Persian language

Persian (also known as Farsi or Parsi) is a language spoken in Iran, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Gorjestan[?] (Georgia), part of India and part of Pakistan. It has over 46 million native speakers. It belongs to the Indo-European language family. It is of the Subject Object Verb type.

Persian is a member of the Indo-European family of languages, and within that family, it belongs to the Indo-Iranian (Aryan) branch, within which, the Iranian sub-branch consists of the following chronological linguistic path: Avestan/Old Persian[?] -> Middle Persian (Pahlavi[?]) -> Modern Persian.

The language itself has greatly developed during the centuries. Due to technological developments new words and idioms are created and enter into Farsi like any other language. In Iran the Academy of Persian language and literature is a center that evaluates the new words in order to initiate and advise its Persian equivalent.

Is the name of the language "Persian" or "Farsi"? To answer this question ask: is it "Spanish" or "Español"? In other words, "Persian" is an English word, and "Farsi" or "Parsi" are Persian words.

(In fact, the term "Farsi", while being an accepted term for the language in Iran, came about due to the fact that Arabic does not contain the letter "p", so Arabs pronounced "Parsi" as "Farsi".)

Judeo-Persian was a language spoken by the Jews living in Persia.

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Persian phonology -- adapted from this Structural Sketch of Persian (http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/languagesofla/farsi/fars-sketch.htm).

Vowels

	front	central	back
high	i:		u:
mid-high	E		O
low		a	A:

Consonants

	labial	dentals	palatals	velars
voiceless stops	p	t	tS	k
voiced stops	b	d	dZ	g
voiceless fricatives	f	s	S	x
voiced fricatives</TD>	v	z	Z	Y
nasals	m	n
liquids		l, r
glides			y	h

The functional contrast for vowels appears to be between long {/i:/, /u:/, /A:/} and short {/E/, /O/, /a/}. Therefore, it seems possible to represent the phonology as {/i:/, /u:/, /a:/} and {/i/, /u/, /a/}. Also note that /tS/ and /dZ/ are affricates, not stops.