predominant in Anatolia and Central Asia. With written attestations appearing since the Bronze Age, in the form of the Anatolian languages and Mycenaean. It is widely spoken in Iran Iran (Persian: ایران [ʔiˈɾɒn] ), officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and formerly known as Persia, is a country in Central Eurasia and Western Asia. The name Iran has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was widely known as Persia. Both Persia and Iran are, Afghanistan The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is a landlocked country in south-central Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan in the south and east, Iran in the west, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in the north, and China in the far northeast. In addition; India claims a border with Afghanistan at the Wakhan corridor as part of its claim on the Gilgit-, Tajikistan Tajikistan , officially the Republic of Tajikistan (Tajik: Ҷумҳурии Тоҷикистон, Jumhurii Tojikiston; Russian: Республика Таджикистан, Respublika Tadzhikistan; Persian: جمهوری تاجیکستان Jomhuri-ye Tajikestan), is a mountainous landlocked country in Central Asia. Afghanistan borders it to the, Uzbekistan Uzbekistan, officially the Republic of Uzbekistan is one of the six independent Turkic states. It is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia, formerly part of the Soviet Union. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south and to some extent in Iraq Iraq , officially the Republic of Iraq (Arabic: جمهورية العراق (help·info) Jumhūrīyat Al-Irāq, Kurdish: كؤماری عه‌راق‎, Komara Îraqê, Assyrian Neo-Aramaic: ܥܸܪܵܩ) is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the, Bahrain Bahrain, officially Kingdom of Bahrain , is a small island country in the Persian Gulf ruled by the Al Khalifa royal family. While Bahrain is an archipelago of thirty-three islands, the largest (Bahrain Island) is 55 km (34 mi) long by 18 km (11 mi) wide. Saudi Arabia lies to the west and is connected to Bahrain via the King Fahd Causeway, which, and Oman Oman , officially the Sultanate of Oman (Arabic: سلطنة عمان‎ Salṭanat ʻUmān), is an Arab country in southwest Asia on the southeast coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It borders the United Arab Emirates on the northwest, Saudi Arabia on the west and Yemen on the southwest. New Persian, which usually is called also by the names of Farsi, Parsi, Dari or Parsi-ye-Dari (Dari Persian), can be classified linguistically as a continuation of Middle Persian Middle Persian, sometimes referred to as Pahlavi or Pehlevi, is the Middle Iranian language/ethnolect of Southwestern Iran that during Sassanid times became a prestige dialect and so came to be spoken in other regions as well. Middle Persian is classified as Western Iranian language. It descends from Old Persian and is the nominal ancestor of, the official religious and literary language of Sassanian The Sassanid Empire , known to its inhabitants as Ērānshahr and Ērān, was the last pre-Islamic Persian Empire, ruled by the Sasanian Dynasty from 224 to 651. The Sassanid Empire, which succeeded the Parthian Empire, was recognized as one of the two main powers in Western Asia and Europe, alongside the Roman Empire and later the Byzantine Iran, itself a continuation of Old Persian The Old Persian language is one of the two attested Old Iranian languages . Old Persian appears primarily in the inscriptions, clay tablets, seals of the Achaemenid era (c. 600 BCE to 300 BCE). Examples of Old Persian have been found in what is now present-day Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Egypt the most important attestation by far being the contents of, the language of the Achaemenids The Achaemenid Empire , also known as the Persian Empire, was the successor state of the Median Empire, ruling over significant portions of what would become Greater Iran. The Persian and the Median Empire taken together are also known as the Medo-Persian Empire, which encompassed the combined territories of several earlier empires.[2] Persian is a pluricentric language A pluricentric language is a language with several standard versions, both in spoken and in written forms. This situation usually arises when language and the national identity of its native speakers do not, or did not, coincide and its grammar is similar to that of many contemporary European languages.[3] The Persian language has been a medium for literary and scientific contributions to the eastern half of the Muslim world The term Muslim world has several meanings. In a cultural sense, it refers to the worldwide community of Muslims, adherents of Islam. This community numbers about 1.3-1.5 billion people, roughly one-fifth of the world population. This community is spread across many different nations and ethnic groups connected by religion and a shared sense of.

