ABSTRACT
Persian belongs to the South-West Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian sub-group of the Indo-European family. The name ‘Persia(n)’ derives from Parsa, the province from which the Sasanid Dynasty originated. The language is also known as Farsi, which is an Arabicized form of Parsa (Arabic has no /p/ sound). Persian is spoken by about 30 million people in Iran, and, in slightly variant form, by 5 million in Afghanistan (known here as Dari), and by about 3 million in the Tajik Republic. Most analysts treat both Dari and Tajik as separate languages.
