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.
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
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.
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.
Persian is a very poetic, soft and song-like language and has been described as one of the most beautiful languages of the world.
Even with all its quirks, Persian is truthfully not as difficult as a first glance might suggest. Beyond the few slightly unusual concepts above, Persian grammar is actually quite simple. Perhaps even more so than some common European languages.
Is Farsi worth learning? Farsi is worth learning if you have friends or family who speak it or you want to travel to a Farsi-speaking region. The language also has a rich history and culture, and it can be a gateway to learning other languages, like Arabic.
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.
Farsi is one of the oldest languages spoken on earth today, but that doesn't mean people can't understand it. In fact, Farsi speakers today are able to read and understand the Persian language of 1700 years ago with more ease than an English speaker might have reading an English text of even 500 years ago.
Learning the Arabic script is definitely one of the hardest aspects of learning Persian. Arabic script is always cursive, it means letters connect to the other letters before and after them. This feature makes recognizing letters more difficult. Verbs are conjugated in Persian.
I would say Persian is the easier language for an English-speaker. The main difficulty for an English speaker wishing to learn Modern Persian is that it is written in an adapted form of Arabic script.
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.
Persian grammar is very easy. Russian grammar is extremely difficult. They both have different alphabets. They both have mostly unfamiliar vocabulary.
A previous version of this story incorrectly referred to habibi as a Farsi word. The word is in fact Arabic. Jamalifard says it is commonly used in Iran.
The first legislation which granted the Persian language its status was initiated by Qajar dynasty in 1906, as part of an electoral law that positioned it as the official language of the state of Iran, its government, its political institutions and its legal system.
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.
Is Farsi the sweetest language? Bengali has been voted the sweetest language in the world, according to a UNESCO survey.
Persian - or Farsi - is spoken in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Afghanistan (Dari) and Tajikistan (Tajiki). Today, more than 120 million people speak Persian as their first or second language. By the number of its speakers and its influence, it is the most widespread language in the Middle East along with Arabic.
Farsi is the official language of Iran. It is also spoken by large sections of the population in neighboring countries (chiefly Afghanistan, Bahrain, Iraq, Oman, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates). Tajik is closely related to Dari and Farsi.
Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.