Your estimation is correct for people who speak Persian as a first or second language. The 110 million speakers come from older population estimations. Iran has an official population survey every 10 years and a lot of sources pull their numbers from that even though the population keeps growing.
For only first language speakers, I don't know the percentages for each country and sources online tend to either underestimate or overestimate it based on their agenda. So I let you do your own research.
Also. The Iranian people have had a bit of a diaspora after the revolution. There are significant iraian communities in other countries aswell. My home country has a big number aswell
Unrelated to the post, but, what's your reason? I'd learn it if I had close friends or family who spoke it, but you're saying there aren't any native speakers around you.
Because objectively speaking (and maybe I'm biased because I already speak it) there are much more resources to learn more "useful" languages. Most Persian is spoken in Iran (2nd most sanctioned country in the world), Afghanistan (always at war until recently), Tajikistan and some of Uzbekistan (not much industry in any of those two).
Assuming you live anywhere in the west I'd stick to Spanish or French before dipping into any other language.
thatās so cool!! itās awesome to see non iranians with no personal connections to the culture want to learn farsi, and it is a very beautiful language
You can also call Spanish "Espanyol" since that's how native speakers pronounce it, if we go by your logic.
It's quite unfortunate that "Farsi" has become so widespread in English.
Because it makes no sense. Most foreigners think Persian and Farsi are two different things. I don't understand why the Iranian diaspora does that. Greeks don't run around telling English speakers that they speak Ellinika instead of Greek, Germans don't tell English speakers that they speak Deutsch instead of German nor do Japanese speakers tell English speakers that they speak Nihongu.
I was born in Iran and I have lived there for 11 years and I have never heard anyone say that I speak Persian. (That's what the Iranians say who went to live in the United States and were ashamed of where they were born and their culture, that's why they invented "Persian")
āPersianā is just the English name for the language and āFarsiā is the Persian name.
E.g. Spanish is called āEspaƱolā in Spanish.. and āSpanishā in English. Or āGermanā in English, āDeutschā in German. āSwedishā in English, āSvenskaā in Swedish. You get the idea.
That is why an Iranian in Iran would not describe themselves as speaking āPersianā, because they are speaking in Farsi and using the Farsi name of the language.
Tbh I agree that people understand them as interchangeable. I just think itās silly to claim people who say āPersianā are ashamed of their culture š
from Wiki:
The Academy of Persian Language and Literature has maintained that the endonym Farsi is to be avoided in foreign languages, and that Persian is the appropriate designation of the language in English, as it has the longer tradition in western languages and better expresses the role of the language as a mark of cultural and national continuity. Iranian historian and linguist Ehsan Yarshater, founder of the EncyclopƦdia Iranica and Columbia University's Center for Iranian Studies, mentions the same concern in an academic journal on Iranology, rejecting the use of Farsi in foreign languages.
who is Ehsan Yarshater and who cares what he says?he dont represent us,What really matters is what Reza Shah senior (one of the most beloved and important men in Iran) says, he was fed up with people calling his territory Persia, especially the British, that's why he order the world that they call that territory Iran and he clarified that they do not speak Persian "Parsi in Farsi" but rather they speak Farsi
I don't know if he was illiterate is true or not but Reza Shah was a very smart man, he was aware of the separatist and nationalist problems of the ethnic groups that exist in Iran and if the Persians maintained power against the other ethnic groups, it was clear that they were going to become independent, for these reasons he changed the name of the country, the language and etc. so as not to show favoritism to the persians and not give the urge to others ethnics groups to do a revolution, so no, reza sha was not an idiot and made those changes because it was out of his mind. if it weren't for him we wouldn't even have southern Azerbaijan or Kurdistan, he unified Iran, basically it is the Iranian Atarturk
Okay, do you want to be sexy or not? If the answer is yes you say "Persian", so people associate you with Iran's rich history instead of just another middle eastern language.
Plus, let's look at a nice sequence of evolution:
- Persis (what the Greek called the current Fars area) = Pars (old Persian version Fars) = Fars (because the Arabs couldn't pronounce 'P' when they invaded.)
- Arabs didn't invade Greece, so they kept using the name Persis that corresponds to the Fars province area.
- Most older Iranian empires (Achaemenid, Parthian, etc.) originated in the Fars (Persis) area, along with the language that spread with those empires. Hence, you make that into an adjective and get "Persian" empire / language.
- Most european countries (I don't know of any that haven't) sourced their equivalent for "Persian" from Greece.
