Persian belongs to theIndo-European language family, and many words in modern Persian usage ultimately originate from Proto-Indo-European. The language makes extensive use of word building techniques such asaffixation andcompounding to derive new words from roots. Persian has also had considerable contact with other languages, resulting in many borrowings.

Persian is very powerful in word building and versatile in ways a word can be built from combining affixes, stems, nouns and adjectives. Having many affixes to form new words (over a hundred), and the ability to buildaffixes and speciallyprefixes from nouns,^{[note 1]} The Persian language is also claimed to be^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]} and demonstrated^{[7][8][9][10]} as anagglutinative language since it also frequently uses derivationalagglutination toform new words from nouns, adjectives, and verbal stems. New words are also extensively formed bycompounding – two existing words combining into a new one, as is common inGerman,Sanskrit and hence most of the Indian languages. The Persian dictionary consists of 343,466 words.

An example set of words derived from a present stem combined with some of available affixes:

An example set of words derived from a past stem combined with some of available affixes:

Loanwords in the Persian language mostly came fromArabic,French, andTurkic languages; though the extent of Turkic influence differs greatly by dialect. Recently, someEnglish loanwords have entered the language as well.

Persian has likewise influenced the vocabularies of other languages, especiallyArabic,^[11]Armenian,^[12]Georgian,^[13]Indo-Iranian languages andTurkic languages. Many Persian words have also found their way into the English language.

TheArab conquest of Iran lasted for two centuries, from the 7th to the 9th CE. During this period, Arabic words were imported into the Persian language, and a number of Persian words found their way into Arabic. Persian words of Arabic origin especially include Islamic terms. Arabic has had an influence on the Persian lexicon, but it has not affected the structure of the language. The morphological process used to obtain these lexical elements has not been imported into Persian and is not productive in the language.

These Arabic words have been imported and lexicalized in Persian. So, for instance, the Arabic plural form forketāb (كتاب) ["book"] iskotob (كتب) obtained by the root derivation system. In Persian, the plural for the lexical wordketâb is obtained by simply adding the Persian pluralmorphemehā:ketāb+hā →ketābhā (كتاب‌ها). Also, any new Persian words can only be pluralized by the addition of this plural morpheme since the Arabic root system is not a productive process in Persian. In addition, since the plurals formed by the Arabicmorphological system constitute only a small portion of the Persian vocabulary (about 5% in theShiraz corpus^{[clarification needed]}), it is not necessary to include them in the morphology; they are instead listed in the dictionary as irregular forms.

In fact, among Iranians there have been sporadicefforts as far back as theSafavid Empire to revive a purer version of Persian by diminishing the use of Arabic loanwords in their language. BothPahlavi Shahs supported such efforts in the 20th century by creating theacademy of Persian Language and Literature. In 1934, Reza Shah ordered to rebuildtomb ofFerdowsi, who is regarded as the savior of Persian language, and set up a ceremony inMashhad, celebrating a thousand years ofPersian literature since the time of Ferdowsi, titledFerdowsi Millenary Celebration (Persian:جشن هزاره فردوسی).

Academy of Persian language and literature after the Iranian revolution continued its striving to protect the integrity of the Persian language. However, the attention of the academy has been turned towards the persistent infiltration of Persian, like many other languages, with English words, as a result of the globalization process. Since the 1980s, the academy constantly campaigns for the use of the Persian equivalents of these new English loanwords. It also has the task of linguistically deriving such words from existing Persian roots if no such equivalents exist, and actively promoting the adoption of these new coinages instead of their English equivalents in the daily lives of thePersian-speaking people inIran,Afghanistan andTajikistan.

Speakers of Turkic languages and Iranian language have been in contact since pre-islamic times; as such there are notableTurkic forms (including Mongolian borrowings through Turkic) that have entered the Persian language.^[14] Throughout history, the Persian-speaking realm was ruled by a succession of dynasties of Turkic origin, notablyGhaznavid,Seljuk,the Sultanate of Rum andTimurid which have patronized Persian culture and literature. With the exception of certain official designations within the government, trade and military, many of the Turkic borrowings in Persian have a more informal, homely flavour,^[15] and therefore, to many Persian native speakers these words do not feel like foreign: e.g.āqā 'mister',dowqolu 'twin',komak 'help',tumān 'official currency of Iran' (butriāl < Portuguese),yābu 'pack nag',qešlāq 'winter quarters',yeylāq 'summer quarters',qeyči 'scissors'. The usage of Turkic loan words varies by dialect; generally, eastern dialects such as:Tajik,Dari, andHazaragi have more Turkic influence thanIranian Persian.^[16]

Over the past couple of centuries, Persian has borrowed many loanwords from European languages (mainly French).^{[note 2]} A lot of these loanwords were originallyFrench and use French pronunciation, also other common words mainly come from English, Italian, German, and Russian (example: samovar) as well.The table below shows some examples of common French/Persian words.

Look upIndo-Iranian Swadesh lists in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• List of French loanwords in Persian
• List of English words of Persian origin
• Academy of Persian Language and Literature

• Lexis (linguistics)
• Persian language

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