Persian is an Indo-European language. It is the official language in Iran, Republic of Tajikistan, and Afghanistan. For this study of Persian, we will be focussing on the Persian of Iran. Persian is also spoken in at least 23 other countries including: Bahrain, Qatar, People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, Pakistan, Oman, United Arab Emirates, as well as many areas in the United States and Canada.

There are about 35 million speakers of Persian worldwide. According to Census Canada, in 1996 there were 44 485 home language speakers of Persian in Canada, 9745 of which live in British Columbia.

There are three main dialect divisions of Persian: Farsi, Dari and Tajik, though Persian seems to be the universal term for the language. All of these languages are generally understandable to each other, though Tajik is written in the Cyrillic alphabet and the others are written using the Arabic alphabet. Farsi is the Persian of Iran, Dari is the Persian of Afghanistan, and Tajik is the Persian of Tajikistan. In all three areas, the language has been influenced by the environment; for example, Tajik Persian has strong Russian influences due to its proximity to Russia. The vocabulary of the Persian language has undergone many changes; many words have been borrowed from other languages including Arabic, Turkish, Mongolian, French and English.

In Afghanistan, Dari Persian, along with Pushto (both Indo-European languages), are official languages of the country; however, Dari Persian has always been used for business and government transactions. Persian is also the language taught in schools and used for the radio. Dari Persian has a special social status in the country; is the preferred language for communication among speakers and holds a higher status due to its historical significance. Dari Persian also has an extensive literature and many great works of poetry written in original Dari have been translated into other languages all over the world.

The Tajiks of Tajikistan is spoken by over ten million people and serves as the lingua franca for the peoples of the lowlands, the mountain Tajiks, and the Tajiks of the Badakhshan highlands. Tajik has been influenced by many other languages including Arabic, Russian, and Uzbeki. Tajik is also spoken in parts of Afghanistan; this form of the language is influenced by Pashtu and the languages of India.

There is some controversy in Iran over the use of the word "Farsi" or "Persian" in describing the language. The word "Farsi" is the Arabized form of the word "Parsi" which is the name of the language in Persian. Canadian teachers of ESL students are, from time to time, very likely to come in contact with students whose first language is Persian or Farsi. In almost all cases, those that indicate that they speak Farsi are from, directly or indirectly, Iran. Although the debate over the use of these two terms is highly interesting and often passionate, for the teacher the differences between them are not significant to the methods of instruction..