Persian has had a considerable influence on neighboring languages, particularly the Turkic languages The Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family in Central Asia Central Asia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north. It is also sometimes known as Middle Asia or Inner Asia, and is within the scope of the wider Eurasian continent, Caucasus The Caucasus or Caucas is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia. It is home to the Caucasus Mountains, including Europe's highest mountain (Mount Elbrus), and Anatolia Anatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the western two-thirds of the Republic of Turkey. The region is bounded by the Black Sea to the north, Georgia to the northeast, the Armenian Highland to the east, Mesopotamia to the southeast, the Mediterranean Sea to the south and the Aegean Sea, neighboring Iranian languages, as well as Armenian The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora. It has its own script, the Armenian alphabet, Arabic Arabic (العربية al-ʿarabīyah, ( Arabic pronunciation ) or عربي ʿarabi) is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. Arabic has more speakers than any other language in the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million and other languages. It has also exerted a strong influence on South Asian languages, especially Urdu Urdu (Urdu: اردو, IPA: [ˈʊrduː] ) is a standardised register of Hindustani. It is the national language and one of the two official languages of Pakistan (the other being English), and one of 22 scheduled languages of India, as an official language of five Indian states. Its vocabulary developed under Persian, Arabic, Turkic, Sanskrit, and, as well as Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: हिन्दी or हिंदी, IAST: Hindī, IPA: [ˈɦɪndiː] ) is the name given to various Indo-Aryan languages, dialects, and language registers spoken in northern and central India, Pakistan, Fiji, Mauritius, and Surinam, Punjabi Punjabi or Panjabi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by inhabitants of the historical Punjab region (in Pakistan and north western India), Sindhi Sindhi is the language of the Sindh region of Pakistan. It is spoken by an estimated 24,410,910 people in Pakistan. It is the third most spoken language in all of Pakistan and is the official language of the province of Sindh. It is also spoken in India by some 2,535,485 speakers. The government of Pakistan issues national identity cards to its, and Saraiki Sarāikī , sometimes spelled Siraiki and Seraiki, is a standardized written language of Pakistan belonging to the Indo-Aryan (Indic) languages. Sarāikī is based on a group of vernacular, historically unwritten dialects spoken by over 34 million people across the southern more than half of Punjab Province, the adjacent border region of Sindh.[2][3][4][5][6][7]

Contents

Classification

Persian belongs to the Western group of the Iranian branch The Iranian languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family and its subfamily, Indo-Iranian. They are spoken by the Iranian peoples. Old Persian is the oldest recorded Iranian language of the Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and Southern Asia, and historically also predominant in Anatolia and Central Asia. With written attestations appearing since the Bronze Age, in the form of the Anatolian languages and Mycenaean language family, and is of the subject object verb In linguistic typology, Subject Object Verb is the type of languages in which the subject, object, and verb of a sentence appear or usually appear in that order. If English were SOV, then "Sam oranges ate" would be an ordinary sentence, as opposed to the English "Sam ate oranges" type. The Western Iranian group contains other related languages such as Kurdish Kurdish is the macrolanguage spoken by the Kurds in western Asia. Genealogically, it is part of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It has between 16 and 35 million speakers today. It exists in a continuum of dialects spoken in a geographic area spanning Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and a small number of speakers in the South, Mazandarani Mazandarani or Tabari (Also known as: Mazeniki) is an Iranian language of the northwestern branch, spoken mainly in Iran's Mazandaran and Golestan provinces. As a member of the Northwestern branch (the northern branch of Western Iranian), genetically speaking it is rather closely related to Gilaki, Zaza, and Balochi, and more distantly related to, Gilaki The Giləki language is an ancient and living Caspian language, and a member of the northwestern Iranian language branch, spoken in Iran's Mazanderan and Gīlān Provinces, Talyshi The Talyshi language is a Northwestern Iranian language spoken in the northern regions of the Iranian provinces of Gilan and Ardabil and the southern regions of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Historically, the language and its people can be traced through the middle Iranian period back to the ancient Medes. It includes many dialects usually divided and Baluchi Balochi is a Northwestern Iranian language. It is the principal language of the Baloch of Balochistan, Pakistan, eastern Iran and southern Afghanistan. It is also spoken as a second language by some Brahui. It is designated as one of nine official languages of Pakistan. The language is in the Southwestern The Western Iranian languages are a subgroup of the Iranian languages, attested from the time of Old Persian Iranian group, along with and very similar to the Tat language of Caucasus[citation needed] Larestani and Luri The special character of the Lurish language suggests that the Lurish area was Iranicized from Persia and not from Media languages.[8]

