Persian is one of those languages that are relatively difficult to begin but easier to master. Although it looks very exotic at first glance, its grammar and structure are familiar for the people speaking a European language.
How hard is it to learn? Persian is a relatively simple language to grasp grammatically. 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.
Persian (Farsi) is one of the oldest documented languages of the world still spoken today, with approximately 110 million speakers worldwide, mainly residing in Iran, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan. Persian is considered one of the easiest languages to learn due to being highly rule-governed.
Persian language is not as hard as you think
So, you may wonder how hard it is. From the point of view of someone who doesn't know the Persian script, it can be intimidating at first. Yet, Persian is actually not a hard language to learn, at least for people speaking an Indo-European language.
Combine all that with the serious calligraphic skills needed to master writing the right-to-left Perso-Arabic script and Persian easily drops in as one of the hardest languages to learn for English speakers.
Although the script looks complicated, after you get familiar with letters it is easy to read. It is actually easier to read Persian script than English language or French because each letter only represents one sound and the written script and what you read are almost identical letter by letter.
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.
Persian is a language with a rich history and is also an important language today, both politically and culturally. It's one of the most spoken languages in the world with over 77 million speakers. Learning it not only opens doors to new people and regions, but it can also make learning other languages easier.
Farsi and Dari are two dialects of the same language, mutually intelligible in written format, but very different when spoken. Make sure you know if your audience speaks Farsi, Dari, or Tajik. Pashto is a different language than Dari and Farsi.
Persian grammar is very easy. Russian grammar is extremely difficult. They both have different alphabets. They both have mostly unfamiliar vocabulary.
As for the question that which of them is older, then Persian takes the prize if we include the history of its earliest version. The Old Persian had been around since 550-330 BC until it transitioned into the Middle version of the tongue in 224 CE. Old Arabic, on the other hand, emerged in the 1st century CE.
Greek would be next in difficulty, and Persian and Hebrew, with quite different scripts that are written right to left, the most difficult. The advantage of the Persian script is that it is based on the Arabic one, so if you can read it, you will be able to read (albeit not understand) Arabic writing.
Persian speaking countries
The Persian language (native name: فارسی) has its roots in the Indo-European language family. As a percentage of the total population, the largest share of around 53 percent is in Iran. A total of about 59.8 million people worldwide speak Persian as their mother tongue.
Persian (also known as Farsi) is an Indo-European language closely tied to Latin, Greek and Germanic languages like English. Its name comes from Fars, which was an ancient name for Persia. It's a Semitic language, though, which means it has more in common with Arabic than any other major language group.
Persian vs Farsi: Is Farsi the same as Persian? The short answer is yes, Farsi and Persian are the same language. The confusion comes from the fact that 'Persian' is the term used by English speakers and 'Farsi' is the term used by Iranian speakers to refer to Persian, the official language of Iran.
Persian is a language with an extremely rich history, literature and cultural tradition. Besides its huge impact on modern literature, Persian has its own prominent place in poetry. Khayyam, Sa'di and Hafiz are only a few of the major figures of this big family.
Persian is one of the oldest Indo-European languages in the world. It's soft-sounding, romantic and full of passion. For Iranians, poetry plays a significant part in their culture, and they study it as part of the curriculum from a young age at school.
The native name of Middle Persian was Parsig or Parsik, after the name of the ethnic group of the southwest, that is, "of Pars", Old Persian Parsa, New Persian Fars. This is the origin of the name Farsi as it is today used to signify New Persian.
How long will it take for me to learn Farsi language? To get to the intermediate level, it usually requires 300 to 600 hours of active study. For fluency, about 1000 hours of study is necessary.
Since Persian has not changed significantly in over a millennium, the basic grammar for the classical and modern forms of the language is virtually the same and is relatively easy to learn.