New Persian

New Persian
فارسی نو
Fārsi written in Persian calligraphy (Nastaʿlīq)
Native to	Iran[1] (as Farsi) Afghanistan[1] (as Dari) Tajikistan[1] (as Tajik) Uzbekistan (as Tajik) Iraq[2] Turkmenistan[3] (as Tajik) Russia[4][5] Azerbaijan[6]
Native speakers	90 million[7] (110 million total speakers)[6]
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Western Iranian Southwestern Iranian Persian New Persian
Early forms	Old Persian Middle Persian Persian alphabet (Iran and Afghanistan) Tajik alphabet (Tajikistan) Hebrew alphabet Persian Braille
Official status
Official language in	Iran (as Farsi)[8]  Afghanistan (as Dari)  Tajikistan (as Tajik)  Dagestan (as Tat)[9]
Regulated by	Academy of Persian Language and Literature (Iran) Academy of Sciences of Afghanistan (Afghanistan) Rudaki Institute of Language and Literature (Tajikistan)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	fa
ISO 639-2	per (B) fas (T)
ISO 639-3	fas
Glottolog	fars1254
Linguasphere	58-AAC (Wider Persian) > 58-AAC-c (Central Persian)
Areas with significant numbers of people whose first language is Persian (including dialects)
Persian Linguasphere. Legend   Official language   More than 1,000,000 speakers   Between 500,000 – 1,000,000 speakers   Between 100,000 – 500,000 speakers   Between 25,000 – 100,000 speakers   Fewer than 25,000 speakers / none
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New Persian (Persian: فارسی نو), also known as Modern Persian (فارسی نوین) and Dari (دری), is the final stage of the Persian language spoken since the 8th to 9th centuries until now in Greater Iran and surroundings. It is conventionally divided into three stages: Early New Persian (8th/9th centuries), Classical Persian (10th–18th centuries), and Contemporary Persian (19th century to present).

Dari is a name given to the New Persian language since the 10th century, widely used in Arabic (compare Al-Estakhri, Al-Muqaddasi and Ibn Hawqal) and Persian texts.^[10] Since 1964, it has been the official name in Afghanistan for the Persian spoken there.

Classification[]

New Persian is a member of the Western Iranian group of the Iranian languages, which make up a branch of the Indo-European languages in their Indo-Iranian subdivision. The Western Iranian languages themselves are divided into two subgroups: Southwestern Iranian languages, of which Persian is the most widely spoken, and Northwestern Iranian languages, of which Kurdish is the most widely spoken.^[11]

Etymology[]

"New Persian" is the name given to the final stage of development of Persian language. The term Persian is an English derivation of Latin Persiānus, the adjectival form of Persia, itself deriving from Greek Persís (Περσίς),^[12] a Hellenized form of Old Persian Pārsa (