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Language code: fa

Technical information about ISO 639 language code fa

Documentation

The table below provides technical details for the Persian language, designated by the fa code from the ISO 639-1 standard.

Code

fa

Name

Official

Persian

Native

فارسی

Family
Indo-Iranian
Text direction

Right-to-Left

Language varieties
Western Persian (Iranian Persian)Dari Persian (Afghan Persian)Tajik Persian
Related languages
LuriTatKurdishPashto
Key facts
Uses a modified Arabic script with four additional lettersClassical Persian poetry is still generally intelligible to modern speakersPersian nouns have no grammatical genderThe basic word order is Subject-Object-VerbPersian has contributed thousands of loanwords to languages such as Urdu and Turkish
Sample phrase

سلام، حال شما چطور است؟

Character encodings

UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32

Supported in Localizely

Persian belongs to the Indo-European language family, more specifically to the Indo-Iranian subgroup. It is officially used in Iran, while variations of Persian, such as Dari and Tajik, are officially used in Afghanistan and Tajikistan, respectively. In Iran and Afghanistan, it is written using the Persian alphabet, whereas in Tajikistan, it is written in the Cyrillic alphabet. It is estimated that there are more than 70 million speakers worldwide.

Language presence globally

Speakers

Iran

65M

Afghanistan

11M

*The graph shows a rough estimate of Persian speakers in countries where it is an official or minority language.

Related locale codes

fa-AF – Persian (Afghanistan)

fa-IR – Persian (Iran)

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