Persian language facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Persian |
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| Farsi fa |
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Farsi in Persian script (Nastaʿlīq style)
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| Native to | Iran Afghanistan(as Dari) |
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| Native speakers | 60 million (2009) (110 million total speakers) |
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| Language family |
Indo-European
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| Early forms: |
Old Persian
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| Dialects |
Western Persian
Bukharic
Pahlavani
Judæo-Persian
Juhuri
Caucasian Tat
Armeno-Tat
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| Writing system | Arabic (Persian alphabet) Cyrillic (Tajik alphabet) Hebrew script Persian Braille |
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| Official status | ||||
| Official language in |  Iran Afghanistan Tajikistan |
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| Recognised minority language in |  Iraq Uzbekistan Pakistan Azerbaijan Bahrain Israel Turkey |
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| Regulated by | Academy of Persian Language and Literature (Iran) Academy of Sciences of Afghanistan |
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| Linguasphere | 58-AAC (Wider Persian) > 58-AAC-c (Central Persian) | |||
Approximate extent of the Persian language area. Map includes all three dialects of Persian.
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Persian, also called Farsi, is a Western Iranian language. It is the official language of Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. It is also spoken by many people in Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and other neighbouring countries and by immigrants from Central Asia in Russia. Persian was also taught as a second language in schools in Pakistan until 2006. In the past, many of those places were parts of the Persian Empire.
Persian has many dialects and is officially called Farsi in Iran, Dari and Farsi in Afghanistan and Tajiki in Tajikistan. The literary language of each country is a little different, but people from each country can understand one another when they have a conversation. It has words from French in Iran and many from Russian Tajikistan.
Alphabet
The Persian alphabet has the following letters:
ا ب پ ت ث ج چ ح خ د ذ ر ز ژ س ش ص ض ط ظ ع غ ف ق ک گ ل م ن و ه ی
The Persian alphabet used in Iran and Afghanistan is similar to the Arabic alphabet, but since Persian in a different family from Arabic, their vocabulary and grammar are very different. Since the 1930s, in the countries that were in the Soviet Union, like Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, Persian has been written in the Cyrillic alphabet, like Russian. All Persian-speakers used to use the Arabic alphabet.
History
Persian is a very old language, and linguists use names for three different versions of Persian that were used in three different times. Old Persian was spoken in the first Persian Empire, under the Achaemenid kings, including Cyrus and Darius the Great. The empire existed from the 6th century BC to the conquest of Alexander the Great. The second Persian empire was ruled by the Sassanian kings from the 2nd century AD until the Muslim conquest of Iran by the Arabs in the 7th century and spoke Middle Persian, or Pahlavi.
New or Modern Persian is spoken today and was first written down in the 9th century, during the Samanid Empire, which was the first Muslim Persian kingdom and was based in Central Asia. The earliest writers of New Persian included poets like Rudaki, and Ferdowsi, who wrote an epic, a very long poem, called the Shahname, translated as the Book of Kings in English. It has myths and historical stories from before the Arabs conquered Persia.
Many other famous writers in Persian language were poets too, a few being Saadi, Hafez, Rumi. The Persian language has been very important one for literature. After Arabic, it was the second most common written language in Muslim countries, especially in the East.
Sample
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Related pages
Images for kids
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An Old Persian inscription written in Old Persian cuneiform in Persepolis, Iran
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Middle Persian text written in Inscriptional Pahlavi on the Paikuli inscription from between 293 and 297. Slemani Museum, Iraqi Kurdistan.
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Kalilah va Dimna, an influential work in Persian literature
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Persian on an Ottoman miniature
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Persian poem, Agra Fort, India, 18th century
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Persian poem, Takht-e Shah Jahan, Agra Fort, India
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A variant of the Iranian standard ISIRI 9147 keyboard layout for Persian
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Example showing Nastaʿlīq's (Persian) proportion rules
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Ali-Akbar Dehkhoda's personal handwriting, a typical cursive Persian script
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The word "Persian" in the Book Pahlavi script
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Tajiki advertisement for an academy
See also
In Spanish: Idioma persa para niños
