Persian Language
Persian, the official and literary language of modern Iran, is the mos important of the group of languages known as Iranian, and the only on proved by written evidence to have existed at each of the three stages Old, Middle and Modern, into which philologists divide them for convenience. Trhe other modern Iranian language are Kurdish, Pushtu (in Afghanistan) Baluchi, the Caspian languages, Ossetic (in the Caucasus) and one or two other spoken in central Asia
Modern Persian is a direct descendant of Pahlavi, the Middle Persian language spoken in Sasanian times, to which in Islamic times a great many Arabic words were added, thus creating an extremely rich language. Persian has in fact changed very little in the past eleven centuries, and an educated Iranian can read works written a thousand years ago without undue difficulty
Pahlavi, which survived for at leas the first three centuries of the Islamic era, is itself a descendant of Old Persian the official language of the Achaemenian dynasty, though influenced by other Middle Persian languages, notably Parthian and Soghdian. The only other Persian language from this early period is Avestan, the language of the Zoroastrian nan scriptures, and presumably that spoken by the Prophet Zoroaster himself.
Old Persian, which was written in its own cuneiform script, survives in numerous Achaemenian royal inscriptions, carved into mountain sides and on stone and precious metal tablet. British and German scholars deciphered Old Persian during the nineteenth century and discovered the key to Elamite and Akkadian writings, two important Semitic languages also used in the Achamenian Empire.
Persian is the most important Islamic language after Arabic, having served as the main literary and cultural language of territories as far apart China and Turkey. It has left a lasting imprint on Turkish and Urdu, and even today is widely spoken beyond the frontiers of Iran, notably in Afghanistan, Tadjikestan, Pakistan, India, Iraq, the Persian Gulf and parts of East Africa.
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