tZtlDNcbeE8.srt

1
00:00:00,930 --> 00:00:01,500
Okay,
um,

2
00:00:01,500 --> 00:00:04,980
before we get started with this video,
I had one little announcement to make,

3
00:00:04,981 --> 00:00:06,920
but I forgot what it was.
Um.

4
00:00:07,440 --> 00:00:08,273
Oh yeah.

5
00:00:13,920 --> 00:00:15,780
As you can see,
we have reached 10,000

6
00:00:15,781 --> 00:00:19,450
subscribers on the length focus channel.
Thank you for helping me reach 10,000.

7
00:00:19,710 --> 00:00:20,543
Let's keep it going.
Let's hit fifty thousand one hundred 

8
00:00:22,380 --> 00:00:23,940
thousand.
Let's see how big this gets,

9
00:00:23,941 --> 00:00:27,750
but you guys are the original crew.
Thank you for your support from day one.

10
00:00:28,200 --> 00:00:29,033
So let's get into today's topic.
I'm going to talk about the Persian 

11
00:00:31,891 --> 00:00:34,010
language.
It's sometimes known as Farsi,

12
00:00:34,050 --> 00:00:34,883
but I'm going to call it Persian.
Persian is a language that is widely 

13
00:00:37,741 --> 00:00:40,560
spoken in parts of the Middle East and 
in Central Asia,

14
00:00:40,620 --> 00:00:41,453
and it has a long history stretching 
back thousands of years with a few 

15
00:00:44,191 --> 00:00:45,024
different stages along the way.
The Persian language originated in 

16
00:00:47,611 --> 00:00:49,740
southwestern Persia.
Wait,

17
00:00:49,741 --> 00:00:51,690
I don't see Persia on this map right 
here.

18
00:00:52,620 --> 00:00:53,310
Oh,
that's right.

19
00:00:53,310 --> 00:00:55,300
Today.
Persia is known as Iran.

20
00:00:55,770 --> 00:00:56,603
Persian is the one official language of 
Iran and it is the native language of 

21
00:00:59,761 --> 00:01:01,200
about half of Iranians.

22
00:01:01,470 --> 00:01:05,100
The statistics actually range from about
45 to 55 percent,

23
00:01:05,101 --> 00:01:09,210
but I'm going to say half and that makes
it 38 point 5 million people,

24
00:01:09,450 --> 00:01:10,283
but virtually all other Iranians can 
speak Persian as a second language as 

25
00:01:13,711 --> 00:01:14,544
well.
Persian is also an official language in 

26
00:01:16,391 --> 00:01:19,110
two other countries,
but you might not know that because they

27
00:01:19,111 --> 00:01:21,900
refer to the language by different names
in those places.

28
00:01:22,140 --> 00:01:22,973
In Afghanistan,
the language is referred to as dory for 

29
00:01:25,381 --> 00:01:27,840
political reasons,
but speakers of Dari,

30
00:01:27,841 --> 00:01:30,450
Persian themselves often called their 
language Farsi.

31
00:01:30,570 --> 00:01:34,020
It's actually really hard to get 
reliable statistics about Afghanistan,

32
00:01:34,050 --> 00:01:34,883
but most sources seem to say that it is 
spoken by 25 to 30 percent of the 

33
00:01:38,821 --> 00:01:39,654
population in Afghanistan,
but it is also widely used as a Lingua 

34
00:01:43,230 --> 00:01:45,510
Franca and pretty much everyone in the 
country can speak.

35
00:01:45,511 --> 00:01:46,344
Dari in Tajikistan.
Persian is referred to as [inaudible] 

36
00:01:49,050 --> 00:01:52,740
because that's what the Soviet Union 
conquers decided to call it.

37
00:01:53,040 --> 00:01:55,830
You know how foreign empires like to 
divide and conquer?

38
00:01:56,350 --> 00:01:56,670
No,
no.

39
00:01:56,670 --> 00:01:59,100
Don't be friends with that powerful 
country over there.

40
00:01:59,101 --> 00:01:59,340
No,
no,

41
00:01:59,340 --> 00:01:59,980
no.
You're.

