سلام علیکم (salaam "aleikom") - Peace be with you! Do you remember the distant overseas country from children's fairy tales? The one where merchants went for strange goods and spices?.. Where in luxurious palaces, surrounded by gardens with peacocks, black-browed beauties languished in anticipation of brave heroes ? Where the stories of gray-haired sages sounded over bowls of green tea? Where did the tireless سندباد - Sinbad the Sailor - begin his next journey to trade and see the world?.. Oh, how I would like to get there even for a moment! Wander through the labyrinth of winding streets, hide in the shade of fragrant fruit trees from the hot sun, feast on honeyed sweets, get lost among the crowd and noise of the bazaar, among the smells of spices and seasonings... Unknown and mysterious, like time, enchanting and bright, like its carpets, Persia... But this fabulous country really exists And to get into it, you only need a plane ticket and a phrasebook... And what language do they speak there?
In the Indo-European family of languages زبان فارسی - Farsi or Parsi, Persian is the most popular language, part of the southwestern subgroup of the Iranian group. According to various estimates, from 60 to 80 million people around the world speak it.
Modern Persian is widely spoken in many countries and communities. Since some countries have established their own special norms for it, this gives the right to classify it as a pluricentric language. Three related variants are officially recognized and have become the national languages of Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. The most famous among them is Farsi, also known as “Western Farsi” or Farsi of the Islamic Republic of Iran - the native language of the Persians, as well as a second language for interethnic communication, the language of literature, media, etc. for representatives of other nationalities in this country. “East Farsi” includes دری - Dari or Farsi-Kabuli - the official language of Afghanistan, as well as Tajik or Tojiki - the official language of Tajikistan. Persian is spoken by national minorities in Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Yemen, UAE, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and other countries.
Despite the differences between the three major literary norms, educated people from Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan can easily understand each other. But the spoken dialects of Persian can be so different that it makes communication difficult for their speakers (especially the dialects of Western Iranian and Northern Tajik peoples).
Today, Farsi includes several forms: a language of high and archaic speech based on the classical version - bookish and written standard or modern, which, due to a rather conservative attitude to the literary norm, allows Persians today to understand texts even thousands of years ago; a functional option for everyday polite communication - national colloquial speech, which has an increasing impact on book language, often used in modern literature; and خودمونی - hodemuni - casual speech, which also includes irregular dialects. These forms are quite different from each other, both at the grammatical, phonetic, lexical, syntactic, and word-formation levels, reflecting changes accumulated over thousands of years since the classical period. All this once again confirms that Persian is fluid, mobile and polysemantic, as the language of the East should be. Yes, Farsi was influenced by Greek, Roman, Indian, Arabic... But it retained its ancient magic, its special charm and individuality.
The Persian alphabet in Farsi and Dari is based on the addition of four letters to Arabic and thus includes 32 characters. A feature of the Persian writing is the consistent display of consonants and stable, long vowels. Short vowels are written only at the beginning and end of words, which leads to the emergence of a large number of homographs - words that have the same spelling but different sounds. That is, in order to read or pronounce a Persian word correctly, you will need to know it in advance. Agree, this is quite difficult not only for beginners in Farsi, but also for native speakers themselves! Another difficulty is the lack of spelling standards. Persian is a language in continuous development. Rules become obsolete, new ones take their place, it moves, flows like a river, without barriers or restrictions. Of course, over time, textbooks will be written, words and sentences will be given strict boundaries, but for now you can enjoy the “breath” of a living, free and flexible language.
When you encounter Persian, you will find that the times of close trade and cultural relations between Iran (Persia) and Russia (Rus) have left their mark on both languages. Take for example such Iranian borrowings as: بادیه - tub, پنبه - paper, دیوان - sofa, پلاس - carpet, پیاله - bowl, استکان - glass, تاس - basin, انبار - barn, بازار - bazaar, جامهدان - suitcase - and This is only a small part of borrowings. This list can be continued: paradise, sky, honor, price, wise, copper, boot, hops, pants, bowl, dog, axe, hut and many other “native” words for us came from Persia. According to one version, the word “god” also has ancient Iranian roots. How many “strings” connect us with this ancient country!
Speaking about Persian, it is impossible not to mention that this is the language in which the greatest literary monuments, philosophical, medical, military and natural science treatises were written. In 1872, at the Berlin Congress of Linguists, Farsi was recognized as a world classical language along with Sanskrit, ancient Greek and Latin. The reason is the richness of Persian literature and its enormous influence on world culture. Omar Khayyam, Saadi, Nizami, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Rumi, Al Biruni, Rudaki, Firduosi, Jami, Nasir Khosrow, Attar, Balkhi, Sanai, Hafiz Shirazi, Dehlavi - these and many other greatest poets and learned philosophers wrote in Persian language.
In conclusion, I would like to return to Persian fairy tales. This is an amazing world of wise, instructive stories, exciting adventures and passionate love stories... Here everyone, both children and adults, will find something for themselves. And who hasn’t heard stories about the merry fellow Khoja Nasreddin, who emerged victorious from any difficult situation? His weapons were apt words, humor and an unconventional way of thinking. Someone will probably remember the story of the “Shah and the Vizier” or the “Persian Cat”. Or maybe you had a chance to read the exciting هزار و یک شب - “A Thousand and One Nights” or the book based on it هزار افسانه - “Thousands of Myths”? Lovers of legends about ancient times may be familiar with شاهنامه - “Shah-nameh” or “Book of Kings,” which tells the history of Iran before the advent of Islam in the 7th century, or with such an interesting and famous book as the Persian dastan of the 19th century. "Amir Arslan."
Perhaps you want to read books by our contemporaries that have not yet been translated into Farsi, or you are doing business with partners from Iran and need translation of commercial documents, or you need to translate personal documents from/to Farsi - then welcome to us. Professional translators from .
Literary and colloquial Farsi had a noticeable influence on the development of other Iranian, Turkic and Modern Indian languages.
The writing of the Farsi and Dari languages is the Persian alphabet, created on the basis of the Arabic script, supplemented by several signs for sounds not found in Arabic. The Tajik language uses the Cyrillic alphabet (introduced in 1939; acquired its modern form in 1998).
Persian belongs to the southwestern subgroup of the Iranian group of the Indo-European family. Its closest relatives are the Luro-Bakhtiyar dialects, which in all likelihood developed from Early New Persian (VII-VIII centuries), as well as the Tat language, found in the Republic of Azerbaijan. Somewhat more distant relatives of Farsi are the native dialects of Fars, the dialects of Larestan and Bashkardi, like Persian, which originate from the Middle Persian language.
