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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 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 Farsi language and literature is a center that evaluates the new words in order to initiate and advise its Farsi 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".)

Farsi phonology -- adapted from this Structural Sketch of Farsi.

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.