Modern Persian is a continuation ofMiddle Persian, an official language of theSasanian Empire (224–651 CE), itself a continuation ofOld Persian, which was used in theAchaemenid Empire (550–330 BCE).[20][21] It originated in the region ofFars (Persia) in southwestern Iran.[22] Its grammar is similar to that of many European languages.[23]
Persian was the first language to break through the monopoly ofArabic on writing in theMuslim world, withPersian poetry becoming a tradition in many eastern courts.[24] It was used officially as a language of bureaucracy even by non-native speakers, such as theOttomans inAnatolia,[26] theMughals in South Asia, and thePashtuns in Afghanistan. It influenced languages spoken in neighboring regions and beyond, including other Iranian languages, theTurkic,Armenian,Georgian, &Indo-Aryan languages. It also exerted some influence on Arabic,[27] while borrowing a lot of vocabulary from it in the Middle Ages.[20][23][28][29][30][31]
The termPersian is an English derivation ofLatinPersiānus, the adjectival form ofPersia, itself deriving fromGreekPersís (Περσίς),[36] a Hellenized form ofOld PersianPārsa (𐎱𐎠𐎼𐎿),[37] which means "Persia" (a region in southwestern Iran, corresponding to modern-dayFars). According to theOxford English Dictionary, the termPersian as a language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century.[38]
Farsi, which is the Persian word for the Persian language, has also been used widely in English in recent decades, more often to refer to Iran's standard Persian. However, the namePersian is still more widely used. TheAcademy of Persian Language and Literature has maintained that theendonymFarsi is to be avoided in foreign languages, and thatPersian is the appropriate designation of the language in English, as it has the longer tradition in western languages and better expresses the role of the language as a mark of cultural and national continuity.[39] Iranian historian and linguistEhsan Yarshater, founder of theEncyclopædia Iranica andColumbia University's Center for Iranian Studies, mentions the same concern in an academic journal onIranology, rejecting the use ofFarsi in foreign languages.[40]
Etymologically, the termFarsi derives from its earlier formPārsi (Pārsik inMiddle Persian), which in turn comes from the same root as the English termPersian.[41] In the same process, the Middle Persian toponymPārs ("Persia") evolved into the modern name Fars.[42] The phonemic shift from/p/ to/f/ is due to theinfluence of Arabic in the Middle Ages, from the lack of the phoneme/p/ in Standard Arabic.[43][44][45][46]
Standard varieties' names
The standard Persian of Iran has been called, apart fromPersian andFarsi, by names such asIranian Persian andWestern Persian, exclusively.[47][48] The official language of Iran is designated simply asPersian (فارسی,fārsi).[10]
The standard Persian of Afghanistan has been officially namedDari (دری,dari) since 1958.[15] Also referred to asAfghan Persian in English, it is one of Afghanistan's two official languages, together withPashto. The termDari, meaning "of the court", originally referred to the variety of Persian used in the court of the Sasanian Empire in capitalCtesiphon, which spread to the northeast of the empire and gradually replaced the former Iranian dialects ofParthia (Parthian).[49][50]
Tajik Persian (форси́и тоҷикӣ́,forsi-i tojikī), the standard Persian of Tajikistan, has been officially designated asTajik (тоҷикӣ,tojikī) since the time of theSoviet Union.[17] It is the name given to the varieties of Persian spoken in Central Asia in general.[51]
ISO codes
The international language-encoding standardISO 639-1 uses the codefa for the Persian language, as its coding system is mostly based on the native-language designations. The more detailed standardISO 639-3 uses the codefas for the dialects spoken across Iran and Afghanistan.[52] This consists of the individual languages Dari (prs) and Iranian Persian (pes). It usestgk for Tajik, separately.[53]
History
In general, the Iranian languages are known from three periods: namely Old, Middle, and New (Modern). These correspond to three historical eras ofIranian history; Old era being sometime around theAchaemenid Empire (i.e., 400–300 BC), Middle era being the next period most officially around theSasanian Empire, and New era being the period afterward down to present day.[54]
According to available documents, the Persian language is "the only Iranian language"[20] for which close philological relationships between all of its three stages are established and so that Old, Middle, and New Persian represent[20][55] one and the same language of Persian; that is, New Persian is a direct descendant of Middle and Old Persian.[55] Gernot Windfuhr considers new Persian as an evolution of the Old Persian language and the Middle Persian language[56] but also states that none of the known Middle Persian dialects is the direct predecessor of Modern Persian.[57][58] Ludwig Paul states: "The language of the Shahnameh should be seen as one instance of continuous historical development from Middle to New Persian."[59]
The known history of the Persian language can be divided into the following three distinct periods:
According to certain historical assumptions about the early history and origin of ancient Persians inSouthwestern Iran (where Achaemenids hailed from), Old Persian was originally spoken by a tribe calledParsuwash, who arrived in theIranian Plateau early in the 1st millennium BCE and finally migrated down into the area of present-day Fārs province. Their language, Old Persian, became the official language of the Achaemenid kings.[66] Assyrian records, which in fact appear to provide the earliest evidence for ancient Iranian (Persian and Median) presence on the Iranian Plateau, give a good chronology but only an approximate geographical indication of what seem to be ancient Persians. In these records of the 9th century BCE,Parsuwash (along withMatai, presumably Medians) are first mentioned in the area ofLake Urmia in the records ofShalmaneser III.[67] The exact identity of the Parsuwash is not known for certain, but from a linguistic viewpoint the word matches Old Persianpārsa itself coming directly from the older word*pārćwa.[67] Also, as Old Persian contains many words from another extinct Iranian language,Median, according toP. O. Skjærvø it is probable that Old Persian had already been spoken before the formation of theAchaemenid Empire and was spoken during most of the first half of the first millennium BCE.[66]Xenophon, a Greek general serving in some of the Persian expeditions, describes many aspects of Armenian village life and hospitality in around 401 BCE, which is when Old Persian was still spoken and extensively used. He relates that theArmenian people spoke alanguage that to his ear sounded like the language of the Persians.[68]
Related to Old Persian, but from a different branch of the Iranian language family, wasAvestan, the language of theZoroastrian liturgical texts.
The complexgrammatical conjugation anddeclension of Old Persian yielded to the structure of Middle Persian in which the dual number disappeared, leaving only singular and plural, as did gender. Middle Persian developed theezāfe construction, expressed throughī (moderne/ye), to indicate some of the relations between words that have been lost with the simplification of the earlier grammatical system.
