Farsi Language : One Of The Classical Languages
The External Affairs Minister recently announced that the Government of India has decided to include Farsi (Persian) as one of the classical languages in India under the New Education Policy.
- 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.
Classical Languages in India:
- Currently, six languages enjoy the ‘Classical’ status: Tamil (declared in 2004), Sanskrit (2005), Kannada (2008), Telugu (2008), Malayalam (2013), and Odia (2014).
