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( Middle Persian)
Middle Persian is the Middle Iranian language/ethnolect of Southwestern Iran that during Sassanid times (224-654 CE) became a prestige dialect and so came to be spoken in other regions as well. Middle Persian is classified as Western Iranian language. It descends from Old Persian and is the nominal ancestor of Modern Persian. The native name for Middle Persian (and perhaps for Old Persian also) was Parsik, "(language) of Pars", present-day Fars Province. The word is consequently (the origin of) the native name for the Modern Persian language. Middle Persian was most frequently written in the Pahlavi writing system, which was also the preferred writing system for other Middle Iranian languages. Other forms of written Middle Persian include Pazend, a system derived from Avestan that, unlike Pahlavi, indicated vowels and did not employ Aramaic logograms. Middle Persian should also not be confused with Manichean Middle Persian, which is a geographically and historically distinct development. The ISO 639 language code for Middle Persian is 'pal', which reflects the confusion resulting from the post-Sassanid-era use of 'Pahlavi' (a writing system) as the name for Middle Persian (a language). "Most texts, which include translated versions of the Zoroastrian canon, are 14th century transcriptions of texts from the 9th to the 11th century, when it had long ceased to be a spoken language." This late form "is thus not representative of the real state of Middle Persian."[1]
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