7. Indo-European languages : the most widely spoken family of languages in the world other languages Hellenic Italic Germanic Slavic Indo-Iranian Iranian Indian (Indo-Aryan) Split up around early 2nd millenium BC Dardic and Nuristani languages Persian ( around 70 million speakers) Kurdish (ca. 25 million speakers) Pashto (ca. 25 million speakers) Balochi (ca. 7 million speakers) Main distinction: Eastern group and Western group
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9. a glimpse of Persian language history Proto-Iranian language Appeared in the Iranian plateau ca. 1500 BC From which Persian descended… … and evolved through three stages of development Old Persian Middle Persian Modern Persian ca. 525 BC – 300 BC ca. 300 BC – 800 AD from 800 AD
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11. a glimpse of Persian language history Old Persian ca. 525 BC – 300 BC Originated in the Parsa ( Fars ) province First written evidence with the rise of Achaemenid empire Was spoken throughout the vaste Persian Empire and used as “lingua franca” for over 200 years Received influence from… Elamite, Babylonian, Aramaic, Greek… … and gave influence to Hebrew
19. Evolution of Persian language First 1500 of history: modification in the transition from Old Persian to Modern Persian GENDER Abolition of Abolition of CONJUGATIVE SUFFIXES PLURAL OF FOREIGN WORDS Simplification in the formation of KETAB (Arabic) K O T O B (Arabic) KETAB - HA (Persian)
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21. characteristics Persian is very powerful in wordbuilding and versatile in ways a word can be built from combining affixes, stems, nouns and adjectives Just by combining roots with affixes, Persian vocabulary could reach the number… … of 226 million words!
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25. Language of literature ( zaban-e adabi ) language of books, newspapers, news on TV… Colloquial language ( zaban-e khodemani ) language of everyday use
29. Ambiguity M R K k e rm "worm" k a r a m "generosity " k e r e m "cream" kr o m "chrome" k a rm "vine"