Persian Language Guide

Official language in
Iran, Afghanistan
Script
Arabic

Where it's spoken

Iran's constitution names Persian as the official language and script of the country, the lingua franca of its people, and requires official documents, correspondence and textbooks to be in this language and script. Persian, under the name Dari, is also one of Afghanistan's two official languages, alongside Pashto. An international standard for classifying languages groups Iranian Persian and Dari together as the two individual languages that make up Persian's own classification. Tajikistan's constitution instead names Tajik, not Persian, as the country's state language, and the same classification standard treats Tajik as a separate individual language, not part of that group with Persian and Dari.

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Script & pronunciation

Persian is written in the Arabic script, right to left. As in the Arabic script generally, it is cursive even in print, so the same letter may be written in different forms depending on how it joins with its neighbours, and short vowels are historically left unwritten: when marked at all, they appear as diacritics above or below a consonant letter, and ordinary writing normally omits them. Persian also has its own form of the letter yeh, called Farsi yeh, alongside the letters it shares with the rest of the Arabic script. One case of this general omission of short vowels is the ezafe: an unstressed vowel, -e or -ye after a vowel, that links a noun to a following modifier — an attributive noun, adjective, or prepositional phrase — and often corresponds to the English word "of." This app's card کلید اتاق (Kolid-e otāq, "Room key") does not mark the ezafe vowel in its Persian text, but the romanization spells it out with a hyphen. Persian orthography also requires a character called the zero width non-joiner in certain positions, including the Persian plural suffix, and removing it changes or destroys the meaning of the text; this app's card قیمت‌ها به تومان است (Qeymat-hā be tomān ast, "The prices are in tomans") keeps this character between the noun and the plural suffix in the Persian text, matched by a hyphen at the same point in the romanization.

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Grammar essentials

A study of Persian sentence production describes Persian as "a flexible SOV language" — subject, object, then verb. This app's card یک چای می‌خواهم (yek chāyi mikhāham, "I would like one tea") places its object, "tea," before its verb, "want." A study of Persian compound verbs states that the language's negative prefix attaches to the verbal part of a compound verb and negates the whole compound, not merely the part it touches. This app's card فارسی صحبت نمی‌کنم (Fārsi sohbat nemikonam, "I can't speak Persian") negates the compound verb صحبت کردن (sohbat kardan, "to speak") — itself identified as a compound verb by the card's own grammar note — by attaching the negative prefix to کردن (kardan).

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Politeness & etiquette

Persian speakers can address the other person with the informal singular pronoun تو (to) or with the polite شما (shomā), historically the plural "you," and speakers also use this plural form for a single addressee to show greater respect. This app's card شما (shomā, "You (polite)") notes that speakers use this form with strangers and elders, reserving تو (to) for close friends.

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