Name used by its speakers (Endonym): Farsi ( فارسی )
Native speakers (estimated): 91 million
Total speakers, including second-language (estimated): 127 million
Where it’s spoken: Though Persian is associated most with Iran, the modern language has three standard national varieties which are mutually intelligible. It is the official and dominant language of Iran, where it is called Farsi; Persian dialects are also spoken in Afghanistan (as Dari, one of two official languages) and in Tajikistan (as Tajik, the national language, official alongside Russian). Persian is also spoken (but not official) in Uzbekistan, where a quarter of the population are ethnically Tajik. Outside these four countries, the largest Persian-speaking populations in the world are found in Pakistan (Dari speakers), Russia (Tajiks), and the United States.
Due to various waves of emigration, the largest following the Revolution of 1979, there are millions of people of Iranian heritage around the world, particularly North America, the UK, Western Europe, Australia, and the Persian Gulf states. The largest number of Iranians outside Iran now live in the United States, of which half are in California; though Persians/Iranians have a presence in many cities, the two community epicenters are Los Angeles and Toronto—which, naturally, have acquired the nicknames “Tehrangeles” and “Tehranto”. Religious and ethnic minorities fleeing persecution, including Jews, Baháʼís, Armenians, and Assyrians, have been over-represented among post-1979 emigrants. A significant number of Iranian Jews have also emigrated to Israel over the years.
Language family: Indo-European, Indo-Iranian branch. This subdivision of the Indo-European family is the largest by number of languages (over 300) and native speakers (1.7 billion). Persian is the 4th largest Indo-Iranian language by number of native speakers, after Hindi-Urdu, Bengali, and Punjabi.
Related languages: Besides Dari and Tajik, Tat is another dialect of Persian which, though spoken by few, is one of 14 official languages in the (small) Russian republic of Dagestan. Other languages that share a common descent from Proto-Iranian include Kurdish (spoken in Turkey, Iraq, and Iran); Balochi (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran); Pashto (Afghanistan, Pakistan); and Ossetian (Russia, Georgia). Persian is more distantly related to most of the languages of North India.