Although the "middle period" of the Iranian languages formally begins with the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, the transition from Old to Middle Persian had probably already begun before the 4th century BC. However, Middle Persian is not actually attested until 600 years later when it appears in the Sassanid era (224–651 AD) inscriptions, so any form of the language before this date cannot be described with any degree of certainty. Moreover, as a literary language, Middle Persian is not attested until much later, in the 6th or 7th century. From the 8th century onward, Middle Persian gradually began yielding to New Persian, with the middle-period form only continuing in the texts ofZoroastrianism.
Middle Persian is considered to be a later form of the same dialect as Old Persian.[69] Thenative name of Middle Persian wasParsig orParsik, after the name of the ethnic group of the southwest, that is, "ofPars", Old PersianParsa, New PersianFars. This is the origin of the nameFarsi as it is today used to signify New Persian. Following the collapse of the Sassanid state,Parsik came to be applied exclusively to (either Middle or New) Persian that was written in theArabic script. From about the 9th century onward, as Middle Persian was on the threshold of becoming New Persian, the older form of the language came to be erroneously calledPahlavi, which was actually but one of thewriting systems used to render both Middle Persian as well as various other Middle Iranian languages. That writing system had previously been adopted by the Sassanids (who were Persians, i.e. from the southwest) from the preceding Arsacids (who were Parthians, i.e. from the northeast). WhileIbn al-Muqaffa' (eighth century) still distinguished betweenPahlavi (i.e. Parthian) andPersian (in Arabic text: al-Farisiyah) (i.e. Middle Persian), this distinction is not evident in Arab commentaries written after that date.
"New Persian" (also referred to as Modern Persian) is conventionally divided into three stages:
Early New Persian (8th/9th centuries)
Classical Persian (10th–18th centuries)
Contemporary Persian (19th century to present)
Early New Persian remains largely intelligible to speakers of Contemporary Persian, as the morphology and, to a lesser extent, the lexicon of the language have remained relatively stable.[70]
Early New Persian
New Persian texts written in theArabic script first appear in the 9th-century.[71] The language is a direct descendant of Middle Persian, the official, religious, and literary language of the Sasanian Empire (224–651).[72] However, it is not descended from the literary form of Middle Persian (known aspārsīg, commonly called Pahlavi), which was spoken by the people ofFars and used inZoroastrian religious writings. Instead, it is descended from the dialect spoken by the court of the Sasanian capitalCtesiphon and the northeastern Iranian region ofKhorasan, known as Dari.[71][73] The region, which comprised the present territories of northwestern Afghanistan as well as parts of Central Asia, played a leading role in the rise of New Persian. Khorasan, which was the homeland of the Parthians, was Persianized under the Sasanians. Dari Persian thus supplantedParthian language (pahlavānīg), which by the end of the Sasanian era had fallen out of use.[71] New Persian has incorporated many foreign words, including fromeastern northern and northern Iranian languages such asSogdian and especially Parthian.[74]
Persian notes onQuranic booklets, written by a native ofTus called Ahmad Khayqani in 292 AH (905 CE).A page from a manuscript of "Kitab al-Abniya 'an Haqa'iq al-Adwiya" by Abu Mansur Muwaffaq, Copied byAsadi Tusi in 447 AH (1055 CE).
The transition to New Persian was already complete by the era of the three princely dynasties of Iranian origin, theTahirid dynasty (820–872),Saffarid dynasty (860–903), andSamanid Empire (874–999).[75] Abbas ofMerv is mentioned as being the earliest minstrel to chant verse in the New Persian tongue and after him the poems ofHanzala Badghisi were among the most famous between the Persian-speakers of the time.[76]
The first significant Persian poet wasRudaki. He flourished in the 10th century, when the Samanids were at the height of their power. His reputation as a court poet and as an accomplished musician and singer has survived, although little of his poetry has been preserved. Among his lost works are versified fables collected in theKalila wa Dimna.[24]
The language spread geographically from the 11th century on and was the medium through which, among others, Central Asian Turks became familiar with Islam and urban culture. New Persian was widely used as a trans-regionallingua franca, a task aided due to its relatively simple morphology, and this situation persisted until at least the 19th century.[77] In the late Middle Ages, new Islamic literary languages were created on the Persian model:Ottoman Turkish,Chagatai Turkic,Dobhashi Bengali, and Urdu, which are regarded as "structural daughter languages" of Persian.[77]
"Classical Persian" loosely refers to the standardized language ofmedieval Persia used inliterature andpoetry.This is the language of the 10th to 12th centuries, which continued to be used as literary language andlingua franca under the "Persianized" Turko-Mongol dynasties during the 12th to 15th centuries, and under restored Persian rule during the 16th to 19th centuries.[78]
A branch of the Seljuks, theSultanate of Rum, took Persian language, art, and letters to Anatolia.[81] They adopted the Persian language as theofficial language of the empire.[82] TheOttomans, who can roughly be seen as their eventual successors, inherited this tradition. Persian was the official court language of the empire, and for some time, the official language of the empire.[83] The educated and noble class of the Ottoman Empire all spoke Persian, such as SultanSelim I, despite being Safavid Iran's archrival and a staunch opposer ofShia Islam.[84] It was a major literary language in the empire.[85] Some of the noted earlier Persian works during the Ottoman rule areIdris Bidlisi'sHasht Bihisht, which began in 1502 and covered the reign of the first eight Ottoman rulers, and theSalim-Namah, a glorification of Selim I.[84] After a period of several centuries,Ottoman Turkish (which was highly Persianised itself) had developed toward a fully accepted language of literature, and which was even able to lexically satisfy the demands of a scientific presentation.[86] However, the number of Persian and Arabic loanwords contained in those works increased at times up to 88%.[86] In the Ottoman Empire, Persian was used at the royal court, for diplomacy, poetry, historiographical works, literary works, and was taught in state schools, and was also offered as an elective course or recommended for study in somemadrasas.[87]
Use in the Balkans
Persian learning was also widespread in the Ottoman-heldBalkans (Rumelia), with a range of cities being famed for their long-standing traditions in the study of Persian and its classics, amongst them Saraybosna (modernSarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina),Mostar (also in Bosnia and Herzegovina), and Vardar Yenicesi (or Yenice-i Vardar, nowGiannitsa, in northern Greece).[88]
Vardar Yenicesi differed from other localities in the Balkans insofar as that it was a town where Persian was also widely spoken.[89] However, the Persian of Vardar Yenicesi and of the rest of the Ottoman-held Balkans was different from formal Persian both in accent and vocabulary.[89] The difference was apparent to such a degree that the Ottomans referred to it as "Rumelian Persian" (Rumili Farsisi).[89] As learned people such as students, scholars and literati often frequented Vardar Yenicesi, it soon became the site of a flourishingPersianate linguistic and literary culture.[89] The 16th-century OttomanAşık Çelebi (died 1572), who hailed fromPrizren in modern-dayKosovo, was galvanized by the abundant Persian-speaking and Persian-writing communities of Vardar Yenicesi, and he referred to the city as a "hotbed of Persian".[89]
Many Ottoman Persianists who established a career in the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (modern-dayIstanbul) pursued early Persian training in Saraybosna, amongst themAhmed Sudi.[90]
Persian poem,Agra Fort, India, 18th centuryPersian poem,Takht-e Shah Jahan,Agra Fort, India
The Persian language influenced the formation of many modern languages in West Asia, Europe,Central Asia, andSouth Asia. Following the Turko-PersianGhaznavid conquest ofSouth Asia, Persian was firstly introduced in the region by Turkic Central Asians.[91] The basis in general for the introduction of Persian language into the subcontinent was set, from its earliest days, by various Persianized Central Asian Turkic and Afghan dynasties.[81] For five centuries prior to theBritish colonization, Persian was widely used as a second language in theIndian subcontinent. It took prominence as the language of culture and education in several Muslim courts on the subcontinent and became the sole "official language" under theMughal emperors.
