What is Farsi?

About Farsi

• Farsi, also known as Persian Language, is the most widely spoken member of the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, a subfamily of the Indo-European languages. 
• It is the official language of Iran, and two varieties of Persian known as Dari and Tajik are official languages in Afghanistan and Tajikistan, respectively.
• Significant populations of Farsi speakers can be found in other Persian Gulf countries (Bahrain, Iraq, Oman, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates), as well as large communities in the US.
• It has about 62 million native speakers, ranking it among the world’s 20 most widely spoken first languages.
• Farsi in Iran is written in a variety of the Arabic script called Perso-Arabic, which has some innovations to account for Persian phonological differences. This script came into use in Persia after the Islamic conquest in the seventh century.
• Its relatives are the languages of northern India and, more distantly, the major European languages including English.

Key Facts about Classical Languages in India:

• Criteria evolved by Government of India to determine declaration of a language as a Classical language is as under: –
• High antiquity of its early texts/recorded history over a period of 1500-2000 years;
• A body of ancient literature/texts, which is considered a valuable heritage by generations of speakers;
• The literary tradition be original and not borrowed from another speech community;
• The classical language and literature being distinct from modern, there may also be a discontinuity between the classical language and its later forms or its offshoots.
• Currently, six languages enjoy the ‘Classical’ status: Tamil (declared in 2004), Sanskrit (2005), Kannada (2008), Telugu (2008), Malayalam (2013), and Odia (2014).
• The benefits it provides once a language is notified as a Classical language:
  • Two major annual international awards for scholars of eminence in classical Indian languages.
  • A Centre of Excellence for studies in Classical Languages is set up.
  • The University Grants Commission is requested to create, to start with at least in the Central Universities, a certain number of Professional Chairs for the Classical Languages so declared.”

Q1) What are Indo-European languages?

Indo-European is a family of languages (including most of the languages spoken in Europe, India, and Iran) descended from a common tongue spoken in the third millennium B.C. by agricultural people originating in southeastern Europe. The family of languages is the second-oldest in the world, only behind the Afroasiatic family (which includes the languages of ancient Egypt and early Semitic languages). In terms of written evidence, the earliest Indo-European languages that researchers have found include the Hittite, Luwian, and Mycenaean Greek languages.

Source: Farsi to be one of India’s nine classical languages: Jaishankar

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