Persian is a member of the Western Iranian group of the Iranian languages, which make up a branch of the Indo-European languages in their Indo-Iranian subdivision. The Western Iranian languages themselves are divided

In general, the Iranian languages are known from three periods: namely Old, Middle, and New (Modern). These correspond to three historical eras of Iranian history; Old era being sometime around the Achaemenid Empire (i.e., 400–300 BC), Middle era

Iranian Persian has six vowels and twenty-three consonants; both Dari and Tajiki have eight vowels.
Vowels
Historically, Persian

Native word formation
Persian makes extensive use of word building and combining affixes, stems, nouns and adjectives.

The term Persian is an English derivation of Latin Persiānus, the adjectival form of Persia, itself deriving from Greek Persís (Περσίς), a Hellenized

There are three standard varieties of modern Persian:
• Iranian Persian (Persian, Western Persian, or Farsi) is spoken in Iran, and by minorities in Iraq and the Persian Gulf states.
• Eastern Persian (Dari Persian, Afghan Persian, or Dari) is

Morphology
Suffixes predominate Persian morphology, though there are a small number of prefixes. Verbs can express tense and aspect,