42
00:01:59,980 --> 00:02:01,680
You're separate.
You're distinct from them,

43
00:02:01,890 --> 00:02:05,070
but touching Persian is indeed a variety
of Persian.

44
00:02:05,250 --> 00:02:06,083
It is spoken by 6 million people in 
Tajikistan and another one point 5 

45
00:02:09,390 --> 00:02:11,850
million people in the nearby Central 
Asian countries,

46
00:02:11,970 --> 00:02:12,803
especially in Uzbekistan.
Person has also spoken by about $5 

47
00:02:15,780 --> 00:02:19,140
million expatriates around the world,
especially in some Middle East countries

48
00:02:19,141 --> 00:02:20,670
like Iraq,
UAE,

49
00:02:20,671 --> 00:02:21,710
Bahrain,
uh,

50
00:02:21,750 --> 00:02:23,580
places like that,
as well as the USA.

51
00:02:23,700 --> 00:02:24,533
So let's recap in your round.
There are about 38 point 5 million 

52
00:02:26,970 --> 00:02:29,820
native speakers of Persian in 
Afghanistan and Pakistan.

53
00:02:29,821 --> 00:02:32,220
There are $11 million native speakers of
Dari,

54
00:02:32,221 --> 00:02:34,710
Persian in Tajikistan and surrounding 
areas.

55
00:02:34,740 --> 00:02:38,820
There are seven point 5 million native 
speakers of touchy Persian and there are

56
00:02:38,821 --> 00:02:39,654
about $5 million pat speaking Persian 
around the world that comes to a total 

57
00:02:42,871 --> 00:02:45,390
of $62 million native speakers.

58
00:02:45,450 --> 00:02:46,283
But if we include all the second 
language speakers of Persian who use it 

59
00:02:48,961 --> 00:02:49,794
as a Lingua Franca,
then the number rises to 110 million 

60
00:02:52,650 --> 00:02:55,860
speakers around the world are Persian,
dirty and tragic.

61
00:02:55,920 --> 00:02:58,230
All really the same language.
Yes,

62
00:02:58,231 --> 00:03:00,520
they are varieties of one single 
language.

63
00:03:00,521 --> 00:03:01,354
They are mutually intelligible,
especially among educated speakers and 

64
00:03:04,421 --> 00:03:06,850
the formal languages are very close to 
each other.

65
00:03:07,090 --> 00:03:09,370
There are some differences in the casual
language,

66
00:03:09,371 --> 00:03:12,760
especially in the accent and some of the
vocabulary that's used,

67
00:03:12,761 --> 00:03:14,590
some of the spelling,
things like that,

68
00:03:14,650 --> 00:03:18,130
but basically they are one language and 
they are mutually intelligible.

69
00:03:18,280 --> 00:03:19,113
One difference that I often come across 
as the lone words in the different 

70
00:03:21,581 --> 00:03:22,414
varieties,
so in Iran there are more French loan 

71
00:03:24,251 --> 00:03:25,084
words.
In Afghanistan there are more English 

72
00:03:26,351 --> 00:03:29,860
loan words end in Tajikistan.
There are more Russian loan words.

73
00:03:29,920 --> 00:03:30,753
Some people who are not so familiar with
the Persian language might assume that 

74
00:03:33,371 --> 00:03:36,610
it's related to the Arabic language 
because Iran is in the middle,

75
00:03:36,611 --> 00:03:37,444
east end is next to Iraq,
but actually Persian is in a totally 

76
00:03:40,331 --> 00:03:41,740
different language family.

77
00:03:41,740 --> 00:03:42,573
Then the Arabic language,
it is in the Indo European language 

78
00:03:45,071 --> 00:03:47,320
family.
That means that person shares historical

79
00:03:47,321 --> 00:03:49,720
origins with most of the languages in 
Europe,

80
00:03:49,750 --> 00:03:50,583
including English,
as well as the languages of northern 

81
00:03:52,421 --> 00:03:53,254
India,
and most speakers have Indo European 

82
00:03:54,761 --> 00:03:55,594
languages find Persian much easier to 
learn the Arabic because of the 

83
00:03:58,181 --> 00:04:01,990
grammatical similarity,
but it does look like Arabic because for

84
00:04:01,991 --> 00:04:05,170
historical reasons,
Persian is usually written in the Arabic

85
00:04:05,171 --> 00:04:08,440
script except in Tajikistan.
Let's look at the history.