During the classical period of Persian (and [ɒ:], the use of digraphs (which can lead to homography, e.g. sh = š , but the combination of corresponding consonants is found in some Persian words).
The Persian language belongs to the Iranian group of the Indo-European family of languages and goes back to the dialects of the ancient Aryans (Indo-Iranians), some of which in the late II - beginning 1st millennium BC e. advanced from Central Asia to the west of the Iranian plateau, where in the historical region of Parsa (Fars) they became known as the Persians.
If ancient Persian monuments are cuneiform rock inscriptions of the Achaemenids of the 6th-6th centuries. BC e. - demonstrate a language with a pronounced inflectional structure of the synthetic type, then its descendant, the Middle Persian language (monuments of the 1st millennium AD) is a language with highly developed analyticism, which has lost the nominal declension and in terms of morphology is significantly close to the modern Persian language.
Thus, the basis of the New Persian language was not the dialects of Fars, as in the case of Old Persian and Middle Persian, but the dialects of Sistan and Khorasan, where local Iranian dialects (primarily the Parthian language) were replaced by Koine Persian in the late Sasanian era. Further to the east, in the territory of Transoxiana (Bactria, Sogdiana, Chach and Fergana) the Persian positions lingua franca greatly intensified with the Islamic conquest, the rapid assimilation of the local eastern Iranian population served as the basis for the emerging Persian-speaking Tajik community. Together with Khorasan, these regions formed a single area, to which the appearance of early literature in New Persian was dated. In particular, the dialect of Bukhara, which became in the 10th century, played a large role in the formation of the New Persian literary language. the capital of the Samanids and the center of cultural life in the eastern parts of the Caliphate.
Initially, literature in New Persian was exclusively poetic; the first prose text dates back to 957 - a century after the appearance of the first verses. Gradually, from XI-XII, Persian gradually begins to be used in other areas of cultural life, although during this period it still gives way to the Arabic language.
Since the 12th century. literary Persian significantly expands not only its scope, displacing literary Arabic, but also its geography of distribution. It becomes the common literary language of the population of Greater Iran and the lingua franca throughout the eastern part of the Islamic world, from Anatolia to Northern India. Having begun to function as the official language of the Khorasan dynasty of Iranian origin, the Samanids, Persian did not lose its status as the language of office, fiction and scientific literature in subsequent centuries under rulers of Turkic origin (Ghaznavids, Seljuks, Ottomans, Khorezmshahs, Timurids, Baburids, Safavids, Qajars, Afsharids, etc. ) It was during the period of the X-XIV centuries. created world-famous Persian poets from different parts of the east of the Muslim world, whose legacy is rightfully included in the classics of world literature: Rudaki, Ferdowsi, Omar Khayyam, Nasir Khosrow, Nizami, Saadi, Rumi, Attar, Hafiz Shirazi, Jami, Dehlavi and many others. The richness of Persian literature, the length of its tradition and the noticeable influence it exerts on neighboring peoples allowed European literary scholars and linguists at a congress in Berlin in 1872 to recognize Farsi as a world classical language on a par with ancient Greek, Latin and Sanskrit.
Persian was widely used as a language of international communication and as a literary language - including in regions where its speakers never constituted a majority of the population. In Central Asia, spoken Tajik dialects, supplanted by Turkic languages, became the substrate for the Uzbek and Turkmen languages, and Farsi literature had a direct impact on the formation of the Chagatai literary language. At the other end of the eastern world, the Seljukids and the rulers of the Ottoman Empire, some of whom were famous Persian poets, patronized literary Persian for many centuries, and the influence of Persian on the Ottoman language was very great. In India, the Persian language was patronized by Muslim sultans, starting with the Ghaznavids (10th century) and including the descendants of Tamerlane - the Great Mughals. Indian Koine Urdu developed under significant Persian influence, and this influence is still noticeable in the spoken language throughout North India.
As an intermediary language, Persian was even more widespread. For example, Farsi was the only Eastern language that Marco Polo knew and used in his travels through China, conquered by the Mongols.
Over more than a thousand years of history, the New Persian language certainly could not remain unchanged, just as regional differences could not help but appear in it. Since the 16th century. previously uniform in language and style throughout Iran, Transcaucasia, Central Asia and India, the literary and written tradition of Farsi begins to demonstrate disintegration into local forms: Western Iranian, Central Asian (“Tajik”) and North Indian. In addition to the accumulated dialect differences, this was largely due to the division of the Persian-speaking space between the Shiite Safavid power (the predecessor of the modern Republic of Iran), the Sheibanid states in Central Asia and the Mughal Empire in India, to which from the 18th century. states of Afghan-Pashtuns were added, and the weakening of cultural ties between these states.
The vowel system of Classical Persian as a whole continued the vocalism of Middle Persian, which consisted of 8 phonemes and was characterized by a phonological distinction between short (a, i, u) and long (ā, ī, ū, ē, ō) vowels. In addition, two diphthongs developed in New Persian: ai and au. In modern language, the opposition in longitude has been replaced by a phonological opposition in quality, complemented by the opposition in stability - instability in a weak (unstressed) position. In different regional variants, the transformation of classical vocalism occurred differently. In Iranian Farsi, unstable vowels correspond to short vowels of the classical language, stable vowels correspond to long vowels, and ē coincides with ī and ō with ū.
The vowels of Early New Persian in the modern language correspond to the following sounds (in IPA transcription, their common transliteration is given in brackets).
Unstable vowels differ from stable vowels in that they are more subject to reduction in the unstressed position. In the shock position, the longitude of the unstable ones is practically no different from the stable ones. The vowel /ɒ/ is a rounded back sound, perceived by Russian speakers almost as a long /o/.
The transformation of vocalism of the classical language clearly shows the difference between the main forms of the modern New Persian language:
In the Persian language, the following consonant phonemes are distinguished (in IPA symbols):
The phonemes /p/, /t/, /k/ tend to be aspirated, especially before stressed vowels and sonorant consonants, as well as at the end of a word: پول pul"money", توپ tup"ball" . /k/ and /g/ are palatalized at the end of words and before front vowels: گرگ gorg"wolf". Voiced consonants at the end of a word are almost not deafened.
In addition, the phonemes /k/ and /g/ tend to be velarly pronounced before the vowels [ā], [u], [o]. (For example, this is how the first /g/ in the word “wolf” is pronounced - [ġorg"]).
