The Persian language, called Farsi, is part of the Indo-European language family and is the official language of the country, spoken by more than half of the population. It is used and understood by almost all Iranians, as well as by millions of inhabitants of neighboring countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Turkmenistan.
Historically, the Persian language has developed into three distinct phases: the ancient, the middle and the modern. Ancient Persian was used exclusively for proclamations by kings and was handed down through cuneiform inscriptions from the period of the great Achaemenid Empire. For many, the language used in the Avesta, or the sacred text of the Zoroastrians, is a form of ancient Persian, while for others it is an absolutely unique language.
The Persian of the intermediate period derives directly from the ancient one and is also known as pahlavi. It was spoken during the period of the Sassanid kingdom and had undergone significant simplifications compared to the ancient one. It had not just one alphabet, but two: the Aramaic one and the one called huzvaresh. Even the official language used by the Zoroastrian clergy had its own literature, made up of Manichaeist and Zoroastrian texts of remarkable artistic level.
From the middle period of the Persian to the modern language few things have changed, especially as regards the grammar that has remained fairly simple. The Iranians use a very large number of words from the Arabic language, entered in their vocabulary as a natural consequence of the conquest of Persia by the Arabs. The modern Persian language, in addition to being written from right to left, uses the same characters of the Arabic alphabet, with some slight modification, as there are four more letters in it.
The Persian language, for those who hear it for the first time, reserves a real surprise. Never ever would you expect such melody and sweetness in a language spoken in an area of the world where the Arabic language prevails, which, although certainly rich and beautiful, is certainly not musical. When two Iranians talk to each other, they always seem to be reciting a poem: this is the effect that it makes on all those who have the pleasure of listening to it for the first time. Obviously this is due to its Indo-European origin, which makes Farsi closely linked to Greek, Latin, Slavic languages, as well as English. These connections can also be seen in numerous words such as baradar, brother in English (brother), madar, mother or mother, and pedar, which obviously means father. It is a language that is relatively easy for all those who already speak English, especially if we consider the difficulties in which instead you run if you want to study any other language in the Middle East.
In the Persian Gulf area, then, the most spoken language is Arabic, as numerous Arab tribes have settled not only along the Gulf coast but also in the warm Khuzestan plain.
The most widely spoken foreign language in Iran is, without a doubt, English, and millions of Iranians study it at school. Unfortunately, as often happens when a language is studied in books and does not find real feedback, knowledge stops at certain standard phrases, which makes every conversation extremely poor and difficult to carry forward. In principle, however, all those who for business must relate to the tourist, such as hoteliers or airline employees, speak English well enough to come to grips with any problem.
Tourist guides know perfectly well at least one foreign language, although not necessarily English.