New Persian
فارسی نو,پارسی نو
Fārsi written inPersian calligraphy (Nastaʿlīq)
Native to	Iran[1] (asWestern Persian) Afghanistan[1] (asDari) Tajikistan[1] (asTajik) Uzbekistan (as Tajik) Iraq[2] Turkmenistan[3] (as Tajik) Russia[4][5] Azerbaijan[6]
Native speakers	70 million[7] (110 million total speakers)[6]
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Western Iranian Southwestern Iranian Persian New Persian
Early forms	Old Persian Middle Persian
Writing system	Persian alphabet (Iran andAfghanistan) Tajik alphabet (Tajikistan) Hebrew alphabet Persian Braille
Official status
Official language in	Iran (asFarsi)[8]  Afghanistan (asDari)  Tajikistan (asTajik) Dagestan (asTat)[9]
Regulated by	Academy of Persian Language and Literature (Iran) Academy of Sciences of Afghanistan (Afghanistan) Rudaki Institute of Language and Literature (Tajikistan)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	fa
ISO 639-2	per (B) fas (T)
ISO 639-3	fas
Glottolog	fars1254
Linguasphere	58-AAC (Wider Persian) > 58-AAC-c (Central Persian)
Areas with significant numbers of people whose first language is Persian (including dialects)
Persian Linguasphere. Legend   Official language   More than 1,000,000 speakers   Between 500,000 – 1,000,000 speakers   Between 100,000 – 500,000 speakers   Between 25,000 – 100,000 speakers   Fewer than 25,000 speakers / none
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New Persian (Persian:فارسی نو,romanized: fārsī-ye now), also known asModern Persian (فارسی نوین), is the current stage of thePersian language spoken since the 8th to 9th centuries until now inGreater Iran and surroundings. It is conventionally divided into three stages: Early New Persian (8th/9th centuries), Classical Persian (10th–18th centuries), and Contemporary Persian (19th century to present).

Dari is a name given to the New Persian language since the10th century, widely used inArabic (seeIstakhri,al-Maqdisi andibn Hawqal) and Persian texts.^[10] Since 1964,Dari has been the official name in Afghanistan for the Persian spoken there.

New Persian is a member of theWestern Iranian group of theIranian languages, which make up a branch of theIndo-European languages in theirIndo-Iranian subdivision.^[11]

The Western Iranian languages themselves are divided into two subgroups: Southwestern Iranian languages, of which Persian is the most widely spoken, and Northwestern Iranian languages, of whichKurdish is the most widely spoken.^[11]

"New Persian" is the name given to the final stage of development of Persian language. The termPersian is anEnglish derivation ofLatinPersiānus, the adjectival form ofPersia, itself deriving fromGreekPersís (Περσίς),^[12] a Hellenized form ofOld PersianPārsa (𐎱𐎠𐎼𐎿),^[13] which means "Persia" (a region in southwestern Iran corresponding to modern-dayFars province). According to theOxford English Dictionary, the termPersian as a language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century.^[14]

There are different opinions about the origin of the wordDari. The majority of scholars believesDari refers to the Persian worddar ordarbār "court" (دربار) as it was the formal language of theSasanian dynasty.^[15] The original meaning of the worddari is given in a notice attributed toIbn al-Muqaffaʿ (cited byIbn al-Nadim inAl-Fehrest).^[16] According to him, "Pārsī was the language spoken by priests, scholars, and the like; it is the language ofFars." This language refers to theMiddle Persian.^[15] As forDari, he says, "it is the language of the cities of Madā'en; it is spoken by those who are at the king's court. [Its name] is connected with presence at court. Among the languages of the people ofKhorasan and the east, the language of the people ofBalkh is predominant."^[15]

New 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.^[17]

New Persian texts written in theArabic script first appear in the 9th-century.^[18] The language is a direct descendant of Middle Persian, the official, religious and literary language of the Sasanian Empire (224–651).^[19] However, it is not descended from the literary form of Middle Persian (known aspārsīk, 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.^[18][20] Khorasan, which was the homeland of the Parthians, was Persianized under the Sasanians. Dari Persian thus supplanted theParthian language, which by the end of the Sasanian era had fallen out of use.^[18] New Persian has incorporated many foreign words, including fromeastern northern and northern Iranian languages such asSogdian and especially Parthian.^[21]

The mastery of the newer speech having now been transformed from Middle into 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), and could develop only in range and power of expression.^[22] Abbas ofMerv is mentioned as being the earliest minstrel to chant verse in the newer Persian tongue and after him the poems ofHanzala Badghisi were among the most famous between the Persian-speakers of the time.^[23]

The first poems of the Persian language, a language historically called Dari, emerged in Afghanistan.^[24] 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.^[25]

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 for which it was particularly suitable due to its relatively simple morphological structure and this situation persisted until at least the 19th century.^[26] In the late Middle Ages, new Islamic literary languages were created on the Persian model:Ottoman Turkish,Chagatai,Dobhashi and Urdu, which are regarded as "structural daughter languages" of Persian.^[26]

"Classical Persian" loosely refers to the standardized language of medieval 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.^[27]

Persian during this time served as lingua franca ofGreater Persia and of much of theIndian subcontinent.It was also the official and cultural language of many Islamic dynasties, including the Samanids,Buyids,Tahirids,Ziyarids, theMughal Empire,Timurids,Ghaznavids,Karakhanids,Seljuqs,Khwarazmians, theSultanate of Rum,Delhi Sultanate, theShirvanshahs,Safavids,Afsharids,Zands,Qajars,Khanate of Bukhara,Khanate of Kokand,Emirate of Bukhara,Khanate of Khiva, Ottomans and also many Mughal successors such as theNizam of Hyderabad.Persian was the only non-European language known and used byMarco Polo at the Court ofKublai Khan and in his journeys through China.^[28]

Qajar dynasty

In the 19th century, under theQajar dynasty, thedialect 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, andEnglish 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.^[29] 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 in the future and renamedKatouzian Dictionary (فرهنگ کاتوزیان).^[30]

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".

