Persian vs Turkish: Related or Not? Words, Grammar and History Compared

Persian and Turkish are not related languages. Persian (فارسی, fârsi) is Indo-European, a cousin of English, while Turkish belongs to the separate Turkic family. Yet after a thousand years of contact they share hundreds of words, such as Turkish pencere from Persian پنجره (panjere, window). Speakers of one do not understand the other.

That mix of “unrelated but full of shared words” is what confuses people. Below you will see exactly where the two languages differ (family, sounds, script, grammar), where they meet (loanwords in both directions, the Ottoman legacy, Azerbaijani in Iran), and what all of this means if you speak Turkish and want to learn Persian, or want to learn both. Persian comes in script with transliteration; Turkish is given in its own Latin spelling.

Persian vs Turkish at a glance

Two different language families

The quickest way to see that Persian and Turkish come from different families is to count to five and name your family. Persian lines up with English and other Indo-European languages; Turkish does not.

Persian دو (do) and “two”, مادر (mâdar) and “mother”, برادر (barâdar) and “brother” are distant cousins from the same ancestor. Listen The Turkish words come from a completely different source. In family terms, Persian is closer to English than it is to Turkish, even though Iran and Turkey are neighbors.

Words for basic things like numbers, body parts and close family are rarely borrowed, which is why linguists use them to group languages. Borrowed words pile up in other areas: trade, government, religion, culture and literature. That is exactly where Persian and Turkish overlap.

Sounds and script

Different alphabets today

Persian is written in a version of the Arabic script with four extra letters for its own sounds (پ چ ژ گ). Short vowels are normally left out, so a reader has to know the word. Turkish was also written in Arabic-based script during the Ottoman period, but in 1928 the Turkish Republic switched to a Latin alphabet that spells every vowel. So an Ottoman document and a Persian book look alike on the page, while a modern Turkish newspaper and a Persian one look nothing alike. If you are new to the script, start with our Persian alphabet guide.

Different sound systems

Turkish has front rounded vowels (ö, ü) and the undotted ı that Persian does not have. Persian has the throaty kh (خ) and gh (غ/ق) sounds, which standard Turkish replaced when it borrowed Persian words. The biggest difference is vowel harmony: in Turkish, a suffix changes its vowel to match the word it is attached to (evler “houses” but kitaplar “books”). Persian has nothing like this; the plural ها (-hâ) is the same on every word: خانه‌ها (khânehâ, houses), کتاب‌ها (ketâbhâ, books).

Decoding Persian words inside Turkish

When Persian words entered Turkish, they changed in regular ways. Once you know these patterns, you can often spot the Persian word behind a Turkish one.

Grammar: where Persian and Turkish differ

Grammar is where the family difference shows most. Here are the same ideas in both languages.

The Persian linker -e / -ye is called ezâfe, and it is the first thing Turkish speakers have to get used to, because the order is reversed from Turkish. See ezafe in Persian for the full rules. Listen

Surprising similarities

Not everything is different. Some features match closely, partly through centuries of contact and partly by coincidence. For a Turkish speaker, these make Persian feel friendlier than its family tree suggests.

• Verb at the end. Both are subject-object-verb languages: من کتاب را خواندم (man ketâb-râ khândam), Ben kitabı okudum, “I read the book.”
• A marker for definite objects. Persian adds را (râ) to a specific direct object; Turkish adds the accusative ending -ı/-i. Neither marks an indefinite object: یک کتاب خواندم (yek ketâb khândam), bir kitap okudum, “I read a book.”
• No word for “the”, no gender. Neither language has a definite article or masculine and feminine nouns. Persian “he” and “she” are one word, او (u), just as Turkish uses o.
• Singular after numbers. Both say “three book,” not “three books”: سه کتاب (se ketâb), üç kitap.
• Possessive endings. “My house” is خانه‌ام (khâne-am) in Persian and evim in Turkish: an ending on the noun in both.
• Verbs made with “do”. Both build countless verbs from a noun plus “do”: Persian قبول کردن (ghabul kardan) and Turkish kabul etmek, both “to accept”; تلفن کردن (telefon kardan) and telefon etmek, “to phone.”
• Subject pronouns are optional. The verb ending already says who: نمی‌دانم (nemidânam) and bilmiyorum both mean “I don’t know” without a separate “I”. Listen

Persian words in Turkish

Turkish took in a very large number of Persian words, mostly during the Seljuk and Ottoman centuries, when Persian was a prestige language of court, administration and poetry across Anatolia. Many are still everyday Turkish. A Persian learner who knows Turkish already owns these words; a Turkish speaker learning Persian gets them back, sometimes with a twist.

