Persian Language, also known as Farsi, 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 language of Iran (formerly Persia) and is widely spoken in Afghanistan, and in an archaic form in Tajikistan and the Pamir Mountain region.
People learn Persian today mainly because they wish to communicate with, travel to, work in, or understand the region and culture. Many also learn Persian for career related reasons.
Persian is spoken today primarily in Iran and Afghanistan, but was historically a more widely understood language in an area ranging from the Middle East to India. Significant populations of speakers in other Persian Gulf countries (Bahrain, Iraq, Oman, People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates), as well as large communities in the USA.
Total numbers of speakers is high: over 40 million Farsi speakers (about 50% of Iran's population); over 7 million Dari Persian speakers in Afghanistan (25% of the population); and about 2 million Dari Persian speakers in Pakistan.
Three phases may be distinguished in the development of Iranian languages: Old, Middle, and Modern. Old Iranian is represented by Avestan and Old Persian. Avestan, probably spoken in the northeast of ancient Persia, is the language of the Avesta, the sacred scriptures of Zoroastrianism. Except for this scriptural use, Avestan died out centuries before the advent of Islam. Old Persian is recorded in the southwest in cuneiform inscriptions of the Persian kings of the Achaemenid dynasty (circa 550-330 BC), notably Darius I and Xerxes I. Old Persian and Avestan have close affinity with Sanskrit, and like Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, are highly inflected languages.
During the lessons each student will experience four basic skills in learning Persian: Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing. They will learn how to write, read and speak Persian from the very beginning, based on their age and ability. Although the explanations and hints of the lessons are comprehensive enough to let you learn the words correctly, some sounds will be emphasized in appropriate places to help you correct your pronunciations through listening, if necessary.
Each language has its own structure, complexity, images, ambiguity, simile, metaphor, as well as many different figures of speech, and more importantly the local color that makes it difficult to render it completely into another language. That is to say, no translations can fully replace the original message, and the same is true for English to Persian or vice versa.