Nomenclature

Contemporary local nomenclature

English nomenclature

Persian, the more widely used name of the language in English English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into South-East Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria. Following the economic, political, military, scientific, cultural, and colonial influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 18th century, and of, is an Anglicized form derived from Latin Latin or sometimes Roman is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Although often considered a dead language, in view of the fact that it has no native, fluent speakers, Latin continues to be taught in schools and has been, and currently is, used in the process of new word production in modern languages from many *Persianus < Latin Persia < Greek Greek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical ancient Greek literature and the New Testament of Πέρσις Pérsis, a Hellenized Hellenization is a term used to describe the spread of ancient Greek culture, and, to a lesser extent, language. It is mainly used to describe the spread of Hellenistic civilization during the Hellenistic period following the campaigns of Alexander the Great of Macedon. The result of Hellenization was that elements of Greek origin combined in form of Old Persian Parsa. According to the Oxford English Dictionary The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is a dictionary of the English language. Two fully-bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. As of December 2008[update], the editors had completed one quarter of a third edition, the term Persian seems to have been first used in English in the mid-16th century.[11] Native Persian speakers call it "Pârsi" (local name) or Fârsi.[12] Fârsi is the arabicized form of Pârsi, due to a lack of the 'p' phoneme in Standard Arabic.[13][14] In English, this language is historically known as "Persian", though some Persian-speakers migrating to the West continued to use "Farsi" to identify their language in English and the word gained some currency in English-speaking countries.[15] "Farsi" is encountered in some linguistic literature as a name for the language, used both by Iranian and by foreign authors.[16] According to the OED, the term Farsi was first used in English in the mid-20th century.[12] The Academy of Persian Language and Literature has declared that the name "Persian" is more appropriate, as it has the longer tradition in the western languages and better expresses the role of the language as a mark of cultural and national continuity.[17] Some Persian language scholars[who?] have also rejected the usage of "Farsi" in their articles.

International nomenclature

The international language encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code "fa", as its coding system is mostly based on the local names. The more detailed draft ISO 639-3 uses the name "Persian" (code "fas") for the larger unit ("macrolanguage") spoken across Iran and Afghanistan, but "Eastern Farsi" and "Western Farsi" for two of its subdivisions (roughly coinciding with the varieties in Afghanistan and those in Iran, respectively).[18] Ethnologue, in turn, includes "Farsi, Eastern" and "Farsi, Western" as two separate entries and lists "Persian" and "Parsi" as alternative names for each, besides "Irani" for the western and "Dari" for the eastern form.[19][20]

A similar terminology, but with even more subdivisions, is also adopted by the LINGUIST List, where "Persian" appears as a sub-grouping under "Southwest Western Iranian".[21] Currently, VOA, BBC, DW, and RFE/RL use "Persian Service" for their broadcasts in the language. RFE/RL also includes a Tajik service, and an Afghan (Dari) service. This is also the case for the American Association of Teachers of Persian, The Centre for Promotion of Persian Language and Literature, and many of the leading scholars of Persian language.[22]

History

History of the Persian language
Proto-Iranian (ca. 1500 BCE)

Southwestern Iranian languages
Old Persian (c. 525 BCE - 300 BCE)

Old Persian cuneiform script
Middle Persian (c.300 BCE-800 CE)

Pahlavi script • Manichaean script • Avestan script
Modern Persian (from 800)

Perso-Arabic script

Persian is an Iranian tongue belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages. In general, Iranian languages are known from three periods, usually referred to as Old, Middle, and New (Modern) periods. These correspond to three eras in Iranian history; Old era being the period from sometime before Achaemenids, the Achaemenid era and sometime after Achaemenids (that is to 400-300 BC), Middle era being the next period most officially Sassanid era and sometime in post-Sassanid era, and the New era being the period afterwards down to present day.[23]

According to available documents, the Persian language is "the only Iranian language"[2][24] for which close genetic relationships between all of its three stages are established and so that Old, Middle, and New Persian represent[25][2] one and the same language of Persian, that is New Persian is a direct descendent of Middle and Old Persian.[25]

The oldest records in Old Persian date back to the Persian Empire of the 6th century BC.[26]

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

Old Persian

Old Persian evolved from Proto-Iranian as it evolved in the Iranian plateau's southwest. The earliest dateable example of the language is the Behistun Inscription of the Achaemenid Darius I (r. 522 BC – ca. 486 BC). Although purportedly older texts also exist (such as the inscription on the tomb of Cyrus II at Pasargadae), these are actually younger examples of the language. Old Persian was written in Old Persian cuneiform, a script unique to that language and is generally assumed to be an invention of Darius I's reign.

After Aramaic, or rather the Achaemenid form of it known as Imperial Aramaic, Old Persian is the most commonly attested language of the Achaemenid age. While examples of Old Persian have been found wherever the Achaemenids held territories, the language is attested primarily in the inscriptions of Western Iran, in particular in Parsa "Persia" in the southwest, the homeland of the tribes that the Achaemenids (and later the Sassanids) came from.

In contrast to later Persian, written Old Persian had an extensively inflected grammar, with eight cases, each declension subject to both gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) and number (singular, dual, plural).

Middle Persian

In contrast to Old Persian, whose spoken and written forms must have been dramatically different from one another, written Middle Persian reflected oral use. The complex 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 used postpositions to indicate the different roles of words, for example an -i suffix to denote a possessive "from/of" rather than the multiple (subject to gender and number) genitive caseforms of a word.