Listen to a few of them in Persian: پنجره Listen دوست Listen هفته Listen شهر Listen

Small grammar words and word parts

Persian lent Turkish more than nouns. Some of the most frequent Turkish linking words are Persian:

• ki (that, which) from Persian که (ke)
• eğer (if) from اگر (agar)
• hiç (none, ever) from هیچ (hich), and her (every) from هر (har)
• çünkü (because) from Persian چون (chon, because) plus که (ke)
• the ending -hane (house, place) from خانه (khâne): kütüphane (library), postane (post office)
• the country ending -istan from Persian ـستان (-stân): Hindistan (India), Bulgaristan (Bulgaria)

The Ottoman written language even used the Persian ezâfe, in phrases such as Bab-ı Ali (the Sublime Porte, the Ottoman government). Modern Turkish dropped most of these constructions.

False friends: same word, different meaning

Words drift. These pairs look shared but will trip up a Turkish speaker in Iran.

The classic mix-up: a Turkish speaker hears خسته نباشید (khaste nabâshid, “may you not be tired”) and thinks someone is wishing them good health. It is actually the everyday Persian thanks for someone’s work, close in spirit to Turkish kolay gelsin. Listen And Turkish hastane (hospital) is literally “sick-house” from Persian parts, yet in Iran a hospital is بیمارستان (bimârestân). Listen

Turkic words in Persian

Borrowing went both ways, though Persian took far fewer words than it gave. Turkic-speaking dynasties ruled Iran for long periods, and Turkic languages have been spoken inside Iran for centuries, so some very ordinary Persian words are Turkic in origin.

So when an Iranian says آقا (âghâ) and خانم (khânom) many times a day, they are using words of Turkic origin. Listen

Shared words from Arabic

A third layer makes the two languages look even closer: both borrowed thousands of Arabic words, and Turkish received many of them by way of Persian. کتاب (ketâb) and kitap (book), قلم (ghalam) and kalem (pen), ساعت (sâ’at) and saat (hour, clock), دنیا (donyâ) and dünya (world) all come from Arabic. Persian and Arabic are themselves unrelated; our comparison of Farsi vs Arabic explains that relationship.

Same idea, different words: everyday phrases

Even in greetings, where you might expect overlap, the two languages mostly go separate ways. A few phrases do mirror each other closely.

Listen to خوش آمدید and Listen to نوش جان. For more on these, see welcome in Persian and thank you in Persian.

A shared history: Seljuks, Ottomans and Rumi

The reason two unrelated languages share so much is a long political and cultural partnership. From the 11th century, the Seljuks, a Turkic dynasty, ruled over Iran and much of Anatolia and used Persian as a language of government and literature. The best-known result is Rumi: he lived most of his life in Konya, in today’s Turkey, under the Seljuks of Anatolia, and wrote his Masnavi and his lyric poems in Persian. His tomb in Konya is still visited by people from all over the world. You can read some of his lines in the original in real Rumi quotes in Persian.

The Ottoman elite later read Persian poetry as part of a good education, and Ottoman Turkish, written in Arabic-based script, absorbed Persian and Arabic vocabulary and phrases in large numbers. Influence ran the other way too: the Safavid dynasty, which made Iran a Shia state from 1501, was Turkic-speaking at court, and its founder, Shah Ismail I, wrote poetry in Turkic while Persian remained the language of administration.

The 20th century pulled the languages apart again. Along with the 1928 switch to the Latin alphabet, the Turkish language reform replaced many Persian and Arabic words with Turkic ones. A young Turk today knows fewer Persian words than a reader of Ottoman texts did a century ago, but the everyday core (dost, hafta, pencere, şehir) stayed.

Turkish in Iran: Azerbaijani and other Turkic languages

When people in Iran say they speak “Turkish” (ترکی, torki), they usually mean Azerbaijani, not the Turkish of Turkey. Azerbaijani is a Turkic language very close to Turkish, spoken by millions of Iranians in the northwest, in cities such as Tabriz, Ardabil, Urmia and Zanjan, and by many people in Tehran. It is the largest minority language in Iran. In Iran it is written in Perso-Arabic script; in the Republic of Azerbaijan it is written in Latin letters.