TheBengal Sultanate witnessed an influx of Persian scholars, lawyers, teachers, and clerics. Thousands of Persian books and manuscripts were published in Bengal. The period of the reign of SultanGhiyathuddin Azam Shah is described as the "golden age of Persian literature in Bengal". Its stature was illustrated by the Sultan's own correspondence and collaboration with the Persian poetHafez; a poem which can be found in theDivan of Hafez today.[92] ABengali dialect emerged among the commonBengali Muslim folk, based on a Persian model and known asDobhashi; meaningmixed language. Dobhashi Bengali was patronised and given official status under theSultans of Bengal, and was a popular literary form used by Bengalis during the pre-colonial period, irrespective of their religion.[93]
Following the defeat of theHindu Shahi dynasty, classical Persian was established as a courtly language in the region during the late 10th century underGhaznavid rule over the northwestern frontier of thesubcontinent.[94] Employed byPunjabis in literature, Persian achieved prominence in the region during the following centuries.[94] Persian continued to act as a courtly language for various empires inPunjab through the early 19th century serving finally as the official state language of theSikh Empire, precedingBritish conquest and the decline of Persian in South Asia.[95][96][97]
Beginning in 1843, though, English andHindustani gradually replaced Persian in importance on the subcontinent.[98] Evidence of Persian's historical influence there can be seen in the extent of its influence on certain languages of the Indian subcontinent. Words borrowed from Persian are still quite commonly used in certain Indo-Aryan languages, especiallyHindi-Urdu (also historically known asHindustani),Punjabi,Kashmiri, andSindhi.[99] There is also a small population of ZoroastrianIranis in India, who migrated in the 19th century to escape religious persecution inQajar Iran and speak a Dari dialect.
Contemporary Persian
Qajar dynasty
Persian dialects
In the 19th century, under theQajar dynasty, the dialect that is spoken inTehran rose to prominence. There was still substantial Arabic vocabulary, but many of these words have been integrated into Persian phonology and grammar. In addition, under the Qajar rule, numerousRussian,French, and English terms entered the Persian language, especially vocabulary related to technology.
The first official attentions to the necessity of protecting the Persian language against foreign words, and to the standardization ofPersian orthography, were under the reign ofNaser ed Din Shah of theQajar dynasty in 1871.[citation needed] After Naser ed Din Shah,Mozaffar ed Din Shah ordered the establishment of the first Persian association in 1903.[39] This association officially declared that it used Persian andArabic as acceptable sources for coining words. The ultimate goal was to prevent books from being printed with wrong use of words. According to the executive guarantee of this association, the government was responsible for wrongfully printed books. Words coined by this association, such asrāh-āhan (راهآهن) for "railway", were printed inSoltani Newspaper; but the association was eventually closed due to inattention.[citation needed]
A scientific association was founded in 1911, resulting in a dictionary calledWords of Scientific Association (لغت انجمن علمی), which was completed later and renamedKatouzian Dictionary (فرهنگ کاتوزیان).[100]
Pahlavi dynasty
The first academy for the Persian language was founded on 20 May 1935, under the nameAcademy of Iran. It was established by the initiative ofReza Shah Pahlavi, and mainly byHekmat e Shirazi andMohammad Ali Foroughi, all prominent names in the nationalist movement of the time.The academy was a key institution in the struggle to re-build Iran as a nation-state after the collapse of the Qajar dynasty. During the 1930s and 1940s, the academy led massive campaigns to replace the manyArabic,Russian,French, andGreek loanwords whose widespread use in Persian during the centuries preceding the foundation of the Pahlavi dynasty had created a literary language considerably different from the spoken Persian of the time. This became the basis of what is now known as "Contemporary Standard Persian".
Varieties
There are three standard varieties of modern Persian:
All three varieties are based on the classic Persian literature and its literary tradition. There are also several local dialects from Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan which slightly differ from the standard Persian. TheHazaragi dialect (in Central Afghanistan and Pakistan),Herati (in Western Afghanistan), Darwazi (in Afghanistan and Tajikistan),Basseri (in Southern Iran), and theTehrani accent (in Iran, the basis of standard Iranian Persian) are examples of these dialects. Persian-speaking peoples of Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan can understand one another with a relatively high degree ofmutual intelligibility.[101] Nevertheless, theEncyclopædia Iranica notes that the Iranian, Afghan, and Tajiki varieties comprise distinct branches of the Persian language, and within each branch a wide variety of local dialects exist.[102]
The following are some languages closely related to Persian, or in some cases are considered dialects:
Tat, spoken in parts of Azerbaijan, Russia, and Transcaucasia. It is classified as a variety of Persian.[106][107][108][109][110] (This dialect is not to be confused with theTati language of northwestern Iran, which is a member of a different branch of the Iranian languages.)