Although the "middle period" of 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. However, Middle Persian is not actually attested until 600 years later when it appears in Sassanid era (224–651) 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, to the 6th or 7th century. And from the 8th century onwards, Middle Persian gradually began yielding to New Persian, with the middle-period form only continuing in the texts of Zoroastrian tradition.

The native name of Middle Persian was Parsik or Parsig, 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 Arabic script. From about the 9th century onwards, 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 Rouzbeh (Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa, 8th century) still distinguished between Pahlavi (i.e. Parthian) and Farsi (i.e. Middle Persian), this distinction is not evident in Arab commentaries written after that date.

New Persian

The history of New Persian spans perhaps 1200 years and is often divided into three stages: early, classical, and contemporary. Most current native speakers can read and understand ancient texts despite accumulated grammatical differences. This is a remarkable example of linguistic continuity.[27]

Early New Persian

Classic Persian

See also: List of Persian poets and authors

The Islamic conquest of Persia marks the beginning of the new history of Persian language and literature. This period produced world class Persian language poets and the language served, for a long span of time, as the lingua franca of the eastern parts of Islamic world and of the Indian subcontinent. It was also the official and cultural language of many Islamic dynasties, including Samanids, Buyids, Tahirids, Ziyarids, the Mughal Empire, Timurids, Ghaznavid, Seljuq, Khwarezmids, Safavid, Afsharids, Zand, Qajar, Ottomans and also many Mughal successor states such as the Nizams etc. For example, Persian was the only oriental language known and used by Marco Polo at the Court of Kublai Khan and in his journeys through China.[28] The heavy influence of Persian on other languages can still be witnessed across the Islamic world, especially, and it is still appreciated as a literary and prestigious language among the educated elite, especially in fields of music (for example Qawwali) and art (Persian literature). After the Arab invasion of Persia, Persian began to adopt many words from Arabic and as time went by, a few words were even taken from Altaic languages under the Mongol Empire and Turco-Persian society.

Use in the Indian subcontinent

Main article: Persian and Urdu

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 in South Asia and became the sole "official language" under the Mughal emperors. Coinciding with the Safavid rule over Iran, when (royal) patronage of Persian poets was curtailed, the centre of Persian culture and literature moved to the Mughal Empire, which had huge financial resources[29] to employ a veritable army of Persian courtly poets, lexicographers and other litterati. Beginning in 1843, though, English gradually replaced Persian in importance on the subcontinent.[30] Evidence of Persian's historical influence there can be seen in the extent of its influence on the languages of the Indian subcontinent, as well as the popularity that Persian literature still enjoys in that region.

Contemporary Persian

A variant of the Iranian standard ISIRI 9147 keyboard layout for Persian.

Since the nineteenth century, Russian, French and English and many other languages have contributed to the technical vocabulary of Persian. The Iranian National Academy of Persian Language and Literature is responsible for evaluating these new words in order to initiate and advise their Persian equivalents. The language itself has greatly developed during the centuries.

Varieties and dialects

Persian language

Regional and social varieties:

Grammar:

Language features:

Writing systems:

There are three modern varieties of standard Persian:[31]

The three mentioned varieties are based on the classic Persian literature. There are also several local dialects from Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan which slightly differ from the standard Persian. Hazaragi (in Central Afghanistan), Herati (in Western Afghanistan), Darwazi (in Afghanistan and Tajikistan) and Dehwari in Pakistan are examples of these dialects.

It should be mentioned that most of the Persian dialects differ not only in phonology and morphology, but also in the amount of incorporated vocabulary from neighbouring languages. Hazaragi possesses a sizable amount of Mongolian and Turkic substrate due to the origin of its speakers. Herati, too, has been influenced by adjacent Turkic languages.

ISO 639-3 lists ten dialects of Persian, the three main literary dialects listed above and seven regional dialects: Hazaragi, Aimaq, Bukharic, Dzhidi, Dehwari, Darwazi, Pahlavani.[36]

The following are some closely related languages to Persian:

Phonology

Main article: Persian phonology

Iranian Persian has six vowels and twenty-three consonants, including two affricates /tʃ/ (ch) and /dʒ/ (j).

Vowels

The vowel phonemes of modern Iranian Persian

Historically, Persian has distinguished length: Early New Persian possessed a series of five long vowels (/iː/, /uː/, /ɒː/, /oː/ and /eː/) along with three short vowels /æ/, /i/ and /u/. At some point prior to the sixteenth century within the general area that is today encompassed by modern Iran, /eː/ and /iː/ merged into /iː/, and /oː/ and /uː/ merged into /uː/. Thus, the older contrasts between words like shēr "lion" and shīr "milk," were lost. There are exceptions to this rule and in some words, "ē" and "ō" are preserved or merged into the diphthongs [eɪ] and [oʊ] (which are descendents of the diphthongs [æɪ] and [æʊ] in Early New Persian), instead of merging into /iː/ and /uː/. Examples of this exception can be found in words such as [roʊʃæn] (bright).