In classical Persian, as in modern Tajik and Dari, two uvular phonemes were distinguished: fricative voiced /ʁ/ (in native words, Arabisms and Turkisms) and stop /q/ (only in Arabisms and Turkisms). In modern Farsi of Iran, these two phonemes coincide in one (transliterated as q). It has two voiced allophones: fricative [ʁ] and stop [ɢ]. The stop variant occurs at the beginning of a word.
The glottal stop /ʔ/ can occur in words borrowed from Arabic.
Stress in the Persian language is two-component - force (dynamic) and tonic. Falls, as a rule, on the last syllable: خانه xân e"house", خانهها xâneh â "Houses". Stress on the first syllable is characteristic of some conjunctions and particles (بلی b a li"yes", اگر a gar“if”, etc.).
In verb forms starting with prefixes mi- And be-, the main emphasis is on the prefix, and the secondary emphasis is on the personal ending: میروم miravam"I'm coming."
The main types of syllables are: CV - دو do"two", تو to"You"; CVC - دود dud"smoke", مار mâr"snake"; CVCC - مست mast"drunk", صبر sabr"patience", گفت goft"said"; VCC - آرد ârd"flour", اسب asb"horse" (read: asp); VC - آب âb"water", از az"from, from"; V - او u"she he".
The word and morpheme cannot have the initial structure CCV-; in borrowed words of this type, a vowel prosthesis or epenthesis /e/ or /o/ is usually inserted: استکان estekân(Russian glass), درشکه doroške(Russian droshky). An exception is borrowings with the initial “mute with smooth” (C + l or C + r): C + l or C + r: پلان plan‘plan’, پراژه prože"project".
In words of Iranian origin, the following combinations -CC-/-CC are common outside morphemic seams:
Arabic words can contain a wide variety of combinations of consonants and geminates; in some cases, they are greatly simplified in spoken language.
The grammatical structure of the Persian language can be characterized as inflectional-analytical with elements of agglutination. The conjugation of a verb is inflectional, where personal endings combine the meanings of person and number, while many aspectual and modal forms of the verb are expressed analytically. Most nominal categories are also expressed analytically; in addition, there are nominal affixes of the agglutinative type.
Names in Persian do not have a gender category, which also applies to personal pronouns of 3 liters. units h. Instead of the category of animate/inanimate, there is a category of person/non-person, in which animals are also included in the composition of non-persons. It is expressed lexically (by correlation with pronouns ke/ki"who" or če/či“what”, “who (about animals)”), and syntactically (peculiarities of agreement with the predicate).
The formal division of names into nouns and adjectives is weakly expressed; non-derivative adjectives do not differ in appearance from nouns; derivatives are characterized by special suffixes. The substantivization of adjectives is widely developed. The definition is always immutable and its role is indicated syntactically. The main way to introduce a definition is izafet design, where the main word in the noun phrase (defined) is marked with an agglutinative unstressed indicator -e(after vowels -ye), to which the definition adjoins in postposition. If there are several definitions, they are “strung” on top of each other also using izafet:
This is an almost universal way of expressing both a qualitative definition and a definition by belonging, so the Persian izafet corresponds to the Russian phrase with both an adjective and a genitive. For example, ketâb-e mâdar‘mother’s book’; ketâb-e mâdar-e Âmin"book of Amin's mother"; šâh-e bozorg'great king', šâh-e bozorg-e Iran"Great King of Iran" In preposition to nouns there are limited types of definitions, primarily attributive pronouns. Degrees of comparison can be formed from qualitative adjectives (and adverbs): comparative (affix -tar) and excellent (affix -tarin).
The category of case is completely lost in Persian. Case meanings are expressed analytically and syntactically: by numerous prepositions, postpositions -râ, izafetny construction and position of the word in the sentence. Postposition -râ, which marks a direct object, also gives it the meaning of definiteness; an indefinite direct object is usually not marked with it.
In the nominal syntagm, all affixes have a strict place. All postfixes, except for the plural indicator, always follow the last definition in the isafet chain:
(Preposition) + Noun + (plural affix) + izafet ( -e) + Definition + (affix comparative degree. -tar) + (article -i) + (postposition -râ):
The name system is supplemented by pronouns. Personal pronouns are characterized by suppletive stems for three persons and two numbers. In the third person singular, demonstrative pronouns are used for non-persons.
Polite pronoun man(“I”) can be replaced by bande (بنده), ânhâ("they on išan (ایشان).
There are no possessive pronouns. Instead, an isafet chain is used: medâd -e u (“his pencil”) or pronominal enclitics: medâd am (“my pencil”)
Personal pronouns are accompanied by a reflexive pronoun xod“himself”, “oneself”, as a definition - “your own”.
Conjugation. In addition, the verb receives the expression of present-future, past and perfect forms.
The conjugation is the same for all verbs in all forms. In the stressed version, personal endings are used in the present-future tense, in the unstressed version - in the past tense and as a short verb connective. The exception is 3 l. units h., where in each of these cases there is a different ending.
Every verb has two stems: presentation(present tense - ONV) and preterial(past tense - OPV), for example, kon-: card-"do", row- : raft-"go", suz- : suxt-"burn, burn" ruy- : growth-“grow (about plants).” The first of them continues the ancient Iranian finite basis of the present tense, the second - the passive participle with * -ta-, therefore, in most verbs it is formed from the first by non-trivial historical alternations both in the final vowel of the root and often in the vowel of the root. In total, there are about thirty types of the ratio ONV ~ OPV.
From the ONV tense the present-future and present definite tenses, the aorist subjunctive mood and the imperative mood are formed. From OPV, forms of the past tense are formed, as well as the past participle of -e, actively participating in the formation of analytical species-temporal forms.
Verb forms budan“to be” is used as a verbal connective, the use of which is formalized and almost does not allow omission. In the present-future tense, several variants of the connective are used:
In many contexts, variants of the copula are interchangeable, and the use of one form or another is determined by pragmatic factors. However, only the short form is used as an auxiliary verb in analytical forms.
Early New Persian inherited from Pahlavi the opposition of ONV (present tense) forms and OPV (past tense) forms. They were supplemented by innovative perfect forms formed using participles like karda(“made”) and the verb connective. In addition, Middle Persian verbal aspectual prefixes were generalized:
A special form of the future tense, formed using conjugated forms of the verb, has also become widespread x w āstan and an unchangeable participle equal to OPV: x w āhad kard“will do”, “will do”. At the same time, in general, prefixed and neutral forms were not of a formalized nature and were used quite freely.
