Language Fact File – Farsi, Dari, Tajik

Language fact file: Farsi/Dari/Tajik

Spoken in: Iran (Farsi), Afghanistan (Dari), Tajikistan (Tajik)

Number of native speakers: 72 million

Learn some: A general greeting is the widely used ‘salam’, but if you want to expand and ask how someone is, it’s ‘halet chetore?’ (ha-let che-tor-eh)

Fast facts:

Farsi is written using the Arabic alphabet, whereas Tajik is written in the Cyrillic script, like Russian and Bulgarian.

Farsi contains loan words from Arabic, French, Russian and English, eg otobus is bus and komod is wardrobe, both from the French. 

Farsi, spoken in Iran, has a politeness system called ta’arot, which is a mutually understood pattern of behaviours, eg refusing an offer before you are able to accept it, or generously offering something that you do not expect the other person to accept (and equally, if you are on the receiving end of this generous offer, you are expected not to accept!).