Persian is an Indo-European language spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and countries around the Persian Gulf. It belongs to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian group of the Indo-European language family. It evolved from the language spoken by the ancient Persians. Persian and its dialects have official language status in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. According to the CIA World Factbook, Persian is the native language of some 100 million people living in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Many people of India and Pakistan speak Persian. For centuries, Persian has been a prestigious language of culture in Central Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East, with significant influence over the languages of the neighbouring countries, particularly on the Turkic languages of Central Asia, Caucasia, and Anatolia. It is the second language of culture in the Islamic World. Many Islamic classics were written in Persian, which is poetic and melodic. It had been in widespread use as a second language in and around India for 500 years until British colonization. It was considered to be the language of culture in South Asia. It gained official language status during the Mongolian Empire. The historic influence of Persian in the region is evident from its impact on the Hindi, Kashmiri, Punjabi, Sindhi, Gujarati, Bengali, and Telugu languages, as well as the popularity of Iranian literature in the region. Urdu, in particular, is a combination of Persian with Arabic, Turkish, and the local languages of South Asia. It was widely used in the Muslim areas of the Indian Mongolian Empire. Persian has undergone a number of changes and can be categorized into:

1. Old Persian

2. Middle Persian

3. Classical Persian

4. Modern Persian