Hi everyone, my name is Julie, and today we’re travelling into a three millennial long history,
to explore a language of one of the most ancient empires, a language,
which is still internationally significant today. Salam and welcome to the Persian language!
So Persian is not really a small language, and on this channel I’m trying to make videos
on languages that don’t really get that much attention (and by the way if you love languages,
definitely subscribe, you won’t regret it). Persian was voted by you my subscribers, and
actually it is interesting to explore it, because it seems to me that even though it’s big it is
still rather mysterious for most of the people. Plus, I can understand your interest in Persian,
chun zæbani æst ke khodemæn hæm daræm yad migiræm. Persian is spoken as a first language by about 70
million people, mostly in Iran, where it is called Farsi, in Afghanistan, where it is called Dari,
and in Tajikistan, where it is called Tajiki. Even though the names differ, these are virtually three
varieties of the same language. Adding up for people who speak Persian as the second language,
for example the numerous minorities in Iran, we obtain around 110 million speakers.
That would put Persian somewhere in top 20 of the most spoken languages in the world.
But even despite that most of the people unfamiliar with Persian would say “oh Persian,
isn’t it similar to Arabic?” Never, never call Persian Arabic. Let’s see why in the history.
I understand why people could think that Persian and Arabic
are relatives – they use the same script, they’re spoken in the neighbouring regions.
But Persian is an Indo-European language, so it is actually closer to English then to Arabic.
It all began approximately 5000 years ago maybe, around southern Russia and Ukraine, possibly, when
Indo-Iranians split from the Indo-Europeans. They migrated East and then south. And these
were the guys who called themselves “arya” or “aryans”. And to this day the name of “Iran”
goes back to “aryan” or “the land of Aryans”. Iranian languages come in all shapes and colours,
but we are particularly interested today in this South-Western Iranian tribe Parsa. They’ve been
in the region since around 10th century BC, and it might have stayed that way, if it wasn’t for a
young and ambitious king named Kūroš who, in the 6th century BC took a country that
looked like this… And made it this. In English this king is known as Cyrus the
Great, you may have heard of him. This is the beginning of the many
Persian empires that rose, fell, rose again. And so did Persian language,
evolving in synchrony with the empires. Achaemenid empire corresponds to the Old Persian stage,
when the language was inscribed in cuneiform. Then it was gradually replaced by Middle Persian,
rising with the Sassanian empire. It was inscribed with the so-called Pahlavi script,
which is derived from Aramaic script. With the Islamic conquest came the new stage - New Persian,
and this period continues today. And just to be clear, these stages are purely conventional,
in reality the language was gradually changing throughout the whole time.
Just before the Arab conquest, there were already several languages in use in the Sassanian empire,
most notably Middle Persian, the language of culture and religion,
and Dari, which means “the language of the court” and which was spoken by the court and
by the common people living in the capital region. Curiously, when Arabs came, Dari was not wiped out
of daily use as it happened with other languages in the caliphate, like Aramaic or Egyptian.
Quite the opposite. Arab immigrants switched to speaking Dari, and muslim armies marching East,
were speaking Dari too, as they mostly consisted of converted Persians. They were called Tajiks
by the way, which comes from the Persian word for Arabs and can be also translated
as Muslims. So Dari became a unifying force for the new religion, which resulted in adoption of
this language by local populations. That is the time, when many local languages,
like Bactrian or Sogdian, disappeared. Now we need to really concentrate
on those Eastern Provinces, as it is here where the New Literary Persian crystallised. Because
in the Central and Western areas the language of court and culture became Arabic. But the Eastern
parts were remote, and local nobilities did not have such a good knowledge of Arabic there,
plus they even broke out from the caliphate in the 9th century. Gradually local rulers started
promoting Persian as the main cultural language. And it brought results. In the 10th century a poet
named Rudaki was working in the Samanid court in Bukhara. He was composing his poems in Dari,
which he wrote in the Arabic script. Rudaki is considered the father of Modern Persian language
and the Adam of poets, as his work marked the beginning of Classical Persian literature.
Then the centre of the emerging Persian literature switched to the Ghaznavid capital Ghazna,
with a great number of talented poets flocking there, most notably Ferdowsi,
who was the author of “Shahnameh”, an epic poem reciting the history of Persian kings.
It is composed out of 50 000 two-line couplets, and thus is one of the longes poems known to us.
In these 50 000 couplets the poet tried to use as least Arabic loanwords as possible by
reviving or recreating native Persian words. So, starting from modern day Tajikistand
and Afghanistan in the 10th century, and in Iran in the 11th century, Persian language was making
a spectacular come-back as a language of court, culture and science. In the following centuries
the area was conquered by Seljuks and then by mongols, but nevertheless literature flourished
as this period gave birth to the poets like Omar Khayyam, Saadi, Rumi and Hafez.