86
00:04:08,570 --> 00:04:10,270
First,
there was old Persian,

87
00:04:10,300 --> 00:04:11,133
the oldest known records of old Persian 
or in inscriptions dating back to the 

88
00:04:14,261 --> 00:04:17,650
first Persian empire.
These writings are written in Babylonian

89
00:04:17,680 --> 00:04:20,470
cuneiform script,
which is one of the oldest writing forms

90
00:04:20,471 --> 00:04:21,304
in the world.
We have writings like this from various 

91
00:04:23,111 --> 00:04:25,450
places that were part of the first 
Persian empire,

92
00:04:25,451 --> 00:04:28,210
including Iran of course,
but also Romania,

93
00:04:28,270 --> 00:04:29,500
Armenia,
Iraq,

94
00:04:29,610 --> 00:04:30,700
Bahrain,
Turkey,

95
00:04:30,790 --> 00:04:31,600
and Egypt.

96
00:04:31,600 --> 00:04:32,433
Next,
there was middleperson from about 300 

97
00:04:34,211 --> 00:04:39,100
bce until about 800 ce old Persian 
developed into middle Persian,

98
00:04:39,130 --> 00:04:39,963
which is also known as [inaudible].
We can find middleperson mainly in 

99
00:04:42,911 --> 00:04:47,320
religious texts of the Zoroastrian 
religion from before the Islamic period.

100
00:04:47,440 --> 00:04:48,273
The language was referred to as parsing 
or poor sick during this time period 

101
00:04:51,311 --> 00:04:53,650
because it was the language of the 
parcel of people.

102
00:04:53,860 --> 00:04:54,693
The person language entered a mysterious
new stage with the Islamic conquest in 

103
00:04:58,151 --> 00:04:58,984
6:50,
one add the following 200 years are 

104
00:05:01,091 --> 00:05:01,924
referred to by Iranian scholars as two 
centuries of silence because there is 

105
00:05:06,011 --> 00:05:09,760
very little almost no literature 
available from that time period.

106
00:05:09,970 --> 00:05:10,803
We don't know exactly why,
but it's possible that it was forbidden 

107
00:05:13,841 --> 00:05:16,690
to write in the Persian language by the 
Arab rulers.

108
00:05:16,870 --> 00:05:20,740
These two centuries of silence or a kind
of transition period from middle Persian

109
00:05:20,741 --> 00:05:23,500
to modern Persian and person was 
affected by it.

110
00:05:23,520 --> 00:05:24,353
The Arabic language quite a lot during 
this time that brings us to modern 

111
00:05:27,161 --> 00:05:30,280
Persian or new Persian.
Around 800 ce.

112
00:05:30,520 --> 00:05:34,270
The person language was in danger of 
being lost and replaced by Arabic,

113
00:05:34,300 --> 00:05:35,133
but Persia was one of the few places 
where the Arabic language did not 

114
00:05:37,930 --> 00:05:39,940
replace the local language.
However,

115
00:05:40,000 --> 00:05:44,290
Arabic was used by the intellectuals and
by the elite and it definitely had a big

116
00:05:44,291 --> 00:05:47,740
impact on the vocabulary of the modern 
Persian that was emerging.

117
00:05:48,130 --> 00:05:51,100
After the end of Arab rule in Persia in 
the ninth century,

118
00:05:51,160 --> 00:05:51,993
the Persian language and culture was 
once again reinvigorated and a new 

119
00:05:54,791 --> 00:05:57,620
period of classic literature and poetry 
rose.

120
00:05:57,710 --> 00:06:00,020
One important piece of literature was 
Ferdowsi.