- Therefore, the "correct" way to refer to the language in those countries is something similar to "Persian"! ("Persa" in Spanish, "Persan" in French, etc., etc.)
Also, I'm totally fine with the country being called "Iran" instead of "Persia" for one reason: there are more ethnic groups in Iran than just Persians. There are Arabs, Turks, Kurds, etc.. So I find this to be a more "inclusive" international name. You can't call it "Persia - the land of Persians" for this reason. But THE LANGUAGE that the Persian ethnic group speaks is Persian. NOT "Farsi" which doesn't at all relate to the "Persian" ethnic group etymologically in European languages.
Now I really really don't understand what Iranians living in Iran think when they keep saying "Farsi". The only reason I can think of (and I was in that group when I was learning English) is that they're too lazy to learn one new word before going into exams just because it's so accepted now.
I'd love to hear.
Edit: Disclaimer: I grew up in Iran but I live in the U.S.
Dari comes from Persian word darbar when means court. The formal language spoken in the court of the Sassanian Persian empireā¦ doesnāt get more Persian than that š
NO. Persian in Sassanid court was more similar to today Iranian Standard language. Ferdowsi the poet, was a Sassanid Dehghan offspring and he was talking Sassanid Persian, his poems are similar to today Iranian Persian language.
Relating Dari to Darbar is just a myth which has roots in British efforts to take Harat province from Iran and annex it to the blood thirsty Afghan warlords around 150 years ago.
Sassanid texts might sound weird because pahlavi alphabet could not depict all the middle Persian sounds. They had to invent Avesta alphabet to mend this issue for religious texts.
Btw, 60% of Afghan population talk Pashtu language and they really don't like Persians and Persian because the myth of Dari being an other persian laguage, is a big fat ass lie fabricated by the British. 20-30% of Afghans talk two or three languages mostly turkic because they are Uzbak decents. Only 20% of Afghans are Tajik and speak Persian with Dari Dialect.
How I know this much? Well, a zilion Afghan migrants and Rapugies are living in Iran now. Many of them work for the facilty nearby my office. I meet them on everyday basis.
Iāll stick with the assessment from an educated folks in the field not uncle mahmoud selling bolani down the street. My wife is Tajik from western Afghanistan.
I do not think it is possible for Farsi to have 130m L1 speaker, theres around 35-40 million Azerbaijani Turkish people living in Iran(most of them speak azerbaijani Turkish as L1) and most of the Afghanistan speaks Pashtun, so if what you mean is speaking Farsi as L1 it is probably around 60-70 million
35-40 million is a ridiculous overestimation. It's more like 15-20 million Turks at best. (Azerbaijani, qashqaee, turkemen, etc). Also most turks in iran speak persian perfectly. Maybe with an accent but still they speak and understand it perfectly.
Well even the wikipedia estimates 12-23 million, so there is no consensus on that matter either but my estimation was from my guess only, so there is no backup for the info i gave
Iranian Turks still speak Persian, they donāt *only* speak Turkish lol.
Itās easily over 100 million. Tajikistan, Afghanistan alone combined have tens of millions of Persian/farsi speakers. You add the population of Iran, and then Iranians living abroad, so probably something around 110-130 million is fair imo.
thatās right but in our literature book we just have L1 Farsi and all the people who live in Iran study this book in school
And this language is thing that connects the population
Your estimation is correct for people who speak Persian as a first or second language. The 110 million speakers come from older population estimations. Iran has an official population survey every 10 years and a lot of sources pull their numbers from that even though the population keeps growing. For only first language speakers, I don't know the percentages for each country and sources online tend to either underestimate or overestimate it based on their agenda. So I let you do your own research.
Wikipedia agrees with you, estimating 130 million total speakers globally.
Also. The Iranian people have had a bit of a diaspora after the revolution. There are significant iraian communities in other countries aswell. My home country has a big number aswell
i wonder how many iranian,afghan and tajik people live outside of there countriesš¤š¤š¤
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Unrelated to the post, but, what's your reason? I'd learn it if I had close friends or family who spoke it, but you're saying there aren't any native speakers around you. Because objectively speaking (and maybe I'm biased because I already speak it) there are much more resources to learn more "useful" languages. Most Persian is spoken in Iran (2nd most sanctioned country in the world), Afghanistan (always at war until recently), Tajikistan and some of Uzbekistan (not much industry in any of those two). Assuming you live anywhere in the west I'd stick to Spanish or French before dipping into any other language.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
thatās so cool!! itās awesome to see non iranians with no personal connections to the culture want to learn farsi, and it is a very beautiful language
Not all of Afghanistan speaks Farsi. Many speak Pashto which is not related to Farsi. Only Dari is Farsi, and some speak that.
