Persian (Farsi) is an Indo-European language spoken in Iran (Persia), Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. It is derived from the language of the ancient Persian people. Persian and its varieties have official-language status in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. According to CIA World Factbook, there are approximately 64 million native speakers of Persian in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and about the same number of people in other parts of the world speak Persian. UNESCO was asked to select Persian as one of its languages in 2006. Persian has been a medium for literary and scientific contributions to the Islamic world as well as the Western. It has had an influence on certain neighbouring languages, particularly the Turkic languages of Central Asia, Caucasus, and Anatolia. It has had a lesser influence on Arabic and other languages of Mesopotamia. For five centuries prior to the British colonization, Persian was widely used as a second language in the Indian subcontinent; it took prominence as the language of culture and education in several Muslim courts in India and became the "official language" under the Mughal emperors. Only in 1843 did the subcontinent begin conducting business in English. Evidence of Persian's historical influence in the region can be seen in the extent of its influence on the languages of Hindustani (resulting in Urdu), Kashmiri, Punjabi, Sindhi, Gujarati, Bengali and even Telugu, as well as the popularity that Persian literature still enjoys in the region. Persian, the more widely used name of the language in English, is an Anglicized form derived from Latin *Persianus < Latin Persia < Greek ?????? Pérsis, a Hellenized form of Old Persian Parsa. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term Persian seems to have been first used in English in the mid-16th century. Native Persian speakers call it "F?rsi" (local name) or Parsi. Farsi is the arabicized form of Parsi, due to a lack of the /p/ phoneme in Standard Arabic. According to Pejman Akbarzadeh, "... In English, however, this language has always been known as "Persian" ('Persane' in French and 'Persisch' in German). But many Persians migrating to the West (particularly to the USA) after the 1979 revolution continued to use 'Farsi' to identify their language in English and the word became commonplace in English-speaking countries." "Farsi" is encountered frequently in the linguistic literature as a name for the language, used both by Iranian and by foreign authors, and is preferred by some.However, The Academy of Persian Language and Literature has declared in an official pronouncement that the name "Persian" is more appropriate, as it has the longer tradition in the western languages and better expresses the role of the language as a mark of cultural and national continuity.

The Klingon language (tlhIngan Hol in Klingon) is the constructed language spoken by Klingons in the fictional Star Trek universe. Deliberately designed by Marc Okrand to be "alien", it contains many peculiarities, such as Object Verb Subject (OVS) word order. The basic sound (along with a few words) was first devised by actor James Doohan ("Scotty") for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. That film marked the first time the language had been heard on screen; in all previous appearances, Klingons spoke in English. Klingon was subsequently developed by Okrand into a fully-fledged language. Klingon is sometimes referred to as Klingonese (most notably in the Star Trek: Klingon is one of the rare times when a trained linguist has been called upon to create a language for aliens. Add to this thirty years of the Star Trek phenomenon, a mythos that has permeated popular culture and spread around the globe. These factors begin to explain the popularity of the warriors' tongue. A small number of people, mostly dedicated Star Trek fans or language aficionados, can converse in Klingon. Though mentioned in the original Star Trek series, Klingon was first used on-screen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979); for Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), Okrand enlarged the lexicon and developed grammar around the original dozen words Doohan had created. It would be used intermittently in later movies featuring the original cast: in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), translation difficulties would serve as a plot device.