Iranian Persian

Iranian Persian
Western Persian
فارسی(Fārsi)
Fārsi written inPersian calligraphy(Nastaʿlīq)
Pronunciation	[fɒːɾˈsiː]
Native to	Iran
Region	West Asia
Ethnicity	Persians
Speakers	L1:62 million (2021) L2:17 million (2021)
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Western Southwestern Iranian Persian Iranian Persian
Dialects	Abadani Araki Bandari Basseri Esfahani Karbalai Kashani Kermani Kermanshahi Kuwaiti Mashhadi Qazvini Shirazi Tehrani Yazdi
Writing system	Perso-Arabic script
Official status
Official language in	Iran
Regulated by	Academy of Persian Language and Literature
Language codes
ISO 639-3	pes
Glottolog	west2369

Iranian Persian(Persian:فارسی ایرانی,romanized:Pârsi-ye Irâni),Western PersianorWestern Farsi,natively simply known asPersian(Persian:فارسی,romanized:Pârsi), refers to thevarietiesof thePersian languagespoken inIranand by others in neighboring countries, as well as byIranian communities throughout the world.These are intelligible with other varieties ofPersian,includingAfghanistan'sDariandTajikistan'sTajik.

Name

Iran's national language has been called, apart fromPersianorFarsi,by names such asIranian Persian,Western PersianandWestern Farsi,exclusively.Officially, the national language of Iran is designated simply asPersian(فارسی,fārsi).

ISO code

The international language-encoding standardISO 639-1uses the codefafor the Persian language in general, as its coding system is mostly based on the native-language designations. The more detailed standardISO 639-3uses the codefasfor the dialects spoken across Iran and Afghanistan. This consists of the individual languages Dari and Iranian Persian.The codepesis used for Iranian Persian, exclusively.

Announcement of the Academy about the name of the Persian language in foreign languages

On November 19, 2005, theAcademy of Persian Language and Literaturedelivered a pronouncement on the name of the Persian language, rejecting any use of the wordFarsi(instead of EnglishPersian,GermanPersisch,Spanishpersa,Frenchpersan,etc.) in foreign languages.

The announcement reads:

1. Persianhas been used in a variety of publications including cultural, scientific, and diplomatic documents for centuries and, therefore, it carries a very significant historical and cultural meaning. Hence, changingPersiantoFarsiwould negate this established important precedent.
2. Changing the usage fromPersiantoFarsimay give the impression that "Farsi" is a new language, although this may well be the intention of some users ofFarsi.
3. Changing the usage may also give the impression that "Farsi" is a dialect used in some parts of Iran rather than the predominant (and official) language of the country.
4. The wordFarsihas never been used in any research paper or university document in any Western language, and the proposal to begin using it would create doubt and ambiguity about the name of the official language of Iran.

Supporting this announcement, gradually other institutions and literary figures separately took similar actions throughout the world.

History

The main dynamics of the linguistic evolution of modern Persian are political and social changes such as population shifts, the advancement of particular regions, and the rise of ideological influences. In Iran, theSafavid periodin particular initiated a number of sociolinguistic changes that affected the country's national language, reflecting the political and ideological separation of Iran from Central Asia and Afghanistan. It is likely that the multiple relocations of thecapital city of Iranitself influenced the development of a distinctive metropolitan sociolect that would affect Persian dialects throughout the country.

During the late 12th and late 15th or early 17th centuries in Iran, the vowel repertory of the Persian language was reduced and a few consonants were altered in most of Iran's Western Persian dialects, while these features have been predominantly preserved in the Eastern dialects of Dari and Tajik up until the present day.

From the time of the Turco-Mongol invasions to the Safavid and subsequent Turkic-speaking dynasties, Persian received a number of lexical borrowings from Turkish, although never as much as those from Arabic. However, in contrast with the Tajik dialects of Central Asia, which are heavily influenced by Turkic, Persian in Iran has had its Turkic borrowings largely declined and assimilated. This is also reflective of the political realities in the Safavid, Qajar and Pahlavi periods.