Judeo-Tat. Part of the Tat-Persian continuum, spoken in Azerbaijan, Russia, as well as by immigrant communities in Israel and New York.
Iranian Persian and Tajik have six vowels; Dari has eight. Iranian Persian has twenty-three consonants, but both Dari and Tajiki have twenty-four consonants, due to the phonemic merger of/q/ and/ɣ/ in Iranian Persian.[111]
Persian spoken by an Iranian. Recorded in the United States.
Historically, Persian distinguished length. Early New Persian had a series of five long vowels (/iː/,/uː/,/ɑː/,/oː/, and/eː/) along with three short vowels/æ/,/i/, and/u/. At some point prior to the 16th century in the general area now modern Iran,/eː/ and/iː/ merged into/iː/, and/oː/ and/uː/ merged into/uː/. Thus, older contrasts such asشیرshēr "lion" vs.شیرshīr "milk", andزودzūd "quick" vsزورzōr "strength" were lost. However, there are exceptions to this rule, and in some words,ē andō are merged into the diphthongs[eɪ] and[oʊ] (which are descendants of the diphthongs[æɪ] and[æʊ] in Early New Persian), instead of merging into/iː/ and/uː/. Examples of the exception can be found in words such asروشن[roʊʃæn] (bright). Numerous other instances exist.
However, in Dari, the archaic distinction of/eː/ and/iː/ (respectively known asیای مجهولYā-ye majhūl andیای معروفYā-ye ma'rūf) is still preserved as well as the distinction of/oː/ and/uː/ (known asواو مجهولWāw-e majhūl andواو معروفWāw-e ma'rūf). On the other hand, in standard Tajik, the length distinction has disappeared, and/iː/ merged with/i/ and/uː/ with/u/.[112] Therefore, contemporary Afghan Dari dialects are the closest to the vowel inventory of Early New Persian.[113]
According to most studies on the subject, the three vowels traditionally considered long (/i/,/u/,/ɒ/) are currently distinguished from their short counterparts (/e/,/o/,/æ/) by position of articulation rather than by length. However, there are studies that consider vowel length to be the active feature of the system, with/ɒ/,/i/, and/u/ phonologically long or bimoraic and/æ/,/e/, and/o/ phonologically short or monomoraic.[114]
There are also some studies that consider quality and quantity to be both active in the Iranian system. That offers a synthetic analysis including both quality and quantity, which often suggests that Modern Persian vowels are in a transition state between the quantitative system of Classical Persian and a hypothetical future Iranian language, which will eliminate all traces of quantity and retain quality as the only active feature. The length distinction is still strictly observed by careful reciters of classic-style poetry.[114]
Suffixes predominate Persianmorphology, though there are a small number of prefixes.[118] Verbs can express tense andaspect, and they agree with the subject in person and number.[119] There is nogrammatical gender in modern Persian, and pronouns are not marked fornatural gender. In other words, in Persian, pronouns are gender-neutral. When referring to a masculine or a feminine subject, the same pronounاو is used (pronounced "ou", ū).[120]
Syntax
Persian adheres mainly to subject–object–verb (SOV) word order. But case endings (e.g. for subject, object, etc.) expressed via suffixes may allow users to vary word order. Verbs agree with the subject in person and number. Normal declarative sentences are structured as(S) (PP) (O) V: sentences have optionalsubjects,prepositional phrases, andobjects followed by a compulsoryverb. If the object is specific, the object is followed by the wordrā and precedes prepositional phrases:(S) (O +rā) (PP) V.[119]
Persian makes extensive use of word building and combining affixes, stems, nouns, and adjectives. Persian frequently uses derivationalagglutination toform new words from nouns, adjectives, and verbal stems. New words are extensively formed bycompounding – two existing words combining into a new one.
While having a lesser influence fromArabic[29] and other languages ofMesopotamia and its core vocabulary being ofMiddle Persian origin,[23] New Persian contains a considerable number of Arabic lexical items,[20][28][30] which were Persianized[31] and often took a different meaning and usage than theArabic original. Persian loanwords of Arabic origin especially includeIslamic terms. The Arabic vocabulary in other Iranian, Turkic, and Indic languages is generally understood to have been copied from New Persian, not from Arabic itself.[121]
John R. Perry, in his article "Lexical Areas and Semantic Fields of Arabic", estimates that about 20 percent of everyday vocabulary in current Persian, and around 25 percent of the vocabulary of classical and modern Persian literature, are of Arabic origin. The text frequency of these loan words is generally lower and varies by style and topic area. It may approach 25 percent of a text in literature.[122] According to another source, about 40% of everyday Persian literary vocabulary is of Arabic origin.[123] Among the Arabic loan words, relatively few (14 percent) are from the semantic domain of material culture, while a larger number are from domains of intellectual and spiritual life.[124] Most of the Arabic words used in Persian are either synonyms of native terms or could be glossed in Persian.[124]
Use of occasional foreign synonyms instead of Persian words can be a common practice in everyday communications as an alternative expression. In some instances in addition to the Persian vocabulary, the equivalent synonyms from multiple foreign languages can be used. For example, in Iranian colloquial Persian (not in Afghanistan or Tajikistan), the phrase "thank you" may be expressed using the French wordمرسیmerci (stressed, however, on the first syllable), the hybrid Persian-Arabic phraseمتشکّرَمmotešakkeram (متشکّرmotešakker being "thankful" in Arabic, commonly pronouncedmoččakker in Persian, and the verbـَمam meaning "I am" in Persian), or by the pure Persian phraseسپاسگزارمsepās-gozāram.
Modern Iranian Persian and Afghan Persian are written using thePersian alphabet, which is a modified variant of theArabic alphabet, using different pronunciation and additional letters not found in the Arabic language. After theArab conquest of Persia, it took approximately 200 years before Persians adopted the Arabic script in place of the older alphabet. Previously, two different scripts were used,Pahlavi, used for Middle Persian, and theAvestan alphabet (in Persian, Dīndapirak, or Din Dabire—literally: religion script), used for religious purposes, primarily for theAvestan but sometimes for Middle Persian.
In the modern Persian script,historically short vowels are usually not written, only the historically long ones are represented in the text, so words distinguished from each other only by short vowels are ambiguous in writing: Iranian Persiankerm "worm",karam "generosity",kerem "cream", andkrom "chrome" are all spelledkrm (کرم) in Persian. The reader must determine the word from context. The Arabic system of vocalization marks known asharakat is also used in Persian, although some of the symbols have different pronunciations. For example, aḍammah is pronounced[ʊ~u], while in Iranian Persian it is pronounced[o]. This system is not used in mainstream Persian literature; it is primarily used for teaching and in some (but not all) dictionaries.
