persian

Persian, also known as Farsi in Iran, Dari in Afghanistan, and Tajiki in Tajikistan, is an Iranian language belonging to the Western branch of the Indo-European family. It is the predominant language of Iran and is also spoken in Afghanistan and Tajikistan, where it has official or national-status forms and a large diaspora.

Persian descends from Old Iranian languages and has a continuous literary tradition dating to at least the 9th century with poets such as Ferdowsi, Rumi, Hafez, and Saadi. Modern Persian literature includes contemporary novels, journalism, and cinema, reflecting a long engagement with poetry, prose, and intellectual discourse.

Persian is written primarily in a variant of the Arabic script known as the Perso-Arabic alphabet, which adds letters such as پ, چ, ژ, and گ. In Iran and Afghanistan, the script is used for the standard form of the language; the Tajik variety is written in Cyrillic due to historical Soviet influence.

Dialectal variation includes Iranian Persian (Farsi), Dari, and Tajiki; they are generally mutually intelligible to varying degrees, with standard forms used in education and media. Differences include phonology, vocabulary, and some grammatical conventions, but they remain recognizable as varieties of a single language.

Persian serves as an official or national language across its core regions and has exerted substantial cultural influence in literature, philosophy, and the arts throughout the Iranian world. Its historical and contemporary presence continues to shape regional identity and cross-cultural exchange.