Can Iranians understand Middle Persian, the Sassanid Era (3rd7th Century) Persian language?

آیا ایرانیان فارسی میانه یا پهلوی (زبان فارسی دوره ساسانیان) را متوجه میشوند؟

Middle Persian (Pahlavi) was the official language of the Sassanid Empire (ساسانیان), who referred to themselves as the "Empire of Iranians", locally called Iranshahr (ایرانشهر). For over 4 centuries they ruled over a vast territory which at its greatest extent encompassed most of the Middle East, Anatolia, and the Caucasus, and stretched into North Africa, Central Asia, and parts of presentday India and China.

Middle Persian is also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg () and is descended from Old Persian, the language of the Achaemenid Empire.

In this video, Pouya will read several sentences in Middle Persian, while Mahya and Naghmeh (Persian speakers from Iran) will see how well they can understand.

Mahya's YouTube channel: @mahya_polyglot
Mahya's Instagram:   / mahya_polyglot  
Naghmeh's Instagram:   / naghmehnameh  

If you speak a language that we have not featured before and would like to participate in a future video please follow and message us on Instagram:   / bahadoralast  

The Sassanid Empire collapsed during the early Muslim conquests in the 7th century, and with it Middle Persian evolved into modern Persian. This change was, however, very gradual and for a centuries after the fall of the Sassanids, Middle Persian was still in use. But by the 10th century, Middle Persian was only used by Zoroastrian priests for religious purposes and the language used by locals had experienced significant changes, such as the change of the initial "w" sounds to either "b" or "g", changes in the verbal system, Arabic loanwords replacing many Aramaic loanwords and native Persian terms, as well as the substitution of the Arabic script for Pahlavi Middle Persian script, a change which was actually initiated by a native Iranian dynasty, the Tahirids.

The Persian language (Farsi) is an ancient language which has had a huge amount of impact on other languages and cultures, mainly the Middle East, as well as Central and South Asia. Classified as one of the Western Iranian languages, Persian holds official status in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. Persian has strongly influenced many different languages, including numerous Turkic languages, as well as well as Armenian, Georgian, and many languages in the Indian subcontinent. Persian has a long history of literature and it was notable for being the first language in the Muslim world to break through Arabic's monopoly on writing. The Persian language has also influenced the Arabic language, although the impact of Arabic on Persian has been higher. But the influence of Persian in the Muslim world has been strong since the early days of Islam. It was even established as a court tradition instead of Arabic under many ruling Muslim dynasties.