It belongs to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family, which we spoke about HERE.
More than 60 million people are native speakers of this language, and they are distributed across Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Oman, the Arab Emirates and India, as well as members of the Persian diaspora.
The ISO and the Academy of Persian Language and Literature, among other bodies, refer to this language as “Persian.” The name “Farsi” is used within the Persian and Arab languages.
Modern Persian has evolved into three branches:
1. Contemporary Persian in its many dialects, such as Judeo-Persian, which is spoken by the Jewish inhabitants of Iran.
2. Dari, also known as Eastern or Afghan Persian, which is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan. It is much more conservative than Contemporary Persian, and has two distinct dialects: Aimaq and Hazara.
3. Tajik, the official language of Tajikistan, is the most evolved variant. It is also spoken in the north of Afghanistan and in Uzbekistan, and the main dialect is Bukhari.
