زبان فارسی — ۲٬۵۰۰ سال سنت ادبی پیوسته
Persian (Farsi, پارسی) belongs to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family, making it distantly related to English, French, Greek, and Sanskrit. It has three main historical phases: Old Persian (c. 600–300 BC, written in cuneiform), Middle Persian / Pahlavi (c. 300 BC–900 AD), and Modern Persian (c. 900 AD–present).
After the Arab conquest of Persia in the 7th century, Arabic became the dominant language of administration and scholarship. Yet Persian survived — and eventually flourished. By the 10th century, a Persian literary renaissance had begun, producing the Shahnameh, Hafez, Rumi, and Saadi. Today, Modern Persian retains its essential grammatical structure from Old Persian despite 30-40% Arabic vocabulary.
Persian is spoken by over 110 million people as a first language (primarily in Iran, Afghanistan as Dari, and Tajikistan as Tajik) and by millions more as a second language. It has one of the world's richest literary traditions and influenced Turkish, Urdu, Hindi, Uzbek, and many other languages that absorbed Persian vocabulary during Islamic civilization's golden age.
Old Persian, written in cuneiform, dates to at least 600 BC. Modern Persian has been continuously spoken and written for over 1,100 years, making it one of the world's oldest living literary languages.
After the Arab conquest in the 7th century, Arabic became the prestige language of religion, administration, and science. Over 200+ years, Arabic vocabulary entered Persian — though the grammar, syntax, and core vocabulary remained Persian.