Persian: One of the world’s oldest languages

Persian, known locally as Farsi or Parsi, is the official language of Iran and the lingua franca of its people.

Moreover, Persian has official status in Afghanistan and Tajikistan (albeit being written in Cyrillic in the latter) and is also widely spoken in Uzbekistan.

An Indo-European language and belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch, Persian is the oldest surviving Iranian language as well as being one of the world’s oldest languages still in use today.

Persian takes its name from Iran’s southern Pars Province (later changed to Fars) where the first Persian Empire, the Achaemenid Empire, emerged.

Persian has a long history of more than 2500 years which can be divided into three phases: Old Persian (circa 600-300 BC), written in Cuneiform, corresponding with the time of the Achaemenid Empire; Middle Persian (circa 300 BC-800 AD), the official language of the Sassanid Empire; and Modern Persian (since 800 AD), which has a history of more than 1200 years and is spoken to this day.

For centuries, Persian functioned as the lingua franca in Central and Western Asia and used to be the official language of the Mogul Empire in the Indian subcontinent, only to be replaced in the last two or three centuries by English and later Russian.

Today, Persian plays the major role in uniting the people of Iran with different ethnicities and languages as well as being one of the main pillars of Iranian culture.

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