Persian (local names
Persian ????? IPA&_160;
[f??r'si] (
Farsi) or
Persian ????? [p??r'si] (
Parsi); see
Nomenclature), is an
Indo-European language of
Indo-Iranian branch, from
Iranian languages, which is spoken in
Iran,
Afghanistan, and
Tajikistan.
Persian and its varieties have official-language status in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. According to CIA World Factbook, based on old data, there are approximately 72 million native speakers of Persian in Iran,[2] Afghanistan,[3] Tajikistan[4] and Uzbekistan[5] and about the same number of people in other parts of the world speak Persian, at least as a second language. UNESCO was asked to select Persian as one of its languages in 2006.[6]
Persian has been a medium for literary and scientific contributions to the Islamic world as well as the Western. It has had an influence on certain neighbouring languages, particularly the Turkic languages of Central Asia, Caucasus, and Anatolia as well as Urdu, Hindi, and other Indian langauges. It has had a lesser influence on Arabic and other languages of Mesopotamia.
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 "official language" under the Mughal emperors. Only in 1843 did the subcontinent begin conducting business in English.[7] 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.