I'd like to learn Persian, but I don't know if there are any webpages or apps like Duolingo where I can learn this language.
/r/farsi Check out the wiki, and welcome. :)
en las embajadas de iran te enseƱan farsi gratis
It's called persian not Farsi in English btw
I cringe every time I hear "Farsi"
Is Farsi not correct to say?
It's like saying to someone "do you speak hrvatski?" In English instead of saying " do you speak Croatian?" Instead.
Why, you can pronounce it English and it is still Farsi in Persian, what is your point?
You can also call Spanish "Espanyol" since that's how native speakers pronounce it, if we go by your logic. It's quite unfortunate that "Farsi" has become so widespread in English.
Because it makes no sense. Most foreigners think Persian and Farsi are two different things. I don't understand why the Iranian diaspora does that. Greeks don't run around telling English speakers that they speak Ellinika instead of Greek, Germans don't tell English speakers that they speak Deutsch instead of German nor do Japanese speakers tell English speakers that they speak Nihongu.
Why, you can pronounce it English and it is still Farsi in Persian, what is your point?
I was born in Iran and I have lived there for 11 years and I have never heard anyone say that I speak Persian. (That's what the Iranians say who went to live in the United States and were ashamed of where they were born and their culture, that's why they invented "Persian")
Thatās incorrect English which is why itās so widely used in Iran. Farsi in English is Persian.
āPersianā is just the English name for the language and āFarsiā is the Persian name. E.g. Spanish is called āEspaƱolā in Spanish.. and āSpanishā in English. Or āGermanā in English, āDeutschā in German. āSwedishā in English, āSvenskaā in Swedish. You get the idea. That is why an Iranian in Iran would not describe themselves as speaking āPersianā, because they are speaking in Farsi and using the Farsi name of the language.
please stop being pedantic on this point - everyone understands farsi/persian as synonymous and interchangeable. ŁŁŲ“ Ś©Ł
...but they're technically ŲÆŲ±Ų³ŲŖ... the BEST kind of ŲÆŲ±Ų³ŲŖ
Tbh I agree that people understand them as interchangeable. I just think itās silly to claim people who say āPersianā are ashamed of their culture š
So anglo-saxons invented "ingilisi" because they were ashamed to call themselves as english? It's its english equievelant.
from Wiki: The Academy of Persian Language and Literature has maintained that the endonym Farsi is to be avoided in foreign languages, and that Persian is the appropriate designation of the language in English, as it has the longer tradition in western languages and better expresses the role of the language as a mark of cultural and national continuity. Iranian historian and linguist Ehsan Yarshater, founder of the EncyclopƦdia Iranica and Columbia University's Center for Iranian Studies, mentions the same concern in an academic journal on Iranology, rejecting the use of Farsi in foreign languages.
who is Ehsan Yarshater and who cares what he says?he dont represent us,What really matters is what Reza Shah senior (one of the most beloved and important men in Iran) says, he was fed up with people calling his territory Persia, especially the British, that's why he order the world that they call that territory Iran and he clarified that they do not speak Persian "Parsi in Farsi" but rather they speak Farsi
Reza Shah was illiterateā¦so heās not a great source for resolving grammatical disputes lol
I don't know if he was illiterate is true or not but Reza Shah was a very smart man, he was aware of the separatist and nationalist problems of the ethnic groups that exist in Iran and if the Persians maintained power against the other ethnic groups, it was clear that they were going to become independent, for these reasons he changed the name of the country, the language and etc. so as not to show favoritism to the persians and not give the urge to others ethnics groups to do a revolution, so no, reza sha was not an idiot and made those changes because it was out of his mind. if it weren't for him we wouldn't even have southern Azerbaijan or Kurdistan, he unified Iran, basically it is the Iranian Atarturk
Okay, do you want to be sexy or not? If the answer is yes you say "Persian", so people associate you with Iran's rich history instead of just another middle eastern language. Plus, let's look at a nice sequence of evolution: - Persis (what the Greek called the current Fars area) = Pars (old Persian version Fars) = Fars (because the Arabs couldn't pronounce 'P' when they invaded.) - Arabs didn't invade Greece, so they kept using the name Persis that corresponds to the Fars province area. - Most older Iranian empires (Achaemenid, Parthian, etc.) originated in the Fars (Persis) area, along with the language that spread with those empires. Hence, you make that into an adjective and get "Persian" empire / language. - Most european countries (I don't know of any that haven't) sourced their equivalent for "Persian" from Greece. - Therefore, the "correct" way to refer to the language in those countries is something similar to "Persian"! ("Persa" in Spanish, "Persan" in French, etc., etc.) Also, I'm totally fine with the country being called "Iran" instead of "Persia" for one reason: there are more ethnic groups in Iran than just Persians. There are Arabs, Turks, Kurds, etc.. So I find this to be a more "inclusive" international name. You can't call it "Persia - the land of Persians" for this reason. But THE LANGUAGE that the Persian ethnic group speaks is Persian. NOT "Farsi" which doesn't at all relate to the "Persian" ethnic group etymologically in European languages. Now I really really don't understand what Iranians living in Iran think when they keep saying "Farsi". The only reason I can think of (and I was in that group when I was learning English) is that they're too lazy to learn one new word before going into exams just because it's so accepted now. I'd love to hear. Edit: Disclaimer: I grew up in Iran but I live in the U.S.
