Persian Language

Persian is one of the oldest and most historically significant Iranian languages, dating back to the Persian Empire of antiquity. Despite its long history, the linguistic development of Persian from its earliest roots to its present form is generally well documented. Scholars have firmly established a historical lineage that includes three different permutations of Persian that emerged over time: Old Persian (c. 525–300 BCE), Middle Persian (c. 300 BCE–800 CE), and Modern Persian (800 CE–present).

Used by an estimated thirty-one million speakers throughout parts of the Middle East and Central Asia, Persian is best known as the official language of Iran, where it is often referred to as Farsi. Elsewhere, it is identified by other names; in Tajikistan, where it also enjoys official status, it is called Tajiki, while in Afghanistan, where it shares official status with Pashto, it is known as Dari.

History and Classification

Persian first appeared during the time of the Achaemenian kings, specifically within the reign of Darius I (550–486 BCE). This version of the language, known today as Old Persian, was used almost exclusively for official inscriptions that Darius I and his successors had engraved on various monuments as well as in a number of foundation texts. Outside of these limited uses, Old Persian, which took the form of a cuneiform script, was secondary to Aramaic, which was generally the language through which most political and administrative business was conducted. As a result, Old Persian was understood by only a select few. Despite its apparently limited reach, Old Persian survived even after the Persian Empire fell to Greece at the hands of Alexander the Great.

The next evolution of the Persian language occurred after the Greeks were supplanted in Persia by the Parthian Empire. Led by an Iranian ruling class, the Parthian Empire exerted control over a large portion of the Middle East, save for Persis, a region in what is now central Iran. It was from Persis that the Sasanian Empire arose in the third century CE. The Sasanians, who held power over much of the Middle East until the seventh century, spoke a language descended from Old Persian called Pehlevi, or Middle Persian. Early in the reign of the Sasanian Empire, Middle Persian shared official language status with Parthian, though it was mainly used only in the southern half of Iran. Eventually, however, Middle Persian emerged as the more dominant of the two languages, overtaking Parthian in the north and the east by the fourth century CE and later spreading as far as Afghanistan and elsewhere.

When the Sasanian Empire was toppled by invading Muslims in 651 CE, Arabic was instituted as the official governmental language. Still, Middle Persian remained in use. Over time, with the influence of Arabic and the inclusion of many Arabic loanwords, Middle Persian morphed into Modern Persian. After first flourishing in the northern and eastern portions of Iran, Modern Persian traveled southward and westward, eventually spreading throughout the region. That spread later continued as Iran came under the control of Mongolian and Turkish rulers, finding its way into Turkey, central Asia, and India. In fact, Modern Persian was so widely used in India for a time that British administrators who governed India during its colonial era in the nineteenth century typically learned Persian before learning local native languages. Though it eventually fell out of usage among Indian speakers, Modern Persian remains a widely spoken tongue.

Persian is classified as part of the Iranian subgroup of the Indo-Iranian language family, which itself is a branch of the broader Indo-European language family. Within the Iranian subgroup, it is classified as a Southwestern Iranian language, along with Pashto and others.

Geographic Distribution and Modern Usage

Although it is spoken by approximately thirty-one million people worldwide, Persian is still most prominent in Iran, where it remains the official language and is spoken by more than half of the population. Further, Persian's widespread usage has made the language a standard medium of communication for everything from government to education, mass media, business, and more.

Within Iran, there are a wide variety of distinct Persian dialects. Some of these include Shirazi, Isfahani, and Mashhadi. Tehrani, a dialectal variant that is spoken in Iran's capital city of Tehran, is held to be the standard contemporary Persian dialect.

Persian also continues to flourish as a first language in other countries, such as Afghanistan and Tajikistan, where it is spoken as Dari and Tajiki respectively. Although Persian, Dari, and Tajiki are essentially the same languages, there are key linguistic differences that distinguish each one. For example, grammatical features vary between each language, as does the pronunciation of certain phonemes, or distinct units of sound that distinguish one word from another. Despite these differences, speakers of each language typically have little trouble understanding one another.

Bibliography

Brown, Keith. Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics. 2nd ed. Vol. 9. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2005. 295–298. Print.

Dalby, Andrew. Dictionary of Languages: The Definitive Reference to More than 400 Languages. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Print.

John, Vijay and Jonathan Slocum. "Indo-European Languages: Indo-Iranian Family." Linguistics Research Center. University of Texas at Austin. Web. 31 Aug. 2015. http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/general/ie-lg/Indo-Iranian.html

Lazard, Gilbert. "The Origins of Literary Persian." Foundation for Iranian Studies. Foundation for Iranian Studies. Web. 31 Aug. 2015. http://www.fis-iran.org/en/programs/noruzlectures/literary-persian

Raghibdoust, Shahla. "Persian." Encyclopedia of Modern Asia. Ed. Karen Christensen and David H. Levinson. Vol. 4. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2002. 479–480. Print.