What is Farsi?
Persian (locally called Farsi) is a member of a group of several related languages that linguists classify as Indo-Iranian. It is the official language of the government and public instruction and the mother tongue of more than half of the population of Iran. It is used and understood by nearly all Iranians and millions of Persian-speakers in the neighboring countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Turkmenistan, and so on. The Modern form of Persian evolved directly from Middle Persian (900 AD onward) and has not changed much since that time. The grammar of Modern Persian is comparatively simple. A number of Arabic words were added to the vocabulary as a result of the conquest of Iran by the Muslim Arabs in the 7th century AD. Modern Persian, written from right to left, is the medium of an old and great literature, and is written in a modified version of the Arabic alphabet (it has four letters of its own in addition to those of Arabic).