However, in the eastern varieties, the archaic distinction of /eː/ and /iː/ (respectively known as Yā-ye majhūl and Yā-ye ma'rūf) is still preserved, as well as the distinction of /oː/ and /uː/ (known as Wāw-e majhūl and 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/.[37] Therefore, contemporary Afghan dialects are the closest one can get to the vowel inventory of Early New Persian.

According to most studies on the subject (e.g. Samareh 1977, Pisowicz 1985, Najafi 2001,) the three vowels which are 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 (e.g. Hayes 1979, Windfuhr 1979) which consider vowel-length to be the active feature of this system, i.e. /ɒ/, /i/, and /u/ are phonologically long or bimoraic whereas /æ/, /e/, and /o/ are phonologically short or monomoraic.

There are also some studies which consider quality and quantity to be both active in the Iranian system (e.g. Toosarvandani 2004). This view offers a synthetic analysis which includes both quality and quantity, often suggesting that modern Persian vowels are in a transition state between the quantitative system of classical Persian and a hypothetical future Persian which will eliminate all traces of quantity, and retain quality as the only active feature.

Suffice it to say that the length-distinction is strictly observed by careful reciters of classic-style poetry, for all varieties (including the Tajik).

Consonants

Labial Alveolar Postalveolar Palatal Velar Uvular Glottal
Nasal m n [ŋ]
Plosive p b t d k ɡ [ɢ] [ʔ]
Affricate tʃ dʒ
Fricative f v s z ʃ ʒ x ɣ h
Tap ɾ
Trill [r]
Approximant l j

(Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a voiced consonant. Allophones are in phonetic brackets.)

Grammar

Main article: Persian grammar

Morphology

Suffixes predominate Persian morphology, though there is a small number of prefixes.[38] Verbs can express tense and aspect, and they agree with the subject in person and number.[39] There is no grammatical gender in Persian, nor are pronouns marked for natural gender.

Syntax

Normal declarative sentences are structured as "(S) (PP) (O) V". This means sentences can comprise optional subjects, prepositional phrases, and objects, followed by a required verb. If the object is specific, then the object is followed by the word rɑ: and precedes prepositional phrases: "(S) (O + "rɑ:") (PP) V".[39]

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, as is common in German. Professor Mahmoud Hessaby demonstrated that Persian can derive 226 million words.[40]

Influences

See also: List of English words of Persian origin, List of French loanwords in Persian, and Iranian languages#Comparison table of the Iranian languages

While having a lesser influence on Arabic[5] and other languages of Mesopotamia and its core vocabulary being of Middle Persian origin[3], New Persian contains a considerable amount of Arabic lexical items[2][4][6], which were Persianized[7] and often took a different meaning and usage than the Arabic original. The Arabic vocabulary in other Iranic, Turkic and Indic languages are generally understood to be have been copied from New Persian.[41]

John R. Perry in his article "Areas and Semantic Fields of Arabic" indicates his belief that the overall range of Arabic synonyms vocabulary used along or interchangeable with their equivalents Persian words varies from 2.4% frequency in the Shaahnaameh,[42] 14% in material culture[43], 24% in intellectual life[43] to 40% of everyday literary activity.[43] Most of the Arabic words used in Persian are either synonyms of native terms[43] or could be (and often have been) glossed in Persian.[43] The Arabic vocabulary in Persian is thus suppletive[43], rather than basic and has enriched New Persian.

The inclusion of Mongolian and Turkic elements in the Persian language should also be mentioned,[44] 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 and these words were mainly confined to military, pastoral terms and political sector (titles, administration, etc.) until new military and political titles were coined based partially on Middle Persian (e.g. Artesh for army instead of Qoshun) in the 20th century.[45]

There are also adaptations from French (mainly in the late 19th century and early 20th century) and Russian (mainly in the late 19th century and early 20th century). Like most languages of the world, there is an increasing amount of English vocabulary entering the Persian language. The Persian academy (Farhangestan) has coined Persian equivalents for some of these terms.[citation needed] There are more words adopted from French than from English because Persian speakers more easily pronounce French words.[46]

Persian has likewise influenced the vocabularies of other languages, especially other Indo-Iranian languages like Urdu and to a lesser extent Hindi, etc, as well as Turkic languages like Ottoman Turkish, Chagatai language, Tatar language, Turkish[47] Turkmen, Azeri[48] and Uzbek, Afro-Asiatic languages like Assyrian and Arabic,[49] and even Dravidian languages especially Telugu and Brahui. Several languages of southwest Asia have also been influenced, including Armenian and Georgian. Persian has even influenced the Malay spoken in Malaysia and Swahili in Africa. Many Persian words have also found their way into other Indo-European languages including the English language.[citation needed]