There are three standard varieties of modern Persian:

• Western Persian (Persian,Western Persian, orFarsi) is spoken inIran, and by minorities inIraq and thePersian Gulf states.
• Eastern Persian (Dari Persian,Afghan Persian, orDari) is spoken inAfghanistan.
• Tajiki (Tajik Persian) is spoken inTajikistan andUzbekistan. It is written in theCyrillic script.

All these 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.^[31] 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.^[32]

The following are some languages closely related to Persian, or in some cases are considered dialects:

• Luri (orLori), spoken mainly in the southwestern Iranian provinces ofLorestan,Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad,Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari some western parts ofFars province and some parts ofKhuzestan province.
• Tat, spoken in parts of Azerbaijan, Russia, and Transcaucasia. It is classified as a variety of Persian.^{[33][34][35][36][37]} (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.

Standard Persian is thestandard variety of Persian that is the official language of theIran^[8] andTajikistan^[38] and one of the two official languages ofAfghanistan.^[39] It is a set of spoken and written formalvarieties used by the educatedpersophones of several nations around the world.^[40]

As Persian is apluricentric language, Standard Persian encompasses variouslinguistic norms (consisting ofprescribed usage). Standard Persian practically has three standard varieties with official status inIran,Afghanistan, andTajikistan. The standard forms of the three are based on theTehrani,Kabuli, andBukharan varieties, respectively.^[41][42]

• History of the Persian language
• Old Persian
• Middle Persian

• Bosworth, C.E. & Crowe, Yolande (1995)."Sāmānids". InBosworth, C. E.;van Donzel, E.;Heinrichs, W. P. &Lecomte, G. (eds.).The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Volume VIII: Ned–Sam. Leiden: E. J. Brill.ISBN 978-90-04-09834-3.
• Bosworth, C. E. (1998)."Esmāʿīl, b. Aḥmad b. Asad Sāmānī, Abū Ebrāhīm". InYarshater, Ehsan (ed.).Encyclopædia Iranica. Vol. VIII/6: Eršād al-zerāʿa–Eʿteżād-al-Salṭana. London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul. pp. 636–637.ISBN 978-1-56859-055-4.
• Crone, Patricia (2012).The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran: Rural Revolt and Local Zoroastrianism. Cambridge University Press.ISBN 978-1107642386.
• de Blois, Francois (2004).Persian Literature – A Bio-Bibliographical Survey: Poetry of the Pre-Mongol Period (Volume V). Routledge.ISBN 978-0947593476.
• de Bruijn, J.T.P. (1978)."Iran, vii.—Literature". Invan Donzel, E.;Lewis, B.;Pellat, Ch. &Bosworth, C. E. (eds.).The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition.Volume IV: Iran–Kha. Leiden: E. J. Brill. pp. 52–75.OCLC 758278456.
• Frye, R. N. (2004)."Iran v. Peoples of Iran (1) A General Survey". InYarshater, Ehsan (ed.).Encyclopædia Iranica. Vol. XIII/3: Iran II. Iranian history–Iran V. Peoples of Iran. London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul. pp. 321–326.ISBN 978-0-933273-89-4.
• Jeremiás, Éva (2011)."Iran". In Edzard, Lutz; de Jong, Rudolf (eds.).Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics. Brill Online.
• Lazard, G. (1975). "The Rise of the New Persian Language". InFrye, Richard N. (ed.).The Cambridge History of Iran. Vol. 4: From the Arab Invasion to the Saljuqs. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press. pp. 595–633.ISBN 0-521-20093-8.
• Lazard, G. (1994)."Darī". InYarshater, Ehsan (ed.).Encyclopædia Iranica. Vol. VII/1: Dārā(b)–Dastūr al-Afāżel. London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul. pp. 34–35.ISBN 978-1-56859-019-6.
• Paul, Ludwig (2000)."Persian Language i. Early New Persian".Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition. New York.{{cite encyclopedia}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Perry, John R. (2011)."Persian". In Edzard, Lutz; de Jong, Rudolf (eds.).Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics. Brill Online.
• Spuler, Bertold (2003).Persian Historiography and Geography: Bertold Spuler on Major Works Produced in Iran, the Caucasus, Central Asia, India, and Early Ottoman Turkey. Pustaka Nasional Pte Ltd.ISBN 978-9971-77-488-2.
• Rypka, Jan (1968). Jahn, Karl (ed.).History of Iranian Literature.doi:10.1007/978-94-010-3479-1.ISBN 978-94-010-3481-4.

Persian edition ofWikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• Academy of Persian Language and Literature official website(in Persian)
• Assembly for the Expansion of the Persian Language official website(in Persian)
• Persian language Resources(in Persian)

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• History of the Persian language
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