Persian typewriter keyboard layoutA variant of the Iranian standard ISIRI 9147 keyboard layout for Persian
There are several letters generally only used in Arabic loanwords. These letters are pronounced the same as similar Persian letters. For example, there are four functionally identical letters for/z/ (ز ذ ض ظ), three letters for/s/ (س ص ث), two letters for/t/ (ط ت), two letters for/h/ (ح ه).On the other hand, there are four letters that do not exist in Arabicپ چ ژ گ.
Historically, there was also a special letter for the sound/β/. This letter is no longer used, as the/β/-sound changed to/b/, e.g. archaicزڤان/zaβaːn/ >زبان/zæbɒn/ 'language'[137]
Sound
Isolated form
Final form
Medial form
Initial form
Name
/β/
ڤ
ـڤ
ـڤـ
ڤـ
βe
Variations
The Persian alphabet also modifies some letters of the Arabic alphabet. For example,alef with hamza below (إ ) changes toalef (ا ); words using varioushamzas get spelled with yet another kind of hamza (so thatمسؤول becomesمسئول) even though the latter has been accepted in Arabic since the 1980s; andteh marbuta (ة ) changes toheh (ه ) orteh (ت ).
The letters different in shape are:
Arabic style letter
Persian style letter
Name
ك
ک
ke (kāf)
ي
ی
ye
However,ی in shape and form is the traditional Arabic style that continues in the Nile Valley, namely,Egypt,Sudan, andSouth Sudan.
TheInternational Organization for Standardization has published a standard for simplifiedtransliteration of Persian into Latin, ISO 233-3, titled "Information and documentation – Transliteration of Arabic characters into Latin characters – Part 3: Persian language – Simplified transliteration"[138] but the transliteration scheme is not in widespread use.
Another Latin alphabet, based on theNew Turkic Alphabet, was used inTajikistan in the 1920s and 1930s. The alphabet was phased out in favor ofCyrillic in the late 1930s.[112]
Fingilish is Persian usingISO basic Latin alphabet. It is most commonly used inchat,emails, andSMS applications. The orthography is not standardized, and varies among writers and even media (for example, typing 'aa' for the[ɒ] phoneme is easier on computer keyboards than on cellphone keyboards, resulting in smaller usage of the combination on cellphones).
The Cyrillic script was introduced for writing theTajik language under theTajik Soviet Socialist Republic in the late 1930s, replacing theLatin alphabet that had been used since theOctober Revolution and the Persian script that had been used earlier. After 1939, materials published in Persian in the Persian script were banned in the country.[112][139]
همهی افراد بشر آزاد به دنیا میآیند و حیثیت و حقوقشان با هم برابر است، همه اندیشه و وجدان دارند و باید در برابر یکدیگر با روح برادری رفتار کنند.
Iranian Persian transliteration
Hame-ye afrād-e bashar āzād be donyā mi āyand o heysiyat o hoquq-e shān bā ham barābar ast, hame andishe o vejdān dārand o bāyad dar barābare yekdigar bā ruh-e barādari raftār konand.
Ҳамаи афроди башар озод ба дунё меоянд ва ҳайсияту ҳуқуқашон бо ҳам баробар аст, ҳамаашон андешаву виҷдон доранд ва бояд дар баробари якдигар бо рӯҳи бародарӣ рафтор кунанд.
Tajiki transliteration
Hamai afrodi bashar ozod ba dunjo meoyand va haysiyatu huquqashon bo ham barobar ast, hamaashon andeshavu vijdon dorand va boyad dar barobari yakdigar bo rūhi barodarī raftor kunand.
English translation
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act toward one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
^abcSamadi, Habibeh; Nick Perkins (2012). Martin Ball; David Crystal; Paul Fletcher (eds.).Assessing Grammar: The Languages of Lars. Multilingual Matters. p. 169.ISBN978-1-84769-637-3.
^abcWindfuhr, Gernot:The Iranian Languages, Routledge 2009, p. 418.
^abConstitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran: Chapter II, Article 15: "The official language and script of Iran, thelingua franca of its people, is Persian. Official documents, correspondence, and texts, as well as text-books, must be in this language and script. However, the use of regional and tribal languages in the press and mass media, as well as for teaching of their literature in schools, is allowed in addition to Persian."
^Constitution of the Republic of Dagestan: Chapter I, Article 11: "The state languages of the Republic of Dagestan are Russian and the languages of the peoples of Dagestan."
^abOlesen, Asta (1995).Islam and Politics in Afghanistan. Vol. 3. Psychology Press. p. 205.There began a general promotion of the Pashto language at the expense of Farsi – previously dominant in the educational and administrative system (...) – and the term 'Dari' for the Afghan version of Farsi came into common use, being officially adopted in 1958.
^Siddikzoda, S. "Tajik Language: Farsi or not Farsi?" inMedia Insight Central Asia #27, August 2002.
^abBaker, Mona (2001).Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. Psychology Press. p. 518.ISBN978-0-415-25517-2.Archived from the original on 2 October 2022. Retrieved20 June 2015.All this affected translation activities in Persian, seriously undermining the international character of the language. The problem was compounded in modern times by several factors, among them the realignment of Central Asian Persian, renamed Tajiki by the Soviet Union, with Uzbek and Russian languages, as well as the emergence of a language reform movement in Iran which paid no attention to the consequences of its pronouncements and actions for the language as a whole.
^Jonson, Lena (2006).Tajikistan in the new Central Asia. p. 108.
^Cordell, Karl (1998).Ethnicity and Democratisation in the New Europe. Routledge. p. 201.ISBN0415173124.Consequently the number of citizens who regard themselves as Tajiks is difficult to determine. Tajiks within and outside of the republic, Samarkand State University (SamGU) academics and international commentators suggest that there may be between six and seven million Tajiks in Uzbekistan, constituting 30 per cent of the republic's twenty-two million population, rather than the official figure of 4.7 per cent (Foltz 1996:213; Carlisle 1995:88).