The influence of Persian language spread far beyond its original borders. In the
Mughal empire in India Persian language was established as the language of the elites.
Same in Anatolia, where Persian was the court and culture language of the Ottoman empire,
but quickly replaced by Turkish though. I mean, I can go forever explaining the
history of Persian… But it’s been already a long talk, so let us switch the subject a bit
and finally talk about the language itself, starting as always with pronunciation.
Persian in Iran and Afghanistan is written with the Arabic script, while in Tajikistan they use
Cyrillic script, a legacy of Soviet rule. In the Arabic-based alphabet there are 32 letters, which
are written from right to left. Also, one letter might not look the same way depending on its place
in a word, as some letters have different versions for the beginning, middle and end.
You may have noticed as well that there are several letters that stand for the same sound.
These letters represent different sounds in Arabic originated words, but in Persian
these sounds don't exist, they are pronounced the same as other sounds, but are written in
their original Arabic way. At the same time some letters have multiple possible pronunciations.
Finally, you could see that there are 3 letters for vowels, but in reality there
are 6 vowel sounds, which are divided in 3 short vowels, which are not written,
and 3 long vowels. So, to know that this word is read as “bæstæni” you… should just know it.
All these possible complications are virtually eliminated in the Tajik alphabet, as it is
phonetic. There are 35 letters, and the words are written from left to right of course. But well,
on the other hand with the Arabic script you can do this which is crazy beautiful.
So this is how they write Persian, but how do they speak it? Let’s hear some native speakers.
Persian speakers say that “Farsi shirin æst”, Persian is sweet, because of how lovely it sounds,
at least to them. What do you think? And while you’re writing it in the comment section
let’s see, if Persian grammar is as sweet. Persian grammar, contrary to its orthography,
is pretty systematic. The sentence structure is SOV. There are no gender and no cases,
and verb tenses are formed in a regular manner. You might only need to memorise the present tense
stem which is different from the infinitive. Adjectives always go after the noun,
and they are connected to it by an “ezafe” - a sound “e” attached to the noun - you’re
not gonna see it in writing, but know that it’s there: “dokhtær e ziba”. The same logic goes for
connecting two nouns to show possession: “lebas e dokhtær”. And for possessive pronouns it’s even
easier - the respective suffix is added to the end of a noun, so “her dress” becomes “lebasæsh”.
Another postposition “-ra” is used to indicate direct object “Mæn in pærændeh rā mibinæm” - I
see this bird, but in spoken language they say “-ro” instead of “-rā” and even “-o”,
because why pronounce more sounds when you can pronounce less. This is an example
of how language lives and changes even today. And we could see it even more with the vocabulary.
First of all, how different are the 3 varieties of Persian - Farsi, Dari and Tajik. Well,
depends on who you ask, as this type of subject quickly becomes more political
than linguistic. The main differences between the 3 varieties are pronunciation of some sounds,
cyrillic alphabet for Tajik and loanwords - Farsi would have more French loanwords,
Dari - more English, and Tajik - more Russian. But main source of loanwords in Persian is of
course Arabic with words like “ketab”, “mo’ællem” or “alæm”. Arabic words count probably around 40%
of Persian lexicon, but that’s not sure though as it depends on who is speaking
and in which context. There’re also quite a few French loanwords, especially in the
Iranian standard of Persian, as in the 19th-20th centuries, France served as the model of secular
culture for Iran. Thus we see Persian words like “mersi”, “shofazh”, “burs”. However,
the Academy of Persian Language and Literature is promoting the usage of native Persian terms
instead of loanwords - like “forudgah” or “landing place” instead of “airport” or “daneshgah” or
“knowledge place” instead of “university”. And in Persian it is quite easy to create
new words, as these can be built by combining different stems and affixes. And for creating
verbs it’s even a simpler process: take a noun, attach to it a simple verb like “to do”
or “to become” and you have a new verb: “kar” work + “kærdæn” to do = to work or
“bidar” awake + “shodæn” to become = to awaken. Most of the verbs in Persian are formed this way
so you really have to learn just the conjugation of a number of simple verbs and then you’re able
to conjugate anything out there. Finally, no matter the loanwords,
Persian ultimately remains an Indo-European language, and its Indo-European connections
are easily observed in its basic vocabulary. Persian influenced other languages too,
particularly in those areas where Persian used to be a language of prestige. Both Urdu and Turkish
are said to be made up of around 30% Persian loanwords. English adopted many Persian words too.
Some of these are: bronze, caravan, caviar, magic, paradise and many many more. And suddenly Persian
doesn’t seem so distant and foreign anymore. Big thanks to my Patrons for supporting this
channel, especially for the top tier who are voting on the next languages
and you could vote too. Thank you so much for watching, and I’ll see you next time bye bye.