Similarities Between Russian and Persian

In this language challenge episode, two Russian speakers, Alex and Bogdan, compete against two Persian speakers, Sara and Amir. There are some intriguing similarities between the two languages that may surprise a lot of people. Although one is a Slavic language and the other is Iranian, due to the historical interactions between them, Russian and Persian have adopted several words from one another. Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Russian is the most widely spoken of all Slavic languages, with a very significant number of speakers in Latvia, Moldova, Ukraine, and to a lesser extent, the other post-Soviet states. Russian and Persian are both Indo-European languages, and Russian, being a Slavic language, is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages. The Persian language, which at times is referred to by its endonym Farsi, is a Western Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family.