From WikiLang
 Persian pages
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| Introduction · Sounds and Writing |
| Iranian Languages | |
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| Eastern |  Ossetian ·  Pashto ·  Yaghnobi ·  Yidgha
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| Western |  Dari · Persian
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An Introduction to the Language
Persian (in Persian: فارسی /fɒ:rsi:/ or (older) پارسی /pɒ:rsi:/ ) is the language spoken in Iran. It is also spoken in its classical form in west Afghanistan under the name Dari, and in a third form in Tajikistan where it is called Tajik and is still written in the cyrillic script. Persian is a very ancient language of the Indo-European family, (sub-family: Indo-Aryan). It shares many grammatical and phonological similarities with the languages of Europe, having two grammatical numbers, no noun cases, and, interestingly, no grammatical gender. Persian grammar is relatively regular and with comparatively few lexemes per word. Its sound system boasts a similar set of consonants to German (albeit with the /ɢ/ sound and a voiced counterpart to every voiceless sound giving the /ɣ/ /ʒ/ and /dʒ/ sounds). Its vocabulary is based on ancient persian words, with a fair few English and French loans, and an enormous vocabulary of words from Arabic. Persian literature is rich with many many novels and poems of all styles spanning centuries with a definite tendency towards literature dealing with love and romance.
Family
Indo-European
- Indo-Iranian
- Iranian
- Western Iranian
- Southwestern Iranian
- Persian
- Southwestern Iranian
- Western Iranian
- Iranian
Spoken in
Spoken in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikstan by around 60-70 million people.
