Persian and Arabic — Vocabulary Overlap. Persian has a lot of Arabic words in it. It varies a lot by style and format, but it's anywhere up to 40%, in that in a full Persian dictionary, some 40% of all words are of Arabic origin. In everyday conversation, there's very little — maybe 10-20%.
Persian and Arabic belong to two completely different families, which means that they have separate origins. While Arabic is a Semitic language, Persian is an Indo-European language and shares common roots with Northern India as well as with most European languages such as German, English, and French.
Compared to Turkish, Persian has been more heavily influenced by Arabic, but like Turkish, the language structure and grammar hasn't been affected by Arabic, and the speakers of Persian cannot communicate with Arabic speakers using Persian language and vice versa.
Michael: Arabic, Negar: عربی (arabi), Michael: is another language that shares many, many similarities with Persian. In fact, much like Urdu, it's estimated that Arabic shares more than 70% of its language with Persian.
Across the globe, languages continue to mix and influence each other. According to Wikipedia, John R. Perry, in his article Lexical Areas and Semantic Fields of Arabic, estimates that about 24% of an everyday vocabulary of 20,000 words in current Persian are of Arabic origin.
Mersi (مرسی) or Merci
You can use the French loan word, Merci – pronounced “mer-see” with a rolled r. It is an informal term which is used commonly within Farsi-speaking communities. As a response, you may hear khahesh mikonam (خواهش میکنم) meaning “you're welcome”.
Reading Persian is actually easier than Arabic. Although the Persian and Arabic alphabets share many similar letters, not all the letters are pronounced exactly the same as in Arabic. For example ( ث , ص , س ) all sound different in Arabic. But in Persian they are all pronounced as the English “s” sound as in sand.
In academic circles, the language of Iran is called Modern Standard Persian or simply Persian. For the last few centuries, Persians have called their language “fārsi”. Despite this, when linguists and masters of Persian wrote Persian textbooks in English, no one called the language “fārsi” instead of Persian.
Iran and Turkey are not Arab countries and their primary languages are Farsi and Turkish respectively. Arab countries have a rich diversity of ethnic, linguistic, and religious communities. These include Kurds, Armenians, Berbers and others.
Because “Persian” relates to ethnicity while “Iranian” encompasses a nationality. You can be Iranian and not necessarily be Persian. You can be Iranian and be Mazandarani, Gilaki, Kurdish, Lur, Baloch, Azeri, Turkmen, Arab or another ethnicity. You can be Iranian and not speak Persian.
Despite some resistance from elements of the Zoroastrian clergy and other ancient religions, the vast majority of Iranians became and have remained Muslims. Today 98% of ethnic Iranians, including the population of Persia, are at least nominal Muslims.
Arabic and Persian are totally different languages, but both with a mostly common alphabet, overlapping vocabulary (nearly all going from Arabic to Persian), and with ties to Islam. The similarity is a bit like that between English and French.
Arabic is categorized as a Semitic language, meaning it is closely related to languages like Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, and Amharic. The Semitic languages are a branch of the larger Afro-Asiatic language family, meaning that it is more distantly related to Somali, Oromo, Tamazight, and Coptic/Ancient Egyptian.
The modern Farsi script, also known as Farsi-Arabic, still uses the Arabic alphabet, with four extra letters, for a total of 32 characters. Farsi words read from right to left, while the numbers, which are similar to Arabic numbers, read from left to right, so that Farsi is a bi-directional language.
Of the Semitic languages—from the Afro-Asiatic family—Arabic is the most widely spoken, but only a small percentage of the population speaks it as a native tongue. The main importance of the Arabic language in Iran is historical and religious.
In the Persian Gulf region, people still refer to Persians as Ajami, referring to Persian carpets as sajjad al Ajami (Ajami carpet), Persian cats as Ajami cats, and Persian kings as Ajami kings.
Who is an Arab? Arab is an ethno-linguistic category, identifying people who speak the Arabic language as their mother tongue (or, in the case of immigrants, for example, whose parents or grandparents spoke Arabic as their native language). Arabic is a Semitic language, closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic.
Turks don't speak Arabic.
Back in 1928, Ottoman Turkish, which used a lot of Arabic and Persian words, was replaced by the language spoken today. Ottoman script was abandoned for the Latin alphabet, and from 1932 the Turkish Language Association reintroduced many long forgotten Turkish words.
Iran consists of several ethnic groups, most of which speak Persian or another language closely related to Persian. Unlike most languages or Iran which are mutually intelligible to Persian, the Arabic, Persian and Turkish languages are not mutually intelligible.
In 1935 the Iranian government requested those countries which it had diplomatic relations with, to call Persia "Iran," which is the name of the country in Persian. The suggestion for the change is said to have come from the Iranian ambassador to Germany, who came under the influence of the Nazis.
Anyone who has ever had Persian friends or neighbours or family knows this: Persians are amongst the friendliest people in the world! It is more than just being polite and kind, complete strangers will welcome you into their home and go above and beyond any hospitality you have ever experienced in your life.
Nouns have no gender and there are no articles. Persian is a very poetic, soft and song-like language and has been described as one of the most beautiful languages of the world.
Of course, without doubt, Maghrebi Arabic is the hardest. Their dialect is totally different from MSA because their way of pronouncing words is totally different and a little difficult, and also because they are using a lot of French words in their conversation.
Studying Persian provides an entry into a rich and diverse culture. Major epic and Sufi poets—such as Ferdowsi, Rumi, and Hafez—have served as inspiration to writers and creators across the globe for centuries, and contemporary Persian-language literature continues to find international audiences.