Persian

Also known as: Persian, Farsi

Persian (فارسی Fārsi) is the national language of Iran (~70M L1 as Western Persian/Farsi), Afghanistan (~15M as Dari, written in Perso-Arabic), and Tajikistan (~9M as Tajik, written in Cyrillic post-Soviet), totaling ~110M speakers across the Persosphere — historically the lingua franca of much of the Islamic world from the Caucasus to South Asia. It is an Indo-European Iranian language with a continuous literary tradition spanning 2500+ years (Old Persian → Middle Persian/Pahlavi → Classical New Persian since c. 900 CE), virtually unchanged in syntax and vocabulary across that span. Famous poets: Rudaki (10th c., the "father of Persian poetry"), Ferdowsi (11th c., Shahnameh epic), Khayyam (11-12th c.), Rumi (13th c.), Saadi (13th c.), Hafez (14th c.). Typologically SOV with rich verbal morphology, no grammatical gender, and ezāfe construction (-e linker) for noun-modifier relations.