Around the 15th century, this system underwent further changes, expressed in increased formalization and an increase in the number of analytical forms. Neutral forms coincided with perfect ones, becoming opposed to long forms on me->mi-.
Present-future tense with a formalized prefix mi- widely covered the designation of the future tense and required the development of a special form to express the action performed at the moment of speech. In Iranian Farsi it was developed by using conjugated forms of the verb dâštan: dâram miravam“I (now) go”, lit. "I have going." The eastern versions of Farsi (Tajik and Dari) have developed their own forms of the Present definite tense, which do not coincide with the forms of Iranian Farsi. In Iran, this form is still considered colloquial and was not included in grammars for a long time.
Past tenses have become widely used to convey unreal conditions ("if only...").
The modern system of verbal tense and modal forms has the following form:
Passive forms (mostly 3rd person) are formed from transitive verbs using the past participle of -te/-de and a verb inflected by aspectual and tense forms and conjugated by numbers and persons šodan"become": karde mi-šav-ad"is being done" karde šod"has been done" karde šode ast“(already) done”, etc.
The paradigm of basic species-temporal forms, which are also the most common:
Negative forms are formed using a stressed prefix na- (ne- before -mi-), always attached to the first (lexical) part of the verb and before the prefix mi-. For example, nemiravàd"he won't go" nágoft"He did not say", nákarde bâšám"(if) I (and) did." The exception is compound verbs ( jodấ nákardè ast“he (hasn’t) divided yet”) and passive forms ( gofte nášod"wasn't said") In the aorist and imperative forms, the negative prefix always replaces the prefix be-: nákon"don't do it" naravàd“let him not walk.”
Subsequently, with the development of Arabic-Persian bilingualism and the Persian perception of the social functions of the Arabic language, Arabisms flow into the vocabulary of the Persian language in a wide stream. According to rough estimates, Arabisms make up 14% in the vocabulary of material culture, 24% in the intellectual sphere, and 40% in ordinary literary text. Most Persian Arabisms can potentially be replaced by native equivalents, and often are. On the other hand, many ordinary native words have "high" Arabic equivalents.
Another significant component of the Persian vocabulary is Turkisms, which penetrated primarily into the vocabulary associated with the army, everyday life, cattle breeding, and geographical objects and actively penetrated Mohammad Reza Shah in the 1970s. After the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the process of “cleansing” the language stopped, and Arabisms and Western borrowings are again widely used. In 1990, a new Academy of Persian Language and Literature was created, which has so far published 6 collections of neologisms, as well as the etymological dictionary of the Persian language by M. Hasandust (2014).
There are no academic grammars or dictionaries of the Persian language. Persian grammars created in Iran are divided into two directions: a description of the language of classical poets that continues medieval traditions (with examples almost exclusively from them) and a description of the modern language based on European models. In Russia, grammarians of the Persian language (classical and modern) were compiled by Zaleman and Zhukovsky, Bertels, Zhirkov L.I., Yu. A. Rubinchik and others. Of the Western European Persian grammars, one of the most outstanding is considered to be that compiled by the French Iranian scholar Gilbert Lazare. The largest dictionary of the Persian language was compiled by Dehkhoda (in Iran it is still considered standard, although its vocabulary is partially outdated).
An excerpt from the song “متاسفم” (Motasefam), performed by the famous Iranian singer and composer Mohsen Chavoshi. Author - Hossein Safa.
Persian, or Farsi, is the official language of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It belongs to the Iranian group of the Indo-European family of languages. It is also spoken in Afghanistan, Tajikistan and the Pamirs (though the form of the language there is more archaic). Just a hundred years ago, this language was much more widespread - from the Middle East to India. The total number of Farsi speakers is quite large: 65 million in Iran, about 7 million in Tajikistan; plus Dari speakers (Farsi dialect): 34 million in Afghanistan and about 2 million in Pakistan.
In addition to Persian, the Iranian group of languages includes many modern living languages: Balochi, Gilan, Dari, Kurdish, Mazandaran, Ossetian, Pashto, Tajik, Talysh, Tat, etc. The Iranian group also includes dead languages: Avestan, Alan, Bactrian, Old Persian, Median, Parthian, Saka, Scythian, Sogdian, Middle Persian (Pahlavi), Khorezmian.
There are three periods in the history of the Persian language: ancient, middle, modern.
Ancient period(VI-III centuries BC) is represented by the ancient Persian language, which was widespread in the southwestern part of the Iranian plateau (modern Fars province). The ancient Persian language is attested to by wedge-shaped inscriptions of the Achamenid dynasty (VI-IV centuries BC), made on the walls and architectural details of palaces, tombs of kings, rocks, etc. The sacred book of the Zoroastrians, Avesta, was also written in one of the dialects of the ancient Persian language, which was called in honor of the holy book - Avestan. And the language of the most ancient part of the Avesta (Gatas - hymns) is so close in sound composition and grammatical forms to ancient Indian (Vedic Sanskrit) that both of them can be considered as dialects of one common proto-language of the Aryans. Both Old Persian and Avestan languages have a rich inflectional system with the presence of a pronounced grammatical category of gender (masculine, feminine, neuter), three numbers (singular, dual, plural) and cases (in Old Persian there are seven, in Avestan there are eight).
Middle period(III century BC - 7th century AD) is represented by the Middle Persian language (Pahlavi). It is the written and literary language of Iran during the Sassanian era (224-651 CE). It is based on istakhra, the dialect of the capital of one of the southern provinces of Iran - Fars (Persians), the homeland of the Sassanids. The period of the reign of this dynasty became the heyday of writing in the Middle Persian language. Later, having ceased to be the language of living communication, Middle Persian remained for many centuries as a written language, mainly among the Zoroastrians. Two categories of monuments in the Middle Persian language have reached us: those written in Pahlavi script and those created using other types of writing. Monuments of the first category include: inscriptions on various buildings, tombstones, rocks, on coins, seals, amulets, vessels, as well as quite extensive Zoroastrian literature of spiritual and secular content. The writing of the Middle Persian language was based on the Aramaic alphabet. The oldest example of book writing is the Christian Pahlavi Psalter (translation from Syriac). The manuscript dates back to approximately the 7th century AD. e. The Psalter was found in Bulayik (north of Turfan). Quite a lot of examples of Zoroastrian literature have come down to us, mainly of religious content: Bundahishn (Universe), which sets out the views of Zoroastrians on the creation of the world, “Datastan and Menoye Khrat” (“Judgments of the Higher Mind”), “Pandnamak and Zardusht” (“Book instructions of Zoroaster"), etc. Monuments created using other types of writing include: Manichaean texts written in Manichaean and Sogdian script and Turkic runic writing. Manichaean texts are also of religious content. Pahlavi, in comparison with Old Persian, is characterized by a simplification of morphology, a change in syntax, as well as some phonetic shifts. It is dominated by the features of the analytical system. Due to the collapse of inflection, already in a very early period of its development, it loses the grammatical categories of gender and case, dual number, and verbal forms change significantly. During the period of dominance of the Arab Caliphate in Iran (VII-X centuries AD), Arabic became the state language, as well as the language of literature and writing.