Overall, Iran's Western Persian dialects appear to have changed more rapidly in lexicon and phonology than the Eastern Persian dialects of Afghanistan and Central Asia.

Comparison with other varieties

There are phonological, lexical,and morphologicaldifferences between the Persian dialects of Iran and elsewhere. There are no significant differences in the written forms of Iran's standard Persian and Afghanistan's standard Dari, other than regional idiomatic phrases. However, Iran's commonly spoken Persian is considerably different in pronunciation and some syntactic features from the dialects spoken in Afghanistan and Central Asia.

The dialects of Dari spoken in Northern, Central and Eastern Afghanistan, for example inKabul,Mazar,andBadakhshan,have distinct features compared to Iran's Standard Persian. However, the dialect of Dari spoken in Western Afghanistan stands in between Dari and Iranian Persian. For instance, the Herati dialect shares vocabulary and phonology with both Dari and Iranian Persian. Likewise, the dialect of Persian in Eastern Iran, for instance inMashhad,is quite similar to the Herati dialect of Afghanistan.

The Kabuli dialect has become the standard model of Dari in Afghanistan, as has theTehrani dialectin relation to the Persian in Iran.

Phonology

The following are the primary phonological differences between Iran's mainstream Persian and the Persian dialects of Afghanistan and Tajikistan (Dari and Tajik), as well as Classical Persian.

1. Most varieties of Persian spoken in Iran today lack the so-called "majhul" vowels.The "majhul" vowels/eː,iː/and/oː,uː/have been merged into/iː/and/uː/respectively in Iran's Standard Persian, whereas in Dari and Tajik, they have been preserved as separate. For instance, the words for "lion" and "milk", which are written identically asشیرinPerso-Arabicand respectively asшерandширinTajik,are both pronounced/ʃiːr/in Iran's Standard Persian, while Dari uses/ʃeːr/and/ʃiːr/and Tajik uses/ʃer/and/ʃir/for "lion" and "milk", respectively. The long vowel inزودmeaning "quick" andزورmeaning "strong" is realized as/uː/in Iran's Standard Persian, whereas these words are pronounced/zuːd/and/zoːr/respectively in Dari.
2. The early Classical Persiandiphthongs"aw" (as "ow" in English "cow" ) and "ay" (as "i" in English "ice" ) are pronounced[ow](as in English "low" ) and[ej](as in English "day" ) in the Standard Persian of Iran. Dari and Tajik, on the other hand, preserve the earlier forms. For instance, the wordNowruz(نوروزin Perso-Arabic,Наврӯзin Tajik) is realized as/nowruːz/in Iran's Standard Persian and/nawroːz/in Standard Dari, andنخیرmeaning "no" is/naχejr/in Iran's Standard Persian and/naχajr/in Standard Dari. Moreover,[ow]is simplified to[o]in normal Iranian speech, thereby merging with the short vowel/u/(see below). This does not occur in Dari or Tajik.
3. The high short vowels/i/and/u/tend to be lowered in the Standard Persian of Iran to[e]and[o],while in Dari and Tajik they might have both high and lowered allophones.
4. The pronunciation of the labial consonant[w]is realized as avoiced labiodental fricative[v]in Iran's Standard Persian and Tajikistan's Standard Tajik, whereas Afghanistan's Standard Dari retains the (classical) bilabial pronunciation[w].In Dari,[v]is found as an allophone of/f/before voiced consonants and as variation of/b/in some cases, along with[β].
5. Thevoiced uvular stop([ɢ];قin Perso-Arabic,қin Tajik) and thevoiced velar fricative([ɣ];غin Perso-Arabic,ғin Tajik) are convergent in Iran's Standard Persian (presumably under the influence of Turkic),whereas they are kept separate in Dari and Tajik.
6. The short final "a" (ه-) is normally realized as[e]in Iran's Standard Persian, with the exception of the wordnameaning "no".
   • This means that[a]and[e]in word-final positions are separate in Dari, but not in Iran's Standard Persian, where[e]is the word-final allophone of/æ/in almost all cases.
7. The short non-final "a" is realized as[æ]in Iran's Standard Persian.