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, the phrase "thank you" can be expressed using the French word merci (stressed however on the first syllable), by the hybrid Persian-Arabic word moteshaker-am, or by the pure Persian word sepasgozar-am. The extent of Persian words used in Urdu has made that language often intelligible to Persian-speakers, especially in written form.[citation needed]

Orthography

Example showing Nastaʿlīq's (Persian) proportion rules.[ 1 ] Dehkhoda's personal handwriting; a typical cursive Persian script.

The vast majority of modern Iranian Persian and Dari text is written in a form of the Arabic alphabet. Tajik, which is considered by some linguists to be a Persian dialect influenced by Russian and the Turkic languages of Central Asia,[50][51] is written with the Cyrillic alphabet in Tajikistan (see Tajik alphabet).

Persian alphabet

Main article: Perso-Arabic script

Modern Iranian Persian and Dari are normally written using a modified variant of the Arabic alphabet (see Perso-Arabic script) with different pronunciation and more letters, whereas the Tajik variety is typically written in a modified version of the Cyrillic alphabet.

After the conversion of Persia to Islam (see Islamic conquest of Iran), it took approximately 150 years before Persians adopted the Arabic alphabet in place of the older alphabet. Previously, two different alphabets were used, Pahlavi, used for Middle Persian, and the Avestan alphabet (in Persian, Dîndapirak or Din Dabire—literally: religion script), used for religious purposes, primarily for the Avestan language but sometimes for Middle Persian.

In modern Persian script, vowels that are referred to as short vowels (a, e, o) are usually not written; only the long vowels (i, u, â) are represented in the text. This, of course, creates certain ambiguities. Consider the following: kerm "worm", karam "generosity", kerem "cream", and krom "chrome" are all spelled "krm" 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, an Arabic damma is pronounced [ʊ], 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.

It is also worth noting that 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 'z' letters, three 's' letters, two 't' letters, etc.

Additions

The Persian alphabet adds four letters to the Arabic alphabet:

Sound Isolated form Name
[p] پ pe
[tʃ] (ch) چ če
[ʒ] (zh) ژ že
[g] گ gāf

(The že is pronounced with the same sound as the "s" in "measure" and "fusion", or the "z" in "azure".)

Variations

The Persian alphabet also modifies some letters from the Arabic alphabet. For example, alef with hamza below ( إ ) changes to alef ( ا ); words using various hamzas get spelled with yet another kind of hamza (so that مسؤول becomes مسئول); and teh marbuta ( ة ) changes to heh ( ه ) or teh ( ت ).

The letters different in shape are:

Sound original Arabic letter modified Persian letter name
[k] ك ک kāf
vowel [i] consonant [j] ي ى ye

Writing the letters in their original Arabic form is not typically considered to be incorrect, but is not normally done.

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"[52] but the transliteration scheme is not in widespread use.

Another Latin alphabet, based on the Uniform Turkic alphabet, was used in Tajikistan in the 1920s and 1930s. The alphabet was phased out in favour of Cyrillic in the late 1930s.[50]

Fingilish, or Penglish, is the name given to texts written in Persian using the Basic Latin alphabet. It is most commonly used in chat, emails and SMS applications. 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).

UniPers, short for the Universal Persian Alphabet (Pârsiye Jahâni) is a Latin-based alphabet popularized by Mohamed Keyvan, who used it in a number of Persian textbooks for foreigners and travellers.[53]

The International Persian Alphabet (Pársik) is another Latin-based alphabet developed in recent years mainly by A. Moslehi, a comparative linguist.[54]

Tajik alphabet

Tajik advertisement for an academy. Main article: Tajik alphabet

The Cyrillic alphabet 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 Bolshevik revolution and the Perso-Arabic script that had been used earlier. After 1939, materials published in Persian in the Perso-Arabic script were banned from the country.[50] [55]