New period(modern) began approximately in the 7th-8th centuries AD. e. and continues to this day. By the beginning of the 9th century, a literary language was emerging in Central Asia and Khorasan, called the Dari language in various literary and historical works, as well as Parsi (or Farsi), which became the common language for the Persians and Tajiks. The creation of the first written monuments based on the Arabic alphabet dates back to this period.
Modern Persian and Tajik languages represent a further modification of the Dari language, that is, they are practically two branches of the originally single Dari language. The Iranians, having adopted Islam, began to spread it further across the territory of modern Transcaucasia, Central Asia, Afghanistan and India. This gave rise to calling Persian the second language of Islam. In a large part of this region, classical Persian becomes the common language for Indians, Iranians, Tajiks and other peoples, functioning as the language of literature, science, culture and interethnic communication. Therefore, in the languages of this region, along with Arabic borrowings, there are also many Persian words and expressions.
In the X-XV centuries, a wealth of literature, mainly poetry, was created in Farsi. Among the authors are representatives of the peoples of Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia: Rudaki (10th century) in Bukhara, Ferdowsi (10th-11th centuries) in Khorasan, Omar Khayyam (12th century), Jami (15th century) in Herat, Saadi (13th century) and Hafiz (XIV century) in Shiraz, Nizami (XIII century) on Azerbaijani soil, Rumi (XIII century) in Balkh (Khorasan). The great scientist Abu Ali ibn Sina (Avicenna), prominent historians of the Iranian Middle Ages Beyhaki, Gardezi, Rashid ad-Din and others wrote in Farsi.
The conquest of Iran by the Arabs had a significant impact on the Persian language: Arabic graphics were borrowed, and the vocabulary was enriched with a huge number of Arabic words. According to experts, more than half of the active lexical composition of the modern Persian language are words of Arabic origin. However, the grammatical structure of the Persian language has shown exceptional stability in relation to the Arabic language and has not undergone almost any changes.
The Persian language, also known as Farsi, deserves to be considered by all language lovers. And now I will tell you why.
1. Beauty
Iranians have a saying “farsi shirin ast” - “Farsi is sweet”. Melody, drawl, warm sounds - this language seems to have been specially created for poetry and songs. Here is one review: “When I listen to Iranians, there is a feeling as if honey is flowing through my ears; when I speak, or rather try, a unique feeling of sweetness, sherbet, grape tenderness arises in my mouth, which I do not want to part with.”
2. Simplicity of grammar
If you are a fan of exceptions, infuriating grammar, and irregularly shaped tablets, then please do not take up Farsi. I once saw on the Internet a list of Persian grammar rules that fit on two Word pages. In Farsi there are no agreements in gender and number, there are no cases, the endings of verbs are the same in all tenses. You will be able to carry on basic conversations soon after you start studying.
3. Imagery
But with vocabulary it will be more difficult. All Iranians are a bit of poets, and their language is partly poetry. Judge for yourself, here are ordinary expressions of everyday speech: “my thought fell to the fact that ...”, “my soul wants to tell you that ...”, “I will sacrifice myself for you”, “my soul”, “your place was empty” (it’s a pity that you weren’t there), “my heart wants...”, “may your hands not know pain.” Such expressions are found at every step in Farsi.
4. Key to other languages
For historical reasons, the influence of Farsi can be seen in a large number of languages: Hindi, Armenian, Georgian, Turkish, Azerbaijani... Without knowing Turkish, I was able to understand individual words in a plane ticket, but I generally understand Hindi almost through a word.
5. Persian poetry
This goal alone may be enough. Omar Khayyam, Hafiz, Saadi, Rumi - they all wrote in Persian. Our translations of their works sacrifice either meaning for form, or vice versa. In translation, we will never hear the music of their poems, nor understand their true greatness. Having learned Farsi, you will be able to understand them, because the language has not changed much since then.
6. Cinema
The fact that Iranian cinema is very strong is known only to a narrow circle of fans. Now you know too. Iranians make deep and touching films. Majid Majidi, Jafar Panahi, Asghar Farhadi (who has already received two Oscars), Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Abbas Kiarostami - I advise everyone, even those not interested in Farsi, to watch their films. Well, if you understand Farsi, you will get double pleasure and be able to look into the heart of the Persian soul.
7. Original culture
Persian culture is an unusual mixture of ancient Zoroastrian and Islamic traditions. Everything is different in Iran, they even have their own calendar. Do you know what book is considered the Bible here, is in every home, and is placed on the table on holidays? Do you think Koran? No, this is a collection of Hafiz's poems. This very clearly shows the originality of Persian culture. Even Islam is different here; for example, it is allowed to depict people.
8. Travel
Iran is one of the most underrated tourist destinations on the planet. It's safe here and there are no terrorists. But there is a diverse nature (from snowy mountains to hot deserts) and a rich historical heritage of ancient Persia: Isfahan, Shiraz, Perspepolis, five-thousand-year-old Yazd... But for a relaxing trip you will need minimal knowledge of Farsi. Local residents, as a rule, do not speak English.
9. Iranians
Without knowing the language, you will not be able to talk to the locals, and this will miss out on a lot. Iranians are very friendly and kind people, and their hospitality has been elevated to a real art. They will try to help you in every possible way, will throw a real feast in your honor (Iranian cuisine is very tasty) and may offer to give you any thing that you praise in their house (it is better to be polite and refuse).
Even if you speak a little Farsi, Iranians will smile and give you a lot of compliments. Many travelers note that, despite all the beauties of Iran, they got the most wonderful impression from the local residents.
