Indo-European · ISO 639-3 fas · fa
Persian Language فارسی
Persian is an Indo-European language spoken by about 82 million people in 9 countries. It is an official language of Iran and Afghanistan. It is written in the Perso-Arabic and Latin scripts.
Where Persian is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
Countries that speak Persian
Language family
- Indo-European
- Classical Indo-European
- Indo-Iranian
- Persian
Writing system
Perso-Arabic and Latin scripts
Related languages
About the Persian language
Persian (فارسی) is spoken by about 82 million people. It belongs to the Indo-European language family and, more precisely, to the Indo-Iranian group within the Indo-Iranian branch.
Where is Persian spoken?
Persian is used in 9 countries. The largest communities live in Iran (66 million), Afghanistan (20 million), Pakistan (1.7 million), Iraq (366,125) and Qatar (280,729). More than half of the population speaks it in Iran and Afghanistan — the places where travellers will hear it everywhere.
Share of the population that speaks Persian: Iran 75% (66 million), Afghanistan 50% (20 million), Pakistan 0.7% (1.7 million), Iraq 0.9% (366,125), Qatar 11% (280,729) and Canada 0.6% (236,648).
Persian is an official language in 2 countries: Iran and Afghanistan.
Writing system and status
Persian is written in the Perso-Arabic and Latin scripts.
Its closest relatives in the same branch of the family are Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, Panjabi, Western Panjabi, Marathi and 2 more.
ISO codes: ISO 639-1 fa, ISO 639-3 fas.
Frequently asked questions about Persian
How many people speak Persian?
Where is Persian spoken?
In which countries is Persian an official language?
What language family does Persian belong to?
What is Persian called in Persian?
Is Persian an endangered language?
Data: Languages of the World dataset (MIT) — ISO 639-3, Glottolog (CC BY 4.0), Unicode CLDR, Google LinguaMeta (CC BY 4.0) and Wikidata; country lists: samayo/country-json (MIT). Speaker numbers include first- and second-language speakers where sources report them.