The Persian Alphabet

The Persian alphabet has 32 letters, all derived from the Perso-Arabic script. The 32 letters include the 28 Arabic letters plus 4 letters unique to Persian: پ (pe, /p/), چ (che, /tʃ/), ژ (zhe, /ʒ/), and گ (gaf, /ɡ/). Short vowels are generally not written but can be indicated with optional diacritical marks called harakat.

Persian and Farsi refer to the same language: the official language of Iran. "Farsi" is the name used within Iran (from "Pars", the historical name for Fars Province). "Persian" is the traditional English name for the language. Both terms correctly describe the same 32-letter Perso-Arabic writing system, the same grammar, and the same ISO 639-3 code (fas). Closely related varieties include Dari (spoken in Afghanistan) and Tajik (spoken in Tajikistan, written in Cyrillic).

Yes. Like all Perso-Arabic scripts, Persian is written and read from right to left. Each letter connects to adjacent letters within a word in cursive style, and most letters change shape depending on their position — initial, medial, final, or isolated form. The only exception is numerals, which are written left to right even within otherwise RTL Persian text. The script falls within the Arabic Unicode Block (U+0600–U+06FF).

Persian is an abjad — a consonantal writing system where short vowels are not written in everyday text. The three short vowels (/a/, /e/, /o/) must be inferred from context. Long vowels are represented by three letters: ا for /ā/, ی for /i/, and و for /u/ or /o/. Optional diacritical marks (harakat) — fatha, kasra, and damma — can be added above or below consonants to indicate short vowels, and are used in educational, religious, and children's texts.

Persian has one of the richest literary traditions in the world. Major works include the Shahnameh ("Book of Kings") by Ferdowsi (10th–11th century CE), the mystical poetry of Rumi (the Masnavi), the ghazals of Hafez, the Golestan and Bustan of Saadi, and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Persian was also the literary and administrative language of the Mughal Empire in India. The language has been in continuous use as a literary medium for over 1,000 years.

Persian belongs to the Southwest Iranian branch of the Iranian language family, within the larger Indo-Iranian sub-family of Indo-European. Its closest relatives are Dari (the form of Persian spoken in Afghanistan) and Tajik (the form spoken in Tajikistan, now written in Cyrillic). All three are mutually intelligible varieties of Persian. Persian is descended from Middle Persian (Pahlavi), the language of the Sasanian Empire, which in turn descended from Old Persian, the language of the Achaemenid Empire and the Behistun Inscription.