10. Opportunity to communicate with a native speaker
Maybe you still don’t have the opportunity or desire to travel to Iran. It doesn’t matter – you can find Iranians in Russia. Already, many Iranians are coming to Russia, and there will be even more, because visas for tourist groups have just been canceled. And if you make friends with them here, then you are guaranteed an invitation to Iran! And there is no need to be afraid of them. Of course, there are bad people everywhere and you need to be vigilant. But among the Iranians there are a lot of educated and interesting, absolutely modern people with whom it is worth talking.
What should I say in conclusion? Let's go learn Farsi! Joke. You probably won't need Persian for your career or other practical achievements. But it can undoubtedly become your language for the soul!
Accent
Stress in the Persian language is two-component - force (dynamic) and tonic. It usually falls on the last syllable: xân e h'house', xâneh â 'Houses'. Some grammatical indicators at the end of a word (for example, izafet), as well as particles, are usually unstressed. In verb forms starting with prefixes mi- And be-, the main emphasis is on the prefix, and the secondary emphasis is on the personal ending: miravam'I'm coming'.
Syllable structure
The main types of syllables are: CV - do'two', to'You'; CVC- dud'smoke', mâr'snake'; CVCC- mast'drunk', sabr'patience', goft'said'; VCC- ârd'flour', asb'horse'; VC- âb'water', az‘from, from’; V- u'she he'. Since the word and morpheme cannot have an initial CCV structure, a prosthetic vowel /e/ or /o/ is usually inserted into loanwords of this type: estekân(rus. cup), doroške(rus. droshky). An exception is borrowings with initial C + l or C + r: plan'plan', prože'project'.
Morphology
Persian is an inflectional-analytical language. Remnants of inflection predominate in the verb, where at the same time there are many new analytical forms. The name is characterized by the so-called isafet construction and agglutinative type affixes to express number, belonging, degrees of comparison. There is no category of gender in the Persian language.
Name
Names in Persian are traditionally divided into nouns, adjectives, pronouns and numerals. A noun has the categories of number and definiteness/indeterminacy, an adjective has degrees of comparison (comparative - suffix -tar, excellent - -tarin: bad'bad' - badtar'worse' - badtarin‘worst’), personal pronouns - category of person. All names are characterized by analyticity and the agglutinative appearance of a few affixes. There is no case category in the Persian language, but the so-called izafet indicator is used ( -e), which marks the main word in a noun phrase ( ketâb-e mâdar‘mother’s book’; ketâb-e mâdar-e Amin‘book of Amin’s mother’; šâh-e bozorg‘great king’).
The plural is consistently expressed only in nouns where two main indicators are used: -ân(only for animate persons, paired human body parts and some groups of nouns) and -hâ(for any categories of nouns): mard - mardan/mardhâ‘man’ - ‘men’; setâre - setârehâ‘star’ - ‘stars’. Words borrowed from Arabic tend to retain Arabic plurality indicators: entehâbât- ‘elections’. Demonstrative pronouns form the plural in the same way as nouns, but adjectives do not have a number category at all. For personal pronouns, number is expressed lexically.
The plural indicator can also be used with uncountable nouns, for example, “water,” to denote a large quantity. At the same time, if there is an indication of quantity (two, three, etc.), then the plural indicator is not used.
In addition to izafet, special possessive affixes (pronominal enclitics) are also used to denote possession: -am('my'), -at('is yours'), -aš('his'), -emân('our'), -etân('your'), -esan('their').
Case meanings are usually expressed by prepositions and a single postposition -râ, marking a direct object if it denotes a specific object. Persian also has an unstressed indefinite article. -i: pesar-i‘some (one) boy’; the same meaning can be conveyed by numerals yek: yek pesar(in colloquial speech also yek pesar-i). In general, the expression of certainty/uncertainty is not as rigid as in languages like French or English.
Cardinal numbers do not change and always come before the word they define, which has a singular form. Ordinal numbers are formed from cardinal numbers using suffixes -om And -omin.
The number of adverbs in the Persian language is very small, and very often nouns and adjectives act as adverbs, including without a preposition: for example, šab means both ‘evening, night’ and ‘evening, night’.
Verb
Main article: Persian verb
Verbs in the Persian language in finite forms are conjugated according to persons and numbers. Voice, tense and modal meanings are expressed through a developed system of personal verb forms. There are three moods: indicative, subjunctive and imperative. Several frozen forms of the 3rd person singular have also been preserved. numbers of the desired mood (optative). Transitive verbs have two voices: active and passive, which is expressed by an analytical construction with an auxiliary verb šodan.
The Persian verb is characterized by the presence of two stems: presentation(present tense) and preterital(past tense), for example: kon- : card-'do', row- : raft-'go'. The formation of the past tense stem, as in many other Iranian languages (for example, Ossetian), is characterized by the addition of an affix to the present tense stem -t(d) and non-trivial vocal alternations at the base and consonantal ones at the end: suz- : suxt-‘burn, burn’, ruy- : growth-‘to grow (of plants)’.
In modern Persian, the linking verb has two variants: full (basics hast-/bud-/bâš-) and enclitic (forms in colloquial language completely coincide with personal verb endings; in Literary language the only difference is the form 3 l. units. h. ast). In many contexts the two are used interchangeably, and the use of one form or the other is determined by pragmatic factors. However, in perfect forms only the enclitic version of the copula can be used. Complete coincidence of the latter with personal verb endings in spoken language, as well as the loss of the past participle indicator in live speech -e allowed some researchers to consider perfect forms as synthetic along with present and preterite.
Below is the traditional classification of the basic forms of the Persian verb. The accent, unless otherwise indicated, falls on the prefix or (in the absence of the latter) on the stem. Negation looks like na-/ne-(before palatalized consonants), while in the conjunctive it replaces the indicator be-. Also, this indicator is usually omitted in complex verbs.
- Synthetic forms
- Indicative
- Present-future tense: mi mi-kon-am‘(I) do’). Used in the following meanings:
- 1) ordinary present regularly repeated action ( man dar kârxâne kâr mikonam ‘I work at a factory’);
- 2) the action of the present moment ( hâlâ esterâhat mikonam '(I now have a rest');
- 3) future action ( hatman miâyad ‘(he) will come now’).
- Simple past tense (aorist): ( na) + past tense stem + personal endings ( card-am'(I did'). Simple past forms of linking verbs are expressed regularly from the stem bud.
- 1) expresses a past action without specific characteristics ( pandž bâr maqâle-râ xândand ‘they read the article five times’);
- 2) in subordinate temporal and conditional clauses it can denote a future action, which is thought of as completed ( agar u-râ didi, salâm-am-râ bede‘if you see him, say hi’).