121
00:06:00,030 --> 00:06:04,610
He's showed me the book of Kings,
which is the longest work of epic poetry

122
00:06:04,611 --> 00:06:05,444
ever written.

123
00:06:08,890 --> 00:06:09,723
It was so influential on future 
literature and cultural identity that 

124
00:06:13,331 --> 00:06:17,200
the Persian language today remains 
relatively unchanged from that time.

125
00:06:17,410 --> 00:06:20,950
This one epic poem is a sort of pillar 
of the Persian language.

126
00:06:21,160 --> 00:06:21,993
It is said that Ferdowsi intentionally 
limited the number of Arabic loan words 

127
00:06:25,361 --> 00:06:26,194
used in his epic poem in order to help 
preserve the integrity of the Persian 

128
00:06:29,531 --> 00:06:30,610
language.
Of course,

129
00:06:30,611 --> 00:06:33,820
there's still are a significant number 
of Arabic words in Persian,

130
00:06:33,850 --> 00:06:37,870
but not as many as there could have been
during this Persian cultural resurgence.

131
00:06:37,960 --> 00:06:41,830
The Persian language and culture 
impacted a wide geographic area.

132
00:06:42,070 --> 00:06:46,120
Persian became the official language of 
the Seljuk Empire extending into present

133
00:06:46,121 --> 00:06:50,260
day Turkey and later was the first 
official language of the Ottoman Empire.

134
00:06:50,530 --> 00:06:53,410
Turkish later became the official 
language of the Ottoman Empire,

135
00:06:53,411 --> 00:06:57,340
but it's vocabulary had been very 
influenced by Arabic and Persian,

136
00:06:57,520 --> 00:06:58,353
Persian also spread to the Indian 
subcontinent where it was widely spoken 

137
00:07:01,511 --> 00:07:02,344
until the arrival of the British person 
has left its influence on a lot of 

138
00:07:05,651 --> 00:07:06,484
different languages,
including a heavy influence on the 

139
00:07:08,171 --> 00:07:12,490
vocabulary of Urdu and also some 
influence on the vocabulary of Turkish,

140
00:07:12,640 --> 00:07:13,473
but you can find words of Persian origin
in languages as far away as the Malay 

141
00:07:16,961 --> 00:07:17,794
language in Malaysia and of course there
are English words that are of Persian 

142
00:07:20,801 --> 00:07:21,250
origin.

143
00:07:21,250 --> 00:07:23,740
Some of them came directly into English 
from Persian,

144
00:07:23,741 --> 00:07:27,700
but most of them came in directly into 
English via different language.

145
00:07:27,910 --> 00:07:32,260
Bizarre Bronze Jekyll Kiosk,
lemon mogul,

146
00:07:32,500 --> 00:07:33,730
mummy,
Pajama,

147
00:07:33,910 --> 00:07:36,940
scarlet serendipity Shawl,
tulip,

148
00:07:37,090 --> 00:07:38,950
turban,
Typhoon Khaki,

149
00:07:38,980 --> 00:07:39,813
Caravan Paradise.
The Word Checkmate actually comes from 

150
00:07:43,040 --> 00:07:43,873
Sha,
which means the king is dead and maybe 

151
00:07:46,091 --> 00:07:50,110
tiger though that one is disputed.
Learning Persian is a great idea because

152
00:07:50,111 --> 00:07:50,944
you will be able to speak with 110 
million Persian speakers around the 

153
00:07:53,531 --> 00:07:54,364
world,
but it also gives you access to a rich 

154
00:07:56,201 --> 00:08:00,940
history of literature and insight into a
culture that has had a big impact on the

155
00:08:00,941 --> 00:08:01,774
world and if you ever decide to learn 
Arabic in the future after learning 

156
00:08:04,691 --> 00:08:05,524
Persian,
then you will already know a lot of 

157
00:08:06,791 --> 00:08:07,624
Arabic words from Persian.
Thank you for watching the length focus 

158
00:08:09,791 --> 00:08:11,830
channel.
I hope that was educational.

159
00:08:12,010 --> 00:08:15,130
If you have any comments,
write them down below and have a nice.