^abcdeLazard 1975: "The language known as New Persian, which usually is called at this period (early Islamic times) by the name of Dari or Farsi-Dari, can be classified linguistically as a continuation of Middle Persian, the official religious and literary language of Sassanian Iran, itself a continuation of Old Persian, the language of the Achaemenids. Unlike the other languages and dialects, ancient and modern, of the Iranian group such as Avestan, Parthian, Soghdian, Kurdish, Balochi, Pashto, etc., Old Persian, Middle Persian, and New Persian represent one and the same language at three states of its history. It had its origin in Fars (the true Persian country from the historical point of view) and is differentiated by dialectical features, still easily recognizable from the dialect prevailing in north-western and eastern Iran."
^Ammon, Ulrich; Dittmar, Norbert; Mattheier, Klaus J.; Trudgill, Peter (2006).Sociolinguistics: An International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society. Vol. 3 (2nd ed.). Walter de Gruyter. p. 1912.The Pahlavi language (also known as Middle Persian) was the official language of Iran during the Sassanid dynasty (from 3rd to 7th century A. D.). Pahlavi is the direct continuation of old Persian, and was used as the written official language of the country. However, after the Moslem conquest and the collapse of the Sassanids, Arabic became the dominant language of the country and Pahlavi lost its importance, and was gradually replaced by Dari, a variety of Middle Persian, with considerable loan elements from Arabic and Parthian (Moshref 2001).
^Skjærvø, Prods Oktor (2006)."Iran, vi. Iranian languages and scripts".Encyclopædia Iranica. Vol. XIII. pp. 344–377.Archived from the original on 23 April 2020. Retrieved10 July 2019.(...) Persian, the language originally spoken in the province of Fārs, which is descended from Old Persian, the language of the Achaemenid empire (6th–4th centuries B.C.E.), and Middle Persian, the language of the Sasanian empire (3rd–7th centuries C.E.).
^abcDavis, Richard (2006). "Persian". In Meri, Josef W.; Bacharach, Jere L. (eds.).Medieval Islamic Civilization. Taylor & Francis. pp. 602–603.Similarly, the core vocabulary of Persian continued to be derived from Pahlavi, but Arabic lexical items predominated for more abstract or abstruse subjects and often replaced their Persian equivalents in polite discourse. (...) The grammar of New Persian is similar to that of many contemporary European languages.
^abcde Bruijn, J.T.P. (14 December 2015)."Persian literature".Encyclopædia Britannica.Archived from the original on 10 June 2019. Retrieved10 July 2019.
^abLazard, Gilbert (1971). "Pahlavi, Pârsi, dari: Les langues d'Iran d'apès Ibn al-Muqaffa". In Frye, R.N. (ed.).Iran and Islam. In Memory of the late Vladimir Minorsky. Edinburgh University Press.
^abClasse, Olive (2000).Encyclopedia of literary translation into English. Taylor & Francis. p. 1057.ISBN1-884964-36-2.Archived from the original on 10 March 2021. Retrieved28 September 2020.Since the Arab conquest of the country in 7th century AD, many loan words have entered the language (which from this time has been written with a slightly modified version of the Arabic script) and the literature has been heavily influenced by the conventions of Arabic literature.
^abLambton, Ann K. S. (1953).Persian grammar. Cambridge University Press.The Arabic words incorporated into the Persian language have become Persianized.
^Spooner, Brian (2012)."Dari, Farsi, and Tojiki". In Schiffman, Harold (ed.).Language Policy and Language Conflict in Afghanistan and Its Neighbors: The Changing Politics of Language Choice. Leiden: Brill. p. 94.ISBN978-9004201453.Archived from the original on 10 March 2021. Retrieved30 October 2015.
^Campbell, George L.; King, Gareth, eds. (2013)."Persian".Compendium of the World's Languages (3rd ed.). Routledge. p. 1339.ISBN9781136258466.Archived from the original on 10 March 2021. Retrieved30 October 2015.
^Perry, John R. "Persian morphology." Morphologies of Asia and Africa 2 (2007): 975–1019.
^Seraji, Mojgan, Beáta Megyesi, and Joakim Nivre. "A basic language resource kit for Persian." Eight International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2012), 23–25 May 2012, Istanbul, Turkey. European Language Resources Association, 2012.
^Sahranavard, Neda, and Jerry Won Lee. "The Persianization of English in multilingual Tehran." World Englishes (2020).
^Richardson, Charles Francis (1892).The International Cyclopedia: A Compendium of Human Knowledge. Dodd, Mead. p. 541.
^Strazny, Philipp (2013).Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Routledge. p. 324.ISBN978-1-135-45522-4.
^Lazard, Gilbert (17 November 2011)."Darī".Encyclopædia Iranica. Vol. VII. pp. 34–35.Archived from the original on 24 November 2020. Retrieved22 July 2019.It is derived from the word fordar (court, lit., "gate").Darī was thus the language of the court and of the capital, Ctesiphon. On the other hand, it is equally clear from this passage thatdarī was also in use in the eastern part of the empire, in Khorasan, where in the course of the Sasanian period Persian gradually supplanted Parthian and no dialect that was not Persian survived. The passage thus suggests thatdarī was actually a form of Persian, the common language of Persia. (...) Both were calledpārsī (Persian), but it is very likely that the language of the north, that is, the Persian used on former Parthian territory and also in the Sasanian capital, was distinguished from its congener by a new name,darī ([language] of the court).
^Paul, Ludwig (19 November 2013)."Persian Language: i: Early New Persian".Encyclopædia Iranica.Archived from the original on 17 March 2019. Retrieved18 March 2019.Northeast. Khorasan, the homeland of the Parthians (calledabaršahr "the upper lands" in MP), had been partly Persianized already in late Sasanian times. Following Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ, the variant of Persian spoken there was calledDarī and was based upon the one used in the Sasanian capital Seleucia-Ctesiphon (Ar.al-Madāʾen). (...) Under the specific historical conditions that have been sketched above, the Dari (Middle) Persian of the 7th century was developed, within two centuries, to the Dari (New) Persian that is attested in the earliest specimens of NP poetry in the late 9th century.
^Perry, John (20 July 2009)."Tajik ii. Tajik Persian".Encyclopædia Iranica.Archived from the original on 1 February 2020. Retrieved22 July 2019.
^abcf.Skjærvø 2006 vi(2). Documentation. Excerpt 1: "Only the official languages Old, Middle, and New Persian represent three stages of one and the same language, whereas close genetic relationships are difficult to establish between other Middle and Modern Iranian languages. Modern Yaḡnōbi belongs to the same dialect group as Sogdian, but is not a direct descendant; Bactrian may be closely related to modern Yidḡa and Munji (Munjāni); and Wakhi (Wāḵi) belongs with Khotanese. Excerpt 2:New Persian, the descendant of Middle Persian and official language of Iranian states for centuries."