Examples

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Persian IPA English Gloss
همهٔ افراد بشر آزاد به دنیا می‌آیند و از دید حیثیت و حقوق با هم برابرند، همه دارای اندیشه و وجدان هستند و باید در برابر یکدیگر با روح برادری رفتار کنند. hæmeje æfrɒd bæʃær ɒzɒd be donjɒ miɒjænd o æz dide hejsijæt o hoɢuɢ bɒ hæm bærɒbærænd ǁ hæme dɒrɒje ændiʃe o vedʒdɒn mibɒʃænd o bɒjæd dær bærɒbære jekdigær bɒ ruhe bærɒdæri ræftɒr konænd All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Iran, 36 M (51%) - 46 M (65%) Loc.gov, Afghanistan, 16.369 M (50%), Tajikistan, 5.770 M (80%), Uzbekistan, 1.2 M (4.4%)
  2. ^ a b c d e Professor. Gilbert Lazard, : The language known as New Persian, which usually is called at this period (early Islamic times) by the name of Dari or Parsi-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 Middle 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 in (Lazard, Gilbert 1975, “The Rise of the New Persian Language” in Frye, R. N., The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 4, pp. 595–632, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  3. ^ a b c Richard Davis, “Persian” in Josef W. Meri, Jere L. Bacharach, “Medieval Islamic Civilization”, Taylor & Francis, 2006. Ppg 602-603. “The grammar of New Persian is similar to many contemporary European languages.” “Persian has in general confined its borrowing from Arabic to lexical items, and its morphology is relatively unaffected by the influence of Arabic, being confined to a few conventions such as (usually original) use of Arabic plurals for Arabic-derived words (as in English speaker may use Latin plurals for Latin loan words, in English). Similarly, the core vocabulary of Persian continued to be derived from Pahlavi, but Arabic lexical items predominate for more abstract or abstruse subjects and often replaced their Persian equivalents in polite discourse.
  4. ^ a b Lazard, Gilbert, "Pahlavi, Pârsi, dari: Les langues d'Iran d'apès Ibn al-Muqaffa" in R.N. Frye, "Iran and Islam. In Memory of the late Vladimir Minorsky", Edinburgh University Press, 1971.
  5. ^ a b Nushin Namazi (2008-11-24). "Persian Loan Words in Arabic". http://cgi.stanford.edu/group/wais/cgi-bin/?p=24327. Retrieved 2009-06-01.
  6. ^ a b Classe, Olive (2000). Encyclopedia of literary translation into English. Taylor & Francis. p. 1057. ISBN 1884964362, ISBN 9781884964367. http://books.google.com/books?id=C1uXah12nHgC&pg=PA1057. "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."
  7. ^ a b Ann K. S. Lambton, "Persian grammar", Cambridge University Press, Cambridge University Press 1953. Excerpt: "The Arabic words incorporated into the Persian language have become Persianized".
  8. ^ Windfuhr, Gernot (1987). Berard Comrie. ed. The World's Major Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 523–546. ISBN 978-0195065114.
  9. ^ Willem Vogelsang, "The Afghans", Blackwell Publishing, 2002
  10. ^ ICDC.com, "Declassified". Dr. Zaher (Pashtun) said that there would be, as there is now, two official languages, Pashtu and Farsi, but the latter henceforth would be Dari.
  11. ^ Oxford English Dictionary online, s.v. "Persian", draft revision June 2007.
  12. ^ a b Oxford English Dictionary online, s.v. "Fârsi".
  13. ^ Cannon, Garland Hampton and Kaye, Alan S. (1994) The Arabic contributions to the English language: an historical dictionary Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, Germany, page 106, ISBN 3-447-03491-2
  14. ^ Odisho, Edward Y. (2005) Techniques of teaching comparative pronunciation in Arabic and English Gorgias Press, Piscataway, New Jersey, page 23 ISBN 1-59333-272-6
  15. ^ Pejman Akbarzadeh (2005). "“Farsi” or “Persian”?". http://heritage.chn.ir/en/Article/?id=88. Retrieved 2007-02-20.
  16. ^ For example: A. Gharib, M. Bahar, B. Fooroozanfar, J. Homaii, and R. Yasami. Farsi Grammar. Jahane Danesh, 2nd edition, 2001.
  17. ^ Pronouncement of the Academy of Persian Language and Literature
  18. ^ Documentation for ISO 639 identifier: fas
  19. ^ Ethnologue: Code PRS
  20. ^ Ethnologue: Code PES
  21. ^ Linguist List: Tree for Southwest Western Iranian
  22. ^ Kamran Talattof Persian or Farsi? The debate continues...
  23. ^ (Skjaervo 2006) vi(2). Documentation.
  24. ^ cf. (Skjaervo 2006) vi(2). Documentation. Excerpt: Modern Yaḡnōbi belongs to the same dialect group as Sogdian, but is not a direct descendant; Bac-trian may be closely related to modern Yidḡa and Munji (Munjāni); and Wakhi (Wāḵi) belongs with Khotanese.
  25. ^ a b cf. (Skjaervo 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; Bac-trian 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..
