I hadn't heard of it before, does it have ties to arabic? either way thanks, learn something new every day.
It originated in Persia but is also widely spoken in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and parts of India.
Arabic is a Semitic language, like Hebrew, Aramaic, Geez (and Ethiopian dialect), etc. Farsi is an Indo-European language, as are several other Persian dialects, Kurdish, Armenian, Hindi, and nearly every European language (but not Basque, Hungarian, or Finnish). Farsi has adopted quite a few words from Arabic, but not as much as English borrowed from French or Latin, which were much more closely related languages anyway. One could argue that Farsi is closer to English than Arabic, but the case would be much stronger is Polish was chosen instead.
(Actually, I vaguely remember reading one study a while back showing that the Polish are quite closely related genetically to the Persians. It claimed that, while most of Europe adopted Proto-Indo-European language and culture, the Poles are the only Europeans of indisputably Aryan descent. Despite Nazi propaganda, Germanic and Nordic peoples are mostly non-Aryan. In case you didn't know, Iran means Aryan or Aryan-land, which has been used for the area for millennia but was made official when Iran was allied with Hitler. Iranians are frequently upset by the "eye-ran" pronunciation since it is s far from their Aryan roots.)