- Past continuous: mi+ past tense stem + personal endings ( mi-kard-am‘(I) did’), in 3 l. units h. personal ending zero;
- expresses a long-term, repeated action ( sâl-e gozâšte hafte-i yek bâr sinemâ miraftam ‘once a week last year (I) went to the cinema’).
- Present-future tense: mi mi-kon-am‘(I) do’). Used in the following meanings:
- Subjunctive
- Present tense: be/na+ present tense stem + personal endings ( be-kon-am). Present tense forms of the conjunctive of a linking verb are formed from the stem bâš with the addition of standard personal endings.
- Imperative
- Has 2 liter forms. units and many more h. It is formed identically to the conjunctive in the corresponding forms (with the exception of some verbs, for example. bokon (kardan), boro (raftan)), but in 2 l. units h. the personal ending is omitted.
- Indicative
- Analytical Forms
- Indicative
- Perfect: past tense stem + past participle suffix ( -ecard-é am'(I did'). In spoken language there is usually a contraction to forms like card-ám, with the result that the perfect differs from the simple preterite only in the location of the stress.
- Long perfect: mi+ past tense stem + past participle suffix ( -e) + enclitic forms of linking verb ( mí-kard-e am‘(I) did (and did)’). In spoken language, the same rules of contraction apply as for the simple perfect.
- perfect forms express the effectiveness of an action for the present moment ( hanuz nayâmade-ast '(he has not come yet');
- can also convey the meaning of obviousness, non-obviousness ( miguyând ke u fomt karde ast ‘they say he died’).
- Plusquaperfect: past tense stem + past participle suffix ( -e) + past tense forms of linking verb ( card-é bud-am);
- denotes an action preceding another ( dust-am nahâr xorde bud, ke man be u telefon kardam‘my friend had already had lunch when I called him’);
- Indicative
In addition to the basic forms, the Persian language also distinguishes a number of complex verbal forms that express different aspectual and tense meanings.
- present definite (concrete): present-future tense of the verb dâštan+ present-future tense of the main verb.
- is used instead of the present-future to emphasize that the action is being performed at the present moment ( dâram miâyam'(I'm coming now').
- past definite (specific): simple past tense of the verb dâštan+ past continuous tense of the main verb.
- denotes an action that took place at some specific moment in the past, in particular at the time of the commission of another action ( hasan madrase rafte bud va mâdarbozorg-aš dâšt nahâr mipoxt ‘Hassan went to school, and his grandmother cooked dinner’);
- future categorical: auxiliary verb xâstan+ so-called short infinitive of the main verb (coinciding with the past tense stem).
- book-literary form ( tehrân xâham raft ‘(I) will go to Tehran’), in modern living language the present-future tense is used instead;
Persian has two prefixes that express aspectual meaning. Prefix mi-, giving the verb form the meaning of duration, repetition, joins the following verbal forms:
- present-future indicative;
- past continuous indicative tense;
- long perfect indicative;
- the second component of the analytical forms of the present and past definite tenses of the indicative mood (e.g. dâram mi-ravam'I'm coming now', dâšt mi-raft'he was walking');
Prefix be-, on the contrary, denotes one-time, completeness, and can be used in the forms of the present-future subjunctive mood.
The Persian verb also has the following non-finite forms:
- infinitive (preterital stem + suffix -an: kardan ‘to do’);
- past participle (preterital stem + suffix -e: karde'made');
- present participle (present stem + suffixes -ande, -â , ân: xânande‘reader, reader’, dânâ'knowing', suzan'burning');
- future participle (infinitive + suffix -i: kardani ‘that which should be or can be done’).
Pronouns
Polite pronoun man(“I”) can be replaced by bande(بنده), “ânhâ” (“they”) - on išan (ایشان).
There are no possessive pronouns in Persian. Instead, an isafet chain is used: medâd -e u (“his pencil”) or pronominal enclitics: medâd am (“my pencil”)
Interrogative pronouns
- كی (ki) - Who?
- چه (çe) - What?
- كی (key) - When?
- كجا (koja) - Where?
- چرا ( çera) - Why?
- چطور ( Cetor) - How?
- چگونه (çegune) - how?
- چند (çand) - How many?
- كدام (code) - Which? which?
Syntax
Persian is one of the nominative languages. The normal word order in a sentence is Subject-Object-Predicate: ahmad dust-am-râ mibinad'Ahmed sees my friend.' Cases of inversion are observed in colloquial speech, folklore and poetry. The usual order of words in a sentence is as follows: in the first place or after the adverbial tense is the subject, in the last place is the predicate, which agrees with the subject in person and number. A direct object with a postposition râ- or without a postposition is placed immediately before the predicate verb (sometimes it can be separated from it by an indirect object or an adverbial word): u in ketâbhâ va daftarhâ-râ be šomâ midahad‘he gives you these books and notebooks’, man name minevisam'I'm writing a letter'.
The definition, qualitative or by affiliation, is placed after the word being defined, which has the isafet indicator -e: šahr-e zibâ'beautiful city', xodnevis-e barâdar‘brother’s fountain pen’. If a word has several qualitative definitions, then they follow one after another and after each of them, except the last one, an isafet indicator is placed.
Pronouns are placed in preposition to the word they define.
In general, syntactic relations are expressed by agreement (of the predicate with the subject), control (of the predicate by its dependents with the help of various prepositions and postpositions -râ), adjacency (predicate and unformed direct object; modifier and definition expressed by superlative adjectives, numerals and some types of pronouns; predicate with adverbial), word order, as well as division of the sentence into groups of words related to each other in meaning and intonation.
Dialects
The dialects of the Persian language are poorly studied today, and it is hardly possible to provide a complete list of them. The Tehran dialect, which occupies a leading place among all others, is the most studied. The dialects of Kerman, Isfahan, Novgan (Mashhad), Birjand, Sistan, Sebzevar are also known. Dialects and dialect groups are distinguished on the basis of lexico-grammatical and phonetic features. The differences with the literary language can be so significant that one can, in fact, talk not about Persian dialects, but about many closely related languages; Unfortunately, the degree of study of dialects is too small to draw any more or less unambiguous conclusions on this issue.
Tehran dialect has a great influence on the language of fiction; the media, cinema and theater are oriented towards it. In fact, the Tehran dialect has become the generally accepted literary and colloquial norm of the modern Persian language.