Persian speakers distinguish the two as ترکی آذربایجانی (torki-ye âzarbâyjâni, Azerbaijani) and ترکی استانبولی (torki-ye estânbuli, “Istanbul Turkish”) for the language of Turkey. Turkey itself is ترکیه (torkiye). Listen Other Turkic languages in Iran include Turkmen in the northeast and Qashqai in the south. Most Azerbaijani speakers in Iran are bilingual in Persian, and many of them follow Turkish from Turkey quite well. For the bigger picture of who speaks what, see where Persian is spoken and Farsi, Persian, Dari and Tajik.

Can Turkish speakers understand Persian?

No, not without study. A Turkish speaker hearing Persian will catch familiar words (دوست, شهر, هفته, کتاب) but not the sentences, because the grammar, the verbs, the pronouns and the most common words are different. Compare one simple sentence:

• Persian: خانه‌ی دوستم بزرگ است (khâne-ye dustam bozorg ast)
• Turkish: Dostumun evi büyük
• English: My friend’s house is big.

Only one word is shared, and even its ending is different. Listen Educated speakers who know Ottoman, classical poetry or religious vocabulary will recognize more, especially in formal writing.

Learning Persian and Turkish: which is easier?

For English speakers, neither is quick. The US Foreign Service Institute places both Persian and Turkish in the same difficulty group, longer than Spanish or French but shorter than Arabic, Chinese or Japanese. The difficulties are in different places:

• Persian is easier on grammar and harder on reading. Verb endings are few and regular, there are no cases and no vowel harmony, but you must learn a new script in which short vowels are not written.
• Turkish is easier on reading and harder on word building. You can read aloud from day one, but a single verb can carry tense, negation, ability, mood and person, and every suffix obeys vowel harmony.
• Learning both helps. Turkish gives you hundreds of words you will meet again in Persian, and Persian explains the origin and original meaning of many Turkish words. If your goal is Iran, start with Persian; if you live near Iran’s northwest or work with Azerbaijani speakers, Turkish or Azerbaijani becomes a strong second language.

If you choose Persian, start with the script and the most common words: the 101 most common Persian words include several you may already know from Turkish. Typing practice is easier with our Persian keyboard. For a structured path from the alphabet to real conversations, Learn Farsi in 100 Days takes you one short lesson a day.

Common questions

Are Persian and Turkish the same language?

No. Persian is an Indo-European language and Turkish is a Turkic language. They have different grammar, different basic vocabulary and, today, different alphabets. They share many words because of centuries of contact, mostly Persian words that entered Turkish.

Is Turkish closer to Persian or Arabic?

By origin, Turkish is related to neither. Its closest relatives are Azerbaijani and Turkmen. In vocabulary, Turkish borrowed heavily from both Persian and Arabic, and many of its Arabic words arrived by way of Persian. In grammar, Turkish has more in common with Persian (verb last, no gender, a marker for definite objects) than with Arabic.

Can Turkish people understand Persian?

Not in conversation. They recognize individual words such as دوست (dust) or شهر (shahr) but cannot follow sentences without studying Persian. Iranian Azerbaijanis, who usually speak Persian and a language close to Turkish, are the exception.

Is Persian easier than Turkish?

Persian grammar is simpler, with regular verbs, no cases and no vowel harmony, but its script takes time and short vowels are not written. Turkish is easy to read aloud from the start but builds long words from many suffixes. Most English speakers find Persian grammar gentler and Turkish reading easier.

Do people in Iran speak Turkish?

Persian is the official language of Iran, but millions of Iranians speak Azerbaijani, a Turkic language close to Turkish, especially in the northwest around Tabriz. Iranians usually call it ترکی (torki). Turkmen and Qashqai are also spoken. Almost everyone also speaks Persian.

Why does Turkish have so many Persian words?

For centuries Persian was the language of literature, poetry and administration at the courts of Turkic dynasties, from the Seljuks to the Ottomans. Educated Turks read Persian poetry, and Ottoman Turkish borrowed Persian words, suffixes and even the ezâfe construction. Many of those words, such as pencere, dost and hafta, are still everyday Turkish.

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