Iranian languages

spoken by about 95 million people, mainly in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and parts of Central Asia. Historically, the oldest Iranian forms of which there are any records are Avestan and Old Persian, both highly inflected languages. Old Persian has survived in cuneiform inscriptions from the time of the Achaemenid kings, who ruled ancient Persia during the 6th to 4th cent. BC Avestan is the language in which was composed the Avesta, or sacred text of the Zoroastrian religion. The Avesta probably dates from about the 7th to the 5th cent. BC, but apparently was handed down orally and was not recorded in writing until much later. Avestan is still in use today as the liturgical language of the Zoroastrian faith. The Middle Iranian period, dating from the 3d cent. BC to the 9th or 10th cent. AD, is characterized by considerable grammatical simplification, as in the reduced inflection of the noun and verb. Among the languages surviving in written records that fall within this period are Parthian, Middle Persian, Khwarazmian, Sogdian, and Saka.

    The modern Iranian languages, dating from about the 9th or 10th cent. to the present, show phonetic and grammatical simplification. For example, case endings tend to be dropped and the use of prepositions substituted. The most important of the modern Iranian languages is Moder Persian (Pārsi) the official tongue of Iran, which stems directly from Middle Persian, but has been influenced by Arabic and Turkish. It has a great literature of considerable age and is spoken by over 40 million persons in Iran and Afghanistan. There are a number of dialects of Modern Persian. Other modern Iranian languages include Pashto (also called Pushtu and Afghan), with 18 million speakers in Afghanistan, where it is the national language, and in Pakistan and Iran; Baluchi, which has about 6 million speakers, chiefly in Pakistan and Iran; Kurdish, the language of perhaps 20 million Kurds living mainly in Turkey, Iran, and Iraq; the Pamir dialects or languages, spoken in parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the former Soviet Union; Yaghnobi, which is derived from Sogdian and spoken in Tajikistan; and Tajiki, a tongue of more than 5 million people in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Today's Iranian languages are written in adaptations of the Arabic alphabet, except for Tajiki, which uses Cyrillic characters.

Persian language

member of the Iranian group of the Indo-Iranian subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. The official language of Iran, it has about 38 million speakers in Iran and another 8 million in Afghanistan. Historically the Persian language falls into three periods: Old, Middle, and Modern. Old Persian is known chiefly from cuneiform inscriptions dating from the time of the Achaemenid kings of ancient Persia (6th-4th cent. BC). Old Persian was highly inflected, as was Avestan, which is regarded by some as a form of Old Persian and by others as a separate tongue. Avestan was the language of the sacred texts of Zoroastrianism that are known as the Avesta (probably composed c.7th-5th cent. BC). Middle Persian derives directly from Old Persian. Also called Pahlavi, Middle Persian prevailed under the Sassanid, or Sassanian, rulers of Persia (3d-7th cent. AD). Grammatically, much simplification of inflection took place in Middle Persian, which was recorded both in an Aramaic alphabet and in a script called Pahlavi. Middle Persian also had a noteworthy literature of Manichaean and Zoroastrian texts. The modern form of Persian evolved directly from Middle Persian and may be said to have begun in the 9th or 10th cent. AD It has not changed much since that date. The grammar of Modern Persian is comparatively simple. The inflection of nouns and verbs has been greatly reduced since the ancient stage of the language. A number of Arabic words were added to the vocabulary as the result of the conquest of the Persians by the Muslim Arabs in the 7th cent. AD Modern Persian is the medium of an old and great literature and is written in a modification of the Arabic alphabet. Modern Persian is also known as Fārsi.