^Comrie, Bernard (2003).The Major Languages of South Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Routledge.ISBN978-1-134-93257-3., p. 82. "The evolution of Persian as the culturally dominant language of major parts of the Near East, from Anatolia and Iran, to Central Asia, to northwest India until recent centuries, began with the political domination of these areas by dynasties originating in southwestern province of Iran, Pars, later Arabicised to Fars: first the Achaemenids (599–331 BC) whose official language was Old Persian; then the Sassanids (c. AD 225–651) whose official language was Middle Persian. Hence, the entire country used to be called Perse by the ancient Greeks, a practice continued to this day. The more general designation 'Iran(-shahr)" derives from Old Iranian aryanam (Khshathra)' (the realm) of Aryans'. The dominance of these two dynasties resulted in Old and Middle-Persian colonies throughout the empire, most importantly for the course of the development of Persian, in the north-east i.e., what is now Khorasan, northern Afghanistan, and Central Asia, as documented by the Middle Persian texts of the Manichean found in the oasis city of Turfan in Chinese Turkistan (Sinkiang). This led to certain degree of regionalisation".
^Comrie, Bernard (1990)The major languages of South Asia, the Middle East and Africa, Taylor & Francis, p. 82
^Barbara M. Horvath, Paul Vaughan,Community languages, 1991, p. 276
^L. Paul (2005), "The Language of the Shahnameh in historical and dialectical perspective", p. 150: "The language of the Shahnameh should be seen as one instance of continuous historical development from Middle to New Persian.",inWeber, Dieter; MacKenzie, D. N. (2005).Languages of Iran: Past and Present: Iranian Studies in Memoriam David Neil MacKenzie. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag.ISBN978-3-447-05299-3.Archived from the original on 17 November 2016. Retrieved20 June 2015.
^Schmitt 2008, pp. 80–1. sfn error: no target: CITEREFSchmitt2008 (help)
^Jackson, A. V. Williams. 1920. Early Persian poetry, from the beginnings down to the time of Firdausi. New York: The Macmillan Company. pp.17–19. (inPublic Domain)
^according toiranchamber.comArchived 29 June 2018 at theWayback Machine "the language (ninth to thirteenth centuries), preserved in the literature of the Empire, is known as Classical Persian, due to the eminence and distinction of poets such as Roudaki, Ferdowsi, and Khayyam. During this period, Persian was adopted as the lingua franca of the eastern Islamic nations. Extensive contact with Arabic led to a large influx of Arab vocabulary. In fact, a writer of Classical Persian had at one's disposal the entire Arabic lexicon and could use Arab terms freely either for literary effect or to display erudition. Classical Persian remained essentially unchanged until the nineteenth century, when the dialect of Teheran rose in prominence, having been chosen as the capital of Persia by the Qajar Dynasty in 1787. This Modern Persian dialect became the basis of what is now called Contemporary Standard Persian. Although it still contains a large number of Arab terms, most borrowings have been nativized, with a much lower percentage of Arabic words in colloquial forms of the language."
^Yazıcı, Tahsin (2010)."Persian authors of Asia Minor part 1".Encyclopaedia Iranica.Archived from the original on 17 November 2020. Retrieved6 July 2021.Persian language and culture were actually so popular and dominant in this period that in the late 14th century, Moḥammad (Meḥmed) Bey, the founder and the governing head of the Qaramanids, published an official edict to end this supremacy, saying that: "The Turkish language should be spoken in courts, palaces, and at official institutions from now on!"
^John Andrew Boyle,Some thoughts on the sources for the Il-Khanid period of Persian history, inIran: Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, British Institute of Persian Studies, vol. 12 (1974), p. 175.
Chapter "Imperial Ambitions, Mystical Aspirations: Persian Learning in the Ottoman World" by Inan, Murat Umut. In Green, Nile (ed.), 2019, The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca. University of California Press. pp. 88–89. "As the Ottoman Turks learned Persian, the language and the culture it carried seeped not only into their court and imperial institutions but also into their vernacular language and culture. The appropriation of Persian, both as a second language and as a language to be steeped together with Turkish, was encouraged notably by the sultans, the ruling class, and leading members of the mystical communities."
Chapter "Ottoman Historical Writing" by Tezcan, Baki. In Rabasa, José (ed.), 2012, The Oxford History of Historical Writing: Volume 3: 1400–1800 The Oxford History of Historical Writing: Volume 3: 1400–1800. Oxford University Press. pp. 192–211. "Persian served as a 'minority' prestige language of culture at the largely Turcophone Ottoman court."
Learning to Read in the Late Ottoman Empire and the Early Turkish Republic, B. Fortna, page 50;"Although in the late Ottoman period Persian was taught in the state schools...."
Persian Historiography and Geography, Bertold Spuler, page 68, "On the whole, the circumstance in Turkey took a similar course: in Anatolia, the Persian language had played a significant role as the carrier of civilization.[..]..where it was at time, to some extent, the language of diplomacy...However Persian maintained its position also during the early Ottoman period in the composition of histories and even Sultan Salim I, a bitter enemy of Iran and the Shi'ites, wrote poetry in Persian. Besides some poetical adaptations, the most important historiographical works are: Idris Bidlisi's flowery "Hasht Bihist", or Seven Paradises, begun in 1502 by the request of Sultan Bayazid II and covering the first eight Ottoman rulers.."
Picturing History at the Ottoman Court, Emine Fetvacı, page 31, "Persian literature, and belles-lettres in particular, were part of the curriculum: a Persian dictionary, a manual on prose composition; and Sa'dis "Gulistan", one of the classics of Persian poetry, were borrowed. All these title would be appropriate in the religious and cultural education of the newly converted young men.
Persian Historiography: History of Persian Literature A, Volume 10, edited by Ehsan Yarshater, Charles Melville, page 437;"...Persian held a privileged place in Ottoman letters. Persian historical literature was first patronized during the reign of Mehmed II and continued unabated until the end of the 16th century.