  26. ^ Katzner, Kenneth (2002). The Languages of the World. Routledge. pp. 163. ISBN 0415250048.
  27. ^ Jeremias, Eva M. (2004). "Iran, iii. (f). New Persian". Encyclopaedia of Islam. 12 (New Edition, Supplement ed.). pp. 432. ISBN 9004139745.
  28. ^ 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.
  29. ^ The Mughal economy was responsible for around 20-25 % of the world economy, whereas the West-Asian productivity was less than 5%, see the List of regions by past GDP (PPP).
  30. ^ Clawson, Patrick (2004). Eternal Iran. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 6. ISBN 1403962766.
  31. ^ Persian or Farsi ? Simin Karimi, Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona
  32. ^ Iranchamber.com
  33. ^ Britannica.com
  34. ^ Henderson, M. M. T. (1994) "Modern Persian Verb Stems Revisited" in Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 114, No. 4. (October–December 1994), pp. 639–641.
  35. ^ Keshavarz, M. H. (1988) "Forms of Address in Post-Revolutionary Iranian Persian: A Sociolinguistic Analysis" in Language in Society, Vol. 17 No. 4 p565-75 December 1988
  36. ^ Ethnologue - Language Family Trees - Persian
  37. ^ Perry, J. R. (2005) A Tajik Persian Reference Grammar (Boston : Brill) ISBN 90-04-14323-8
  38. ^ Megerdoomian, Karine (2000). "Persian computational morphology: A unification-based approach". Memoranda in Computer and Cognitive Science: MCCS-00-320. pp. 1. http://www.zoorna.org/papers/MCCS320.pdf.
  39. ^ a b Mahootian, Shahrzad (1997). Persian. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-02311-4. http://books.google.com/books?id=DHqUjnN2_YwC&pg=PR1&ots=HCn8_R8rgr&dq=Mahootian+Shahrzad+1997&num=50&sig=jkzGYSDLMP8jsGiHigUo6spAokI#PPA5,M1.
  40. ^ Fareiran.com / فرايران
  41. ^ 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, contingous Iranic, Turkic and Indic languages was originally borrowed into literary Persian between the ninth and thirteenth century"
  42. ^ John Perry, Encyclopedia Iranica, "Arabic Words in ŠĀH-NĀMA "
  43. ^ a b c d e f 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. excerpt:"A dictionary based sample yields an inventory of approximately 8000 Arabic loanwords in current standard Persian or about forty percent of an everyday literary vocabulary of 20,000 words, not counting compounds and deravitives." excerpt: "In a random experiment, the Arabic Vocabulary of material culture was 14% while that of intellectual life was 24% percent in Persian." excerpt:"Most of the Arabic loans in Persian are either synonyms of attested native terms (as Arabic Mariz; Persian Bimar 'sick') or could be (and often have been) glossed in Persian native morphs (as Arabic ta'lim va tarbiyat 'education' was later replaced by Amuzesh o Parvaresh). Arabic vocabulary in Persian is thus suppletive, rather than basic."
  44. ^ 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.
  45. ^ 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 1,000 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.”
  46. ^ Majd, Hooman. "Persian Cats", The Ayatollah Begs to Differ. 2008. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-52334-9. 33.
  47. ^ Andreas Tietze, Persian loanwords in Anatolian Turkish, Oriens, 20 (1967) pp- 125-168. Archive.org
  48. ^ L. Johanson, "Azerbaijan: Iranian Elements in Azeri Turkish" in Encyclopedia Iranica Iranica.com
  49. ^ Bashgah.net
  50. ^ a b c Perry, John R. (2005). A Tajik Persian Reference Grammar. Boston: Brill. ISBN 90-04-14323-8.
  51. ^ Lazard, Gilbert (1956). "Charactères distinctifs de la langue Tadjik". Bulletin de la Société Linguistique de Paris 52: 117–186.
  52. ^ ISO 233-3:1999
  53. ^ UniPers.com
  54. ^ IPA2, persiandirect.com
  55. ^ Smallwars.quantico.usmc.mil

Further reading

  1. Thackston, W. M. (1993-05-01). An Introduction to Persian (3rd Rev ed.). Ibex Publishers. ISBN 0936347295.
  2. Mace, John (1993-03). Modern Persian (Teach Yourself). Teach Yourself. ISBN 0844238155.
  3. Mace, John (2002-10-18). Persian Grammar: For Reference and Revision (illustrated ed.). RoutledgeCurzon. ISBN 0700716955.
  4. Schmitt, Rüdiger (1989). Compendium linguarum Iranicarum. L. Reichert. ISBN 3882264136.
  5. Windfuhr, Gernot L. (2009-01-15). "Persian". in Bernard Comrie (ed.). The World's Major Languages (2 ed.). Routledge. ISBN 0415353394.
  6. Skjærvø, Prods Oktor (2006). "Iran, vi. Iranian languages and scripts". Encyclopaedia Iranica. 13.

External links

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Persian language edition of Wiktionary, the free dictionary/thesaurus
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