Dari

About Dari

Dari is the Persian spoken in Afghanistan and one of the country's two official languages, together with Pashto. About 9.6 million people speak it as a first language, and many more Afghans use it as a common language. Dari and the Persian of Iran are the same language with differences in accent and some vocabulary, and speakers understand each other easily. See also Persian.

Dari is written from right to left in the Persian form of the Arabic alphabet, and the guides add a spelling in Latin letters. Use shoma for a polite "you" with elders and strangers and tu with close friends and children.

LanguagePersian, Afghan variety
FamilyIndo-European, Iranian
Native speakersabout 9.6 million (2011)
Official inAfghanistan
ScriptPersian alphabet, right to left
Codeprs (ISO 639-3)

Speaker number: Ethnologue, 18th edition (2011), via Wikidata. Retrieved 26 September 2026.

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