Persian (Farsi): linguistics

01Sounds

The language’s phonemes, from one published description.

02Pronunciation

Each letter with its usual sound.

Persian alphabet

Sound values are a teaching guide for the standard language, labelled to verify. Dialects differ. To verify

Sources Wikimedia Commons: pronunciation recordings, each under its own open licence. (2026) To verify

03Grammar at a glance

• Word order is usually subject, object, verb.
• Nouns have no grammatical gender.
• The ezafe vowel -e links a noun to the words that describe it, as in ketāb-e man, my book.
• A definite direct object takes rā after it.
• The verb agrees with the subject in person and number. Subject pronouns are often left out.
• The prefix mi- marks ongoing or habitual action. The prefix be- marks the subjunctive and the imperative.

To verify

Sources Windfuhr (ed.). The Iranian Languages. Routledge. (2009) To verify

04Core words compared

Ten everyday words across the languages of the region.

Persian, Kurdish, Zazaki and Balochi are Iranian languages, and many of their core words are related. Azerbaijani is Turkic and Armenian is its own branch of Indo-European, so their words differ. To verify

Sources Steingass. A Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary. Routledge and K. Paul. Digital edition: Digital Dictionaries of South Asia, University of Chicago. (1892) Verified; Chyet. Kurdish-English Dictionary. Yale University Press. (2003) To verify; Wahby and Edmonds. A Kurdish-English Dictionary. Clarendon Press. (1966) To verify; Paul. Zazaki: Grammatik und Versuch einer Dialektologie. Reichert. (1998) To verify; Jahani and Korn. Balochi. In Windfuhr (ed.), The Iranian Languages. (2009) To verify; Johanson and Csató (eds.). The Turkic Languages. Routledge. (1998) To verify; Dum-Tragut. Armenian: Modern Eastern Armenian. John Benjamins. (2009) To verify

05Sources

1. Moran and McCloy (eds.). PHOIBLE 2.0. Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. 2019

   Verified CC BY-SA 3.0 Phoneme inventories, each from the published source it names, read 2026-10-23.

2. Windfuhr (ed.). The Iranian Languages. Routledge. 2009

   To verify

3. Steingass. A Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary. Routledge and K. Paul. Digital edition: Digital Dictionaries of South Asia, University of Chicago. 1892

   Verified Public domain. The digital edition was reachable on 2026-10-23.

4. Chyet. Kurdish-English Dictionary. Yale University Press. 2003

   To verify

5. Wahby and Edmonds. A Kurdish-English Dictionary. Clarendon Press. 1966

   To verify

6. Paul. Zazaki: Grammatik und Versuch einer Dialektologie. Reichert. 1998

   To verify

7. Jahani and Korn. Balochi. In Windfuhr (ed.), The Iranian Languages. 2009

   To verify

8. Johanson and Csató (eds.). The Turkic Languages. Routledge. 1998

   To verify

9. Dum-Tragut. Armenian: Modern Eastern Armenian. John Benjamins. 2009

   To verify

06Research and sources

Recent and relevant work on this page’s subject, from approved open scholarly sources. Metadata and links only. Titles stay as published. Not yet reviewed.

1. PsychoPy in Persian linguistics

   Elmira Esmaeelpour, Negar Sayadi · 2025 · Zenodo

   ArticleDataCiteZenodoOpen accessCC-BY-4.0

2. Virtual Persian Language Teaching to Non-Persian Speakers: An Alternative or an Option?

   Reza Morad Sahraee, Shohrehalsadat Sajjadi, Shiva Majidi et al. · 2022 · ̒Ilm-i Zabān

   ArticleDOAJOpen access

3. The Oxford Handbook of Persian Linguistics

   2018 · Oxford University Press eBooks

   BookOpenAlexCrossref

4. Language Studies: Persian Linguistics and Lexicography

   Dr. Nusrat Rashid · 2025 · International Journal of Humanities & Social Science Insights & Transformations

   ArticleOpenAlexOpen access

5. English-Persian cross-language plagiarism detection: Multilingual deep learning approach.

   Ansar S, Zarinbal M, Mohebi A · 2026 · PLoS One

   ArticleEurope PMCOpen access

6. Preserving the Scientific Dignity of the Persian Language as the Language of People With Rich Culture and History

   Mohammad Bagher Saberizafarghandi · 2023 · Iranian Journal of Psychiatry and Clinical Psychology

   ArticleOpenAIREOpen access

7. PsychoPy in Persian linguistics (Session three)

   Elmira Esmaeelpour, Negar Sayadi · 2025 · Zenodo

   ArticleDataCiteZenodoOpen accessCC-BY-4.0

8. Roshan Institute Fellowships in Persian Language, Linguistics, and Culture

   Camille Rhoné · 2014 · Diwan

   ArticleDataCite

9. Evaluation of large Language model performance on Persian rheumatology board exams: accuracy and clinical reasoning of GPT-4o vs. GPT-5.1

   Farzad Rafiei, Saina Sadeghipour, Shahab Sheikhalishahi et al. · 2026 · Scientific Reports

   ArticleDOAJOpen access

10. PsychoPy in Persian linguistics (Session Two)

    Elmira Esmaeelpour, Negar Sayadi · 2025 · Zenodo

    OtherZenodoOpen accessCC-BY-4.0

11. A Hybrid Persian Sentiment Analysis Framework: Integrating Dependency Grammar Based Rules and Deep Neural Networks

    Kia Dashtipour, Mandar Gogate, Jingpeng Li et al. · 2019 · arXiv

    PreprintarXivOpen access

12. Benchmarking Large Language Models for Persian: A Preliminary Study Focusing on ChatGPT

    Amirhossein Abaskohi, Sara Baruni, Mostafa Masoudi et al. · 2024 · arXiv

    PreprintarXivOpen access

Sources, licences and fetch dates: arXiv (Metadata CC0 1.0; papers under their own licences), 2026-10-23; Crossref (Metadata facts, any use; abstracts may be publisher-owned and are never shown), 2026-10-23; DataCite (CC0 1.0 (DataCite metadata)), 2026-10-23; DOAJ (Metadata CC0 1.0 (DOAJ); articles under their own open licences), 2026-10-23; Europe PMC (Metadata reusable; full text under each article’s licence), 2026-10-23; OpenAIRE (CC BY 4.0 (OpenAIRE Graph)), 2026-10-23; OpenAlex (CC0-1.0 data; metered API (free key)), 2026-10-23; Zenodo (Metadata CC0 1.0; each record under its own licence), 2026-10-23.