History of the Persian language

Persian
Fārsi
فارسی
Fārsi written in Persian (Nastaʿlīq script)
Pronunciation	[fɒːɾˈsiː]
Native to	Iran Afghanistan (as Dari) Tajikistan (as Tajik) Uzbekistan (as Tajik) Iraq Russia Azerbaijan
Native speakers	45 million (2007) – 60 million (2009) (110 million total speakers)
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Western Iranian Southwestern Iranian Persian
Early forms	Old Persian Middle Persian Persian
Standard forms	Western Persian Dari Tajik
Dialects	Western Persian Dari Central Asian Persian (Tajik) Bukhori Pahlavani Hazaragi Aimaq Judeo-Persian Dehwari Judeo-Tat Caucasian Tat Armeno-Tat
Writing system	Persian alphabet (Iran and Afghanistan) Tajik alphabet (Tajikistan) Hebrew Persian Braille
Official status
Official language in	Iran  Afghanistan (as Dari)  Tajikistan (as Tajik)
Regulated by	Academy of Persian Language and Literature (Iran)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	fa
ISO 639-2	(B)  (T)
ISO 639-3	– inclusive code Individual codes: pes – Western Persian prs – Dari language (Afghan Persian) tgk – Tajiki aiq – Aimaq dialect bhh – Bukhori dialect haz – Hazaragi dialect jpr – Judeo-Persian phv – Pahlavani deh – Dehwari jdt – Judeo-Tat ttt – Caucasian Tat
Glottolog	fars1254
Linguasphere	58-AAC (Wider Persian)  > 58-AAC-c (Central Persian)
Areas with significant numbers of Persian speakers (including dialects).
Countries where Persian is an official language.
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

Persian (/ˈpɜːrʒən/ or /ˈpɜːrʃən/), also known by its endonym Farsi (فارسی fārsi [fɒːɾˈsiː]), is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family, and the predominant modern descendant of Old Persian). It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan (officially known as Dari since 1958 for political reasons), and Tajikistan (officially known as Tajiki since the Soviet era for political reasons), and some other regions which historically were Persianate societies.

The Persian language is classified as a continuation of Middle Persian, the official religious and literary language of the Sasanian Empire, itself a continuation of Old Persian, the language of the Achaemenid Empire. Persian is a pluricentric language and its grammar is similar to that of many contemporary European languages. Persian gets its name from its origin at the capital of the Achaemenid Empire, Persis (modern-day Fars Province), hence the name Persian (Farsi). A Persian-speaking person may be referred to as Persophone.