The phonemic composition of the Tehran dialect is identical to the literary one, but differs significantly in the implementation of phonemes. Apparently, the most common sound is [e], which often replaces the literary [æ], as well as the short form of the linking verb -ast. Consonantism is characterized by the alternation of /l/ and /r/. The plural of most nouns is formed using the suffix -â . The personal endings of the verb do not coincide with the literary language; many verbs have contracted inflections.
Colloquial
Spoken Persian is quite different from literary Persian. The differences between these styles concern not only phonetics, but also grammar, syntax, and word formation. In addition, in Persian (unlike Russian, where bookish vocabulary is acceptable in conversation), the use of literary forms instead of colloquial ones is often erroneous or undesirable, for example, in a telephone conversation.
The most common rule is replacing the long [â] with [u] before the consonants [m] and [n]: Iran - Ir u n, Tehrân - Tehr u n, bâran - bâr u n. Linking verb ast and the ending of the verb in the third person singular -ad goes to ending -e: bârân mibârad - bâr u n mibar e (it's raining), dorost ast - dorost e (right, right) U javâni ast - jav u ni ye (he is young). After words ending with -e or -A bunch ast takes the form -ass: U tešne ast - U tešn ass (he is thirsty).
When conjugated, the linking verb merges with the noun, taking on the form of a personal ending: Man dânešju hastam - dânešju yam (I am a student), ânhâ tehrâni hastand - tehr u ni yand (They are Tehranians).
2nd person plural ending -id in spoken language it has the form -in: Cherâ diruz telefon nakard in ? (Why didn't you call yesterday?)
The 5 most used verbs in the language have a present tense stem reduced to one consonant sound and a vowel-consonant pair in their colloquial version: goftan-g(speak), dâdan - d(give) raftan-r(leave), šodan - š(become), âvardan - âr(bring). Bahâr barf ab mi šavad- bahâr barf ab mi še (In spring the snow melts) in râ âbejo miguyad - in râ âbejo mi ge (He calls it beer). In the imperative mood, some verbs also have a shortened form.
Postposition râ in colloquial language it is converted into ro, if the highlighted noun ends in a consonant - to the ending -o: Man râ bebakhš - Man o bebakhš(I'm sorry).
Language Descriptions
There are no academic grammars or dictionaries of the Persian language. Persian grammars created in Iran are divided into two directions: a description of the language of classical poets that continues medieval traditions (with examples almost exclusively from them) and a description of the modern language based on European models. In Russia, grammarians of the Persian language (classical and modern) were compiled by Zaleman and Zhukovsky, Bertels, Zhirkov, Yu. A. Rubinchik and others. Of the Western European Persian grammars, one of the most outstanding is considered to be that compiled by the French Iranian scholar Gilbert Lazare. The largest dictionary of the Persian language was compiled by Dehkhoda (in Iran it is still considered standard, although its vocabulary is partially outdated).
Writing
Basic fonts for writing Farsi: naskh (1, 2), nastaliq (3)
The Persian alphabet, based on Arabic, is used to write the modern Persian language. The Arabic alphabet was supplemented with four letters to represent sounds not found in Arabic. The alphabet consists of 32 letters in total. Most letters have four types of style, depending on where in the word it is located. There are no capital letters. The writing direction is from right to left. Numbers in complex numerals and dates are written from left to right.
A characteristic feature of the Persian language in Iran is the widespread use of the Nastaliq (Tahriri) script, which in other countries with Arabic writing is considered archaic and is used extremely rarely. At the same time, the standard “naskh” is also widely used in Iran.
Many letters are identical in spelling and differ from each other only in diacritics.
- Letter "Be" ( ﺏ ) has a general appearance with the letters "Pe" ( پ ), "Te" ( ﺕ ), "Se" ( ﺙ );
- Letter "Jim" ( ﺝ ) has a general appearance with the letters "Che" ( چ ), "Ha-ye hotti" ( ﺡ ), "He" ( ﺥ ).
7 letters of the Persian alphabet are not connected to the following letters: “Aleph” ( ﺍ ), "Dal" ( ﺩ ), "Hall" ( ﺫ ), "Re" ( ﺭ ), "Ze" ( ﺯ ), "Zhe" ( ژ ) and "Vav" ( و ).
Some letters with different spellings represent the same sounds. For example, the letters “Hall” ( ﺫ ), "Ze" ( ﺯ ), "Rear" ( ﺽ ) and “For” ( ﻅ ) transmit sound [z]. Other letters, on the contrary, can mean different sounds. So, "Vav" ( و ) can be used to record the sounds [в], [о] and [у].
Most letters are written on the line, while "Re" ( ﺭ ), "Ze" ( ﺯ ), "Zhe" ( ژ ) and "Vav" ( و ) are written below the line.
Spelling
The problem of Persian spelling is acute. The fundamental problem is that the Arabic script does not correspond to the structure of the Indo-European language, does not convey short (weak) vowels in writing (except for educational books and dictionaries), and there are many homographs in the language. In addition, there are still no clear spelling norms, many letters, originally intended only for Arabisms, are used contrary to etymology in original words, many words have several reading or writing options, prepositions, prefixes and other formants are written by some authors together, by others separately etc. Neither the Shah's government nor the Islamic regime welcomed the desire for romanization or spelling reform. It was not until the 1930s that the romanization movement was relatively active.
Despite this, in the orthography of at least the literary language a number of principles are strictly observed. With very rare exceptions, long vowels in writing are represented by separate signs (alif, vav, yod), while short vowels (including the isafet ending -e or -ue) are not expressed. The spelling of consonants is strictly phonetic, although some sounds correspond to several different letters (this applies in most cases to Arabic borrowings, sometimes to distinguish homonyms).
Example text
Prose text
Poetic spoken text
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| Modern languages |
Ossetian Yaghnobi Pashto Vanetsi
|
|---|---|
| Northwestern Iranian languages | |
| Ancient languages | Median † Parthian† Azeri † |
| Modern languages | Tati-Talysh subgroup: Kilit † Talysh tati Caspian subgroup: Gilan Mazanderan velatru shamerzadi Semnan Kurdish subgroup: Kurmanji Sorani Kelhuri Lucky Zaza-Gurani subgroup: gurani zazaki Central Iranian subgroup: Central Iranian (incl. Jewish-Iranian dialects) Sivendi Tajrishi† Baloch subgroup: Baluchi Bashkardi Ormuri-parachi subgroup: ormuri parachi |
| Southwestern Iranian languages | |
| Ancient languages | Old Persian † Middle Persian (Pahlavi) † |
| Modern languages |
Tat Lur-Bakhtiyar dialects Farsa Lara Kurdshuli Kumzari
|
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