Persian Is the Key Language for Southern Central Asia Between India and Turkey
Persian is spoken in Iran and the neighbouring states. Fifteen million native speakers live in Afghanistan and in the Central Asian states of the former Soviet Union respectively. With almost 130 million speakers, Persian is one of the most important languages in the region that is otherwise characterised by linguistic diversity. As an Indo-Germanic language, there are many similarities to most of the European languages, which are only recognisable, though, upon closer examination.
For cultural reasons, a large part of modern Persian consists of Arabic words. There are Persian counterparts for many words to be sure, but they are used much less frequently.
Persian is denominated differently in the several countries. In Europe the term Iranian is sometimes used, which, however, can only be applied to a linguistical group that today is made up of 50 well-established languages. Traditionally, the language that is spoken in Iran is designated as Persian - named after the historical province of Pars [Fars] in southern Iran. The speakers themselves call the language Pārsī (پارسی) or Fārsī (فارسی), as the Arabic language does not recognise the P phoneme. In Afghanistan and India, Persian is called Darī (درى), which can be translated as the language of the royal court and originates from the time of Mogul dominance.
