Where Western Farsi is spoken
Western Farsi is spoken in 12 countries: Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and 8 more. The table gives the share of each country’s people who speak it, from Unicode CLDR, where CLDR has a figure.
| Country | Share of population | Estimated speakers |
|---|---|---|
| Iran | 75% | 66,290,175 |
| Afghanistan | 50% | 20,060,800 |
| Pakistan | 0.7% | 1,665,602 |
| Iraq | 0.9% | 366,126 |
| Qatar | 11% | 280,730 |
| Canada | 0.6% | 236,648 |
| United Arab Emirates | 1.9% | 190,612 |
| Tajikistan | 0.8% | 81,074 |
| Oman | 0.9% | 36,679 |
| Azerbaijan | Not given | Not given |
| Turkey | Not given | Not given |
| Turkmenistan | Not given | Not given |
Estimated speakers are the CLDR percentage applied to CLDR’s own population figure for the country, so they are rough. A country without a figure may still have speakers: it is listed because the language area, or Glottolog’s record, reaches it.
On the map, Western Farsi is drawn as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007. The area was digitised by the Glottography project (doi:10.5281/zenodo.18613195), and the atlas is cited on the data sources page. Language areas are generalisations, and cities and borderlands are multilingual, so the outline does not mean that everyone inside it speaks Western Farsi.
How many people speak Western Farsi?
Wikidata gives about 52.8 million first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2019). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.
Status: Not endangered. Glottolog lists it as not endangered: it is still being passed on to children.
Where Western Farsi sits in the language family tree
Glottolog classifies Western Farsi as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.
- Indo-European
- Classical Indo-European
- Indo-Iranian
- Iranian-Nuristani
- Iranian
- Southwestern Iranian
- Middle-Modern Persian
- Modern Southwestern Iranian
- Farsic-Caucasian Tat
- Farsic
- Western Farsi
More about Western Farsi
- Read about Western Farsi on Wikipedia
- Indo-European languages map
- Languages spoken in Iran
- All languages, A to Z
Codes: ISO 639-3 pes, Glottolog west2369. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.
Questions about Western Farsi
Where is Western Farsi spoken?
Western Farsi is spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and 8 more. Unicode CLDR puts it at 75% of the population of Iran, which is about 66,290,175 people. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.
How many people speak Western Farsi?
Wikidata gives about 52.8 million first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2019). Speaker numbers are approximate and differ between sources: counting who is a speaker, and whether to include second-language speakers, is not settled.
Which language family is Western Farsi in?
Glottolog places Western Farsi in the Indo-European family, in the branch Classical Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Iranian-Nuristani, Iranian, Southwestern Iranian, Middle-Modern Persian, Modern Southwestern Iranian, Farsic-Caucasian Tat and Farsic.