Are Farsi and Arabic completely different langauges?

Answer 1

Yes and no. They are fundamentally as different as English and Hebrew, but with an interesting qualification. Most native Persian words were replaced by Arabic words, so more than 50% of the vocabulary is Arabic. This is like English having an enormous amount of French and Latin vocabulary, which is what makes it so easy to learn French or Spanish or Italian for us. In the same way Persian and Arabic are much easier to learn for each other's speakers (esp. if you know Arabic first!) than they should given that they are fundamentally completely different. BTW, Persian is related to English, and so its native, non-Arabic vocabulary is often easy for us. For ex., if I tell you that pedar is father, I bet you can guess what maadar and beraadar mean.

Answer 2

The short answer is that Farsi and Arabic are completely different languages. Farsi is from the Indo-European family and is a (very distant!) relative of English. Arabic is from the Semitic family and is a relative of Hebrew and Coptic.

However, Farsi has Arabic words in it because of religion (Arabic is the language of Islam), and because there are Arab speakers in close proximity to the areas where Farsi is spoken, so words have been exchanged between the languages, just as they have between, say, French and English, or Estonian and Russian.

Similarly, Farsi is written using Arabic script. However, the same is true of Urdu, also an Indo-European language, or of Malay (Jawi), which is neither Indo-European nor Semitic.

Answer 3

I grew up in Iran speaking Farsi and I don't understand a word of the Arabic language! I even lived in an Arabic country for two years and still failed to learn Arabic!
The only similarity between Farsi and Arabic is that we both write from right to left.
Arabic has 25 letters I think and Farsi has 32 letters.
Oh and you may find a few common words in rare cases, like the word SALAM which means hi in Farsi while Arabs use it to say goodbye!!!! Long story short, you can even offend an Iranian like me by asking such questions, I personally don’t know what Arab’s stand on this question is, but I am sure that they definitely want people to understand that Arabic and Farsi are two completely different languages.
There are fundamental differences between Arabs and Iranians.
Major differences which are not funny at all< like the Canada/U.S debates on their differences>.
P.S: if you have Iranian friends and you want to piss them off such questions will do it for ya! ;)

p.p.s: this link may also help: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061016040932AAVzhnI

Answer 4

Yes, they are. Farsi is a language spoken largely in Iran, whereas Arabic is a language used across the middle east often for religious purposes. In Iran students learn both languages and while there are some similarities (like in all latin based languages) it is nearly impossible for someone who speaks Arabic to understand someone speaking Farsi.

Answer 5

Yes although they do use the same alphabet. The farsi alphabet does have 4 more characters then the arabic alphabet though. But I am Persian so I speak farsi and I can read arabic writing but I can not understand it. (because it is the same alphabet, but different languages) :]

Answer 6

no.they're really 2 different language!
farsi or persian is a language that is spoken in IRAN or Persia
I'm an IRANIAN girl ,and my main language is Farsi
it has 32 letters but arabic has 29 letters ...
I can't understand arabic
the similarity of them is that we both write from right to left.
IRANIAN people are really different from arabs ,
IRAN has a great history in past,and has a great civilization.
I want to say you that just alittle study about IRAN and history of it.
when you read them u can understand that we were one of the big pole of world in the past.
do you know that the first human right was written by cyrus? (one of IRANIAN kings)
if you want I can tell you more about IRAN,because I want to introduce my country .
Viva IRAN

Answer 7

Farsi is the subfolder of arabic language and is very similar to arabic I want to you know that the people of iran not fars att all we have turkish kord baloch ...

Answer 8

Yes.

Answer 9

yes they are. the letters are alike.. but they're 2 different languages.

Answer 10

yup.. 2 different languages