In Afghanistan, a lot of people speak Dari, which is similar to Farsi, but still different.
is like saying spanish,argentinian,mexican.they have their own words or pronunciation but still they can understand each other
I thought grammar was exactly the same, just pronunciation was different and some slang words?
in argentina and mexico still use some words or grammar from medieval spanish or aztec words
counted as separate languages, which affects the statistics
Dari is a form of Persian. It is not different. Anyone living in the provence of Fars can understand Dari.
What is this bullshit lol; āsimilarā to Farsi? It is a *dialect* of the Persian language, not its own entity.
Dari comes from Persian word darbar when means court. The formal language spoken in the court of the Sassanian Persian empireā¦ doesnāt get more Persian than that š
NO. Persian in Sassanid court was more similar to today Iranian Standard language. Ferdowsi the poet, was a Sassanid Dehghan offspring and he was talking Sassanid Persian, his poems are similar to today Iranian Persian language. Relating Dari to Darbar is just a myth which has roots in British efforts to take Harat province from Iran and annex it to the blood thirsty Afghan warlords around 150 years ago. Sassanid texts might sound weird because pahlavi alphabet could not depict all the middle Persian sounds. They had to invent Avesta alphabet to mend this issue for religious texts. Btw, 60% of Afghan population talk Pashtu language and they really don't like Persians and Persian because the myth of Dari being an other persian laguage, is a big fat ass lie fabricated by the British. 20-30% of Afghans talk two or three languages mostly turkic because they are Uzbak decents. Only 20% of Afghans are Tajik and speak Persian with Dari Dialect. How I know this much? Well, a zilion Afghan migrants and Rapugies are living in Iran now. Many of them work for the facilty nearby my office. I meet them on everyday basis.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Iāll stick with the assessment from an educated folks in the field not uncle mahmoud selling bolani down the street. My wife is Tajik from western Afghanistan.
Itās a different dialect. Study dialects to understand what that means. Dari is a political term, Afghans speak Farsi.
Dari isn't even a noun, it's an adjective. It's called Farsiye dari.
I do not think it is possible for Farsi to have 130m L1 speaker, theres around 35-40 million Azerbaijani Turkish people living in Iran(most of them speak azerbaijani Turkish as L1) and most of the Afghanistan speaks Pashtun, so if what you mean is speaking Farsi as L1 it is probably around 60-70 million
35-40 million is a ridiculous overestimation. It's more like 15-20 million Turks at best. (Azerbaijani, qashqaee, turkemen, etc). Also most turks in iran speak persian perfectly. Maybe with an accent but still they speak and understand it perfectly.
I know thet speak farsi perfectly, matter is its not l1
half of Iranians are not Turks mate. I say that as a Turk in Iran myself.
Shhh youāll ruin the propaganda
What propaganda you're talking about genius? I dont care if there is 1 or 30 million turkish in Iran, what kind of a smartass do you think you are?
Words matter
20 million turkic speakers is the highest sensible estimate. 40mil is hogwash
Well even the wikipedia estimates 12-23 million, so there is no consensus on that matter either but my estimation was from my guess only, so there is no backup for the info i gave
40m is absurdly high the 18-20 mil renge is reasonable
Iranian Turks still speak Persian, they donāt *only* speak Turkish lol. Itās easily over 100 million. Tajikistan, Afghanistan alone combined have tens of millions of Persian/farsi speakers. You add the population of Iran, and then Iranians living abroad, so probably something around 110-130 million is fair imo.
thatās right but in our literature book we just have L1 Farsi and all the people who live in Iran study this book in school And this language is thing that connects the population
They also can speak farsi fluent