SIL in Eurasia

The distribution of the Iranian languages

The Iranian Language Family

There are an estimated 150–200 million native speakers of the languages in the Iranian language family. The Ethnologue estimates that there are 86 Iranian languages, the largest among them being Persian, Pashto, and the Kurdish dialect continuum.

Only four of the many modern Iranian languages are the official languages of the state in which they are spoken.

Persian (also known as Fārsī), the national language of Iran, which is spoken by about 30,000,000 people as a mother tongue.

Dari, a variety of Persian spoken by 12.5 million people is recognized, as a second language in Afghanistan.

Pashto, with 35,000,000 speakers, the majority of whom live in Pakistan is also an official language in Afghanistan.

Tajik, another West Iranian language, is spoken by more than 7,000,000 people widely spread throughout Tajikistan and the rest of Central Asia. Tajik is important as the lingua franca of the Pamirs mountain range, a region where a remarkable variety of Iranian languages and dialects are spoken. Some 500,000 people speak Ossetic. Most of the Ossetes live in North Ossetia in Russia and South Ossetia in Georgia. Ossetic is an East Iranian language not mutually intelligible with any other Iranian language.

Kurdish and Balochi (Baluchi), are spoken over a vast area, although they have not been officially accepted as the national language of an established state. Kurdish is spoken by more than 11,000,000 people living in Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Transcaucasia. More than 6,000,000 people speak Balochi as their chief language; they are spread widely over parts of eastern Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Turkmenistan.

(Map: Worldmaper (original author), LenguaMapa (new version 2019) / CC BY-SA)

 

For further reading