ChapterImperial Ambitions, Mystical Aspirations: Persian learning in the Ottoman World, Murat Umut Inan, page 92 (note 27), edited byNile Green, (title:The Persianate World The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca); "Though Persian, unlike Arabic, was not included in the typical curriculum of an Ottoman madrasa, the language was offered as an elective course or recommended for study in some madrasas. For those Ottoman madrasa curricula featuring Persian, see Cevat İzgi, Osmanlı Medreselerinde İlim, 2 vols. (Istanbul: İz, 1997),1: 167–69."
^Inan, Murat Umut (2019). "Imperial Ambitions, Mystical Aspirations: Persian learning in the Ottoman World". InGreen, Nile (ed.).The Persianate World The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca. University of California Press. pp. 85–86.
^abcdeInan, Murat Umut (2019). "Imperial Ambitions, Mystical Aspirations: Persian learning in the Ottoman World". InGreen, Nile (ed.).The Persianate World The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca. University of California Press. p. 86.
^Inan, Murat Umut (2019). "Imperial Ambitions, Mystical Aspirations: Persian learning in the Ottoman World". InGreen, Nile (ed.).The Persianate World The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca. University of California Press. p. 85.
^Talei, Maryam; Rovshan, Belghis (24 October 2024)."Semantic Network in Lari Language".Persian Language and Iranian Dialects.9 (1):31–61.doi:10.22124/plid.2024.27553.1673.ISSN2476-6585.Archived from the original on 28 November 2024.This descriptive-analytical research examines sense relations between the lexemes of the Lari language, the continuation of theMiddle Persian and one of the endangered Iranian languages spoken in Lar, Fars province
^"Western Iranian languages History".Destination Iran. 16 June 2024.Archived from the original on 28 November 2024. Retrieved28 November 2024.Achomi or Khodmooni (Larestani) is a southwestern Iranian language spoken in southern Fars province and the Ajam (non-arab) population in Persian Gulf countries such as UAE, Bahrain, and Kuwait. It is a descendant of Middle Persian and has several dialects including Lari, Evazi, Khoni, Bastaki, and more.
^Taherkhani, Neda; Ourang, Muhammed (2013)."A Study of Derivational Morphemes in Lari & Tati as Two Endangered Iranian Languages: An Analytical Contrastive Examination with Persian"(PDF).Journal of American Science.ISSN1545-1003.Lari is of the SW branch of Middle Iranian languages, Pahlavi, in the Middle period of Persian Language Evolution and consists of nine dialects, which are prominently different in pronunciation (Geravand, 2010). Being a branch of Pahlavi language, Lari has several common features with it as its mother language. The ergative structure (the difference between the conjugation of transitive and intransitive verbs) existing in Lari can be mentioned as such an example. The speech community of this language includes Fars province, Hormozgan Province and some of the Arabic-speaking countries like the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman (Khonji, 2010, p. 15).
^Windfuhr 1979, p. 4: "Tat-Persian spoken in the East Caucasus"
^V. Minorsky, "Tat" in M. Th. Houtsma et al., eds., The Encyclopædia of Islam: A Dictionary of the Geography, Ethnography and Biography of the Muhammadan Peoples, 4 vols. and Suppl., Leiden: Late E.J. Brill and London: Luzac, 1913–38.
^V. Minorsky, "Tat" in M. Th. Houtsma et al., eds., The Encyclopædia of Islam: A Dictionary of the Geography, Ethnography and Biography of the Muhammadan Peoples, 4 vols. and Suppl., Leiden: Late E.J. Brill and London: Luzac, 1913–38. Excerpt: "Like most Persian dialects, Tati is not very regular in its characteristic features"
^C Kerslake, Journal of Islamic Studies (2010) 21 (1): 147–151. excerpt: "It is a comparison of the verbal systems of three varieties of Persian—standard Persian, Tat, and Tajik—in terms of the 'innovations' that the latter two have developed for expressing finer differentiations of tense, aspect, and modality..."[1]Archived 17 September 2013 at theWayback Machine
^Borjian, Habib (2006). "Tabari Language Materials from Il'ya Berezin's Recherches sur les dialectes persans".Iran & the Caucasus.10 (2):243–258.doi:10.1163/157338406780346005.It embraces Gilani, Talysh, Tabari, Kurdish, Gabri, and the Tati Persian of the Caucasus, all but the last belonging to the north-western group of Iranian language.
^John R. Perry, "Lexical Areas and Semantic Fields of Arabic" in Éva Ágnes Csató, Eva Agnes Csato, Bo Isaksson, Carina Jahani,Linguistic convergence and areal diffusion: case studies from Iranian, Semitic and Turkic, Routledge, 2005. pg 97: "It is generally understood that the bulk of the Arabic vocabulary in the central, contiguous Iranian, Turkic, and Indic languages was originally borrowed into literary Persian between the ninth and thirteenth centuries"
^John R. Perry, "Lexical Areas and Semantic Fields of Arabic" in Éva Ágnes Csató, Eva Agnes Csato, Bo Isaksson, Carina Jahani,Linguistic convergence and areal diffusion: case studies from Iranian, Semitic and Turkic, Routledge, 2005. p.97
^e.g. The role of Azeri–Turkish in Iranian Persian, on which see John Perry, "The Historical Role of Turkish in Relation to Persian of Iran",Iran & the Caucasus, Vol. 5 (2001), pp. 193–200.
^Xavier Planhol, "Land of Iran",Encyclopedia Iranica. "The Turks, on the other hand, posed a formidable threat: their penetration into Iranian lands was considerable, to such an extent that vast regions adapted their language. This process was all the more remarkable since, in spite of their almost uninterrupted political domination for nearly 1,500 years, the cultural influence of these rough nomads on Iran's refined civilization remained extremely tenuous. This is demonstrated by the mediocre linguistic contribution, for which exhaustive statistical studies have been made (Doerfer). The number of Turkish or Mongol words that entered Persian, though not negligible, remained limited to 2,135, i.e., 3 percent of the vocabulary at the most. These new words are confined on the one hand to the military and political sector (titles, administration, etc.) and, on the other hand, to technical pastoral terms. The contrast with Arab influence is striking. While cultural pressure of the Arabs on Iran had been intense, they in no way infringed upon the entire Iranian territory, whereas with the Turks, whose contributions to Iranian civilization were modest, vast regions of Iranian lands were assimilated, notwithstanding the fact that resistance by the latter was ultimately victorious. Several reasons may be offered."
Perry, John R. (2005).A Tajik Persian Reference Grammar: Handbook of Oriental Studies. Vol. 2. Boston: Brill.ISBN90-04-14323-8.
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