Persian portal

Welcome to Persian portal, a place where I'll write you about different topics of the Persian language and its grammar, in particular.

Alphabet

Persian is written in an extended version of Arabic script (known as Perso-Arabic) in Iran and Afghanistan and with a variety of Cyrillic alphabet (known as Perso-Cyrillic) in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Here, Persian will be written in a variant of Latin alphabet so that more people can read the pages and learn about Persian. Furthermore, since Persian speakers are completely familiar with Latin alphabet and use it in online chats, forums, e-mails and SMS, you can easily communicate with Persian speakers in Latin alphabet.

NOTE This portal refers to the Persian of Iran. However, Persian dialects are widely intelligible and knowing one of them, you can communicate well with all Persian speakers. Especially that this portal focuses on written Persian, which is almost identical in all regions.

History

Persian is one of the oldest languages of the world and one of the few old languages remaining in continuous use after several thousands of years. It belongs to the Indo-European family of languages, like Greek and Latin. The known history of the Persian language can be divided into three distinct periods: Old, Middle and New. The earliest dateable example of the language is the Behistun Inscription of the Achaemenid Darius I (522 - 486 BCE). However, this inscription does not represent the language form spoken at that era but an archaic form belonging to several centuries earlier, being used stylistically. Therefore, Old Persian (OP) dates back to more than 3000 years ago.

Middle Persian (MP) can be divided into several periods within two remarkable eras: the Persian spoken at the era of the Parthian Empire (248 BCE - 226 CE) and the Persian during the Sassanid Empire (226 - 651 CE). Over this period, the morphology of the language was simplified greatly. For example:

Much of the literature in Middle Persian was unfortunately destroyed with the Arab invasion during the Islamic conquest of Persia.

Islamic conquest of Persia marks the beginning of the modern history of Persian language and literature. However, it took about 200 years until Middle Persian transformed to New Persian. The starting point of New Persian is therefore around 850 CE to this day (about 1200 years!). Through its long way into the modern times, Persian developed a very large number of idioms, expressions and proverbs. It saw world-famous poets such as Ferdowsi, Rumi, Khayyam, Hafez and Saadi. New Persian is not very different from Middle Persian in grammar. The main difference is in vocabulary because after the Arab invasion of Persia, many Arabic words entered Persian.

Today, Persian is mainly spoken in Iran (Persia), Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Bahrain having official status in the first three countries. It has more than 130 million speakers. Persian was historically a much more widely spoken language. It was once the official or cultural language of many regions and Islamic dynasties (such as Ottoman Empire). Persian was for a long time the lingua franca of the western parts of Islamic world and of Indian subcontinent (for five centuries prior to the British colonization). Persian has been a medium for literary and scientific contributions to the Islamic world as well as the Western. The status of Persian was comparable to Latin in the Christendom in the field of literature. At this time many Persian poets emerged from Indian subcontinent, Central Asia and regions under the control of Ottoman Empire. The heavy influence of Persian on other languages can still be witnessed across the Islamic world, and it is still appreciated as a literary and prestigious language among the educated elite, especially in fields of literature, history, mystics and art. Iran (Persia) was historically much bigger until 200 years ago when it lost many territories, especially to Russia (for more information, read Wikipedia - Greater Iran). Consequently, Persian gradually faded in most of those regions.