Persian vocabulary

Persian language

Regional and social varieties: Modern Persian & Western variant Classical Persian & Eastern variant Central Asian variant (Tajik) Hazara dialects (Hazaragi) Judeo-Persian (Dzhidi) Judeo-Tajik (Bukhori) Grammar: Standard New Persian Central Asian Persian Language features: Vocabulary Nouns Verbs Phonology Writing systems: Perso-Arabic script Cyrillic alphabet Romanized Persian alphabet Geographic distribution: Persian by country

Persian belongs to the Indo-European language family, and many words in modern Persian usage ultimately originate from Proto-Indo-European. The language makes extensive use of word building techniques such as affixation and compounding to derive new words from roots. Persian has also had considerable contact with other languages, resulting in many borrowings.

Native word formation

Persian is very powerful in word building and versatile in ways a word can be built from combining affixes, stems, nouns and adjectives. Persian frequently uses derivational agglutination to form new words from nouns, adjectives, and verbal stems. New words are extensively formed by compounding – two existing words combining into a new one, as is common in German. Professor Mahmoud Hessaby demonstrated that Persian can derive more than 226 million words.

An example set of words derived from a present stem combined with some of available affixes:

Persian	Components	English	Word class
dān دان	dān دان	Present stem of dânestan (to know)	Verbal stem
dāneš دانش	dān + -eš دان + ش	knowledge	Noun
dānešmand دانشمند	dān + -eš + -mand دان + ش + مند	Scientist	Noun
dānešgâh دانشگاه	dān + -eš + -gâh دان + ش + گاه	university	Noun
dānešgâhi دانشگاهی	dān + -eš + -gāh + -i دان + ش + گاه + ی	pertaining to university; scholar; scholarly	Adjective
hamdānešgāhi هم‌دانشگاهی	ham- + dān + -eš + -gāh + -i هم + دان + ش + گاه + ی	university-mate	Noun
dāneškade دانشکده	dān + -eš + -kade دان + ش + کده	faculty	Noun
dānā دانا	dān + -ā دان + ا	wise, learned	Adjective
dānāyi دانایی	dān + -ā + -i دان + ا + ی	wisdom	Noun
nādān نادان	nā- + dān نا + دان	ignorant; foolish	Adjective
nādāni نادانی	nā- + dān + -i نا + دان + ی	ignorance; foolishness	Noun
dānande داننده	dān + -ande دان + نده	one who knows	Adjective
dānandegi دانندگی	dān + -ande + -i دان + نده + ی	knowing	Noun

An example set of words derived from a past stem combined with some of available affixes:

Persian	Components	English	Word class
did دید	did دید	Past stem of didan (to see)	Verbal stem
did دید	did دید	sight; vision	Noun
didan دیدن	did + -an دید + ن	to see	Infinitive
didani دیدنی	did + -an + -i دید + ن + ی	worth seeing	Adjective
didār دیدار	did + -ār دید + ار	visit; act of meeting	Noun
didāri دیداری	did + -ār + -i دید + ار + ی	visional, of the sense of sight	Adjective
dide دیده	did + -e دید + ه	seen; what seen	Past participle; Noun
nādide ندیده	nâ- + did + -e ن + دید + ه	what unseen	Noun
didgāh دیدگاه	did + -gâh دید + گاه	point of view	Noun
didebān دیدبان	dide + -bān دید + بان	watchman	Noun
didebāni دیدبانی	dide + -bān + -i دید + بان + ی	watchman-ship	Noun

External influences

There are many loanwords in the Persian language, mostly coming from Arabic, English, French, and the Turkic languages.

Persian has likewise influenced the vocabularies of other languages, especially Arabic, Indo-Iranian languages and Turkic languages. Many Persian words have also found their way into the English language.

Arabic influence

The Islamic conquest of Iran lasted for two centuries, from the 7th to the 9th CE. Arabic gradually was replaced with Pahlavi and as the Pahlavi books translated into Arabic by newly-converted Iranians, Arabic became the language of the intellectuals: Writers, poets and philosophers, as well as people in the administration chose to speak and write in Arabic.

During this period, many Arabic words were imported into the Persian language and many Persian words found their way into Arabic. Arabic has had an extensive influence on the Persian lexicon, but it has not really affected the structure of the language. Although a considerable portion of the lexicon is derived from Arabic roots, including some of the Arabic plural patterns, the morphological process used to obtain these lexical elements has not been imported into Persian and it is not productive in the language.

These Arabic words have been imported and lexicalized in Persian. So, for instance, the Arabic plural form for ketāb (كتاب) ["book"] is kutub (كتب) obtained by the root derivation system. In Persian, the plural for the lexical word ketâb obtained by just adding the Persian plural morpheme (ketāb+hā → ketābhā كتاب‌ها). Any new Persian words, however, can only be pluralized by the addition of the plural morpheme since the Arabic root system is not a productive process in Persian.

In addition, since the plurals formed by the Arabic morphological system constitute only a small portion of the Persian vocabulary (about 5% in the Shiraz corpus), it is not necessary to include them in the morphology; they are instead listed in the dictionary as irregular forms.

On the other hand, among educated Persians, there have been sporadic efforts as far back as the 10th century to diminish the use of Arabic loanwords in their language. Both Pahlavi Shahs supported such efforts in the 20th century. Since the Revolution, a contrary tendency to increase the use of Arabic words in both spoken and written Persian has emerged among government leaders.

Turkic influence

Less noticeable, but also considerable are the Turkic forms (including Mongolian borrowings) that have entered the Persian language. Throughout history, the Persian-speaking realm, including the Iranian plateau, was ruled by a succession of dynasties of Turkic origin, notably Ghaznavid, Seljuk, Timurid, Safavid, Qajar, which have patronized Persian culture and literature. Even the Mongol Il-Khanate brought more Turkic speakers, who constituted the backbone of the Mongol armies, to the Iranian plateau. With the exception of certain official designations within the government, trade and military, many of the Turkic borrowings in Persian have a more informal, homely flavour, and therefore, to many Persian native speakers these words do not feel like foreign: e.g. āqā 'mister', dowqolu 'twin', komak 'help', toman 'official currency of Iran' (but riāl < Portuguese), kākā 'brother', yābu 'pack nag', qeshlāq 'village; summer quarters', jelow 'front; bridle', qeychi 'scissors'.

French/European influence

Over the past couple of centuries, Persian has borrowed many loanwords from European languages (mainly French). A lot of these loanwords were originally French and use French pronunciation, also other common words mainly come from English, Italian and German as well. The table below shows some examples of common French/Persian words.

Persian	French	English
doosh	douche	shower
mersi	merci	thank you
gârson	garçon	waiter
mânto	manteau	women's coat
chufâj	chauffage	radiator
shomine	cheminée	fireplace
otobus	autobus	bus
kerâvât	cravate	tie
sâk	sac	bag
pâpiyon	papillon	bow
Alman	Allemagne	Germany
mâyo	maillot	swimming suit
jambon	jambon	ham

See also

• List of French loanwords in Persian‎
• Academy of Persian Language and Literature
• List of English words of Persian origin
• Category:Persian loanwords