Iran (Population: around 70 m)

1.Azeri (23.5 m)
2.Persian (22 m)
3.Kurdish (6.7 m)
4.Gilaki (3.2 m)
5.Mazani (3.2 m)
6.Luri (2.3 m)
7.Turkmen (2 m)
8.Qashqai (1.5 m)
9.Arabic (1.4 m)
10.Domari (1.3 m)
11.Laki (1 m)
12.Bakhtiari (1 m)
13.Baluchi (0.9 m)
14.Khorasani Turkish (0.5 m)
15.Dari (0.3 m)
16.Armenian (0.2 m)
17.Hazaragi (0.2 m)
18.Takestani (0.2 m)
19.Aimaq (0.2 m)
20.Pashto (0.1 m)

where do these figures come from?

Don't the Azeris, Mazanis, Bakhtiaris, etc. learn Persian as a second language? It's strange that there are more Azeri speakers in Iran, than Persian speakers.

http://www.ethnologue.com/country_index.asp?place=Asia - http://www.ethnologue.com/country_index.asp?place=Asia

this is best site about languages

1. Arabic
2. Kurdish
3. Turkmen
4. Armenian
5. Assyrian
6. Syriac
7. Aramaic

are you really from iraq? is it dangerous over there?

Calling the Turkish language of the Turkmens of Iraq as "Turkmen" doesn't make much sense at all. Calling them Turkmens was one of the ethnic digesting policies of Saddam, to disconnect them from their ethnic and historical bounds with Turkey.

Anyway, Turkmens speak a totally similar dialect to Azeri of Iran, closer to Anatolian Turkish than Turkmen of Central Asia.

USA- American English

NYC, Miami, LA- You name it!

Swedish

Official minority languages:

Sámi (North Sámi, Lule Sámi and South Sámi)

Finnish

Meänkieli/ Tornedalian finnish

Yiddish

Romani Chib

Ethnic squad in Lithuania:

Lithuanians - 83,45 proc.,

Polish - 6,74 proc.,

Russians - 6,31 proc.,

White Ruthenians(Belarusians, as many thinks) - 1,23 proc.,

others - 2,27 proc.

In Greece apart from the Greek which is spoken by 98% of the population (including immigrants), other main spoken languages are:

Albanian (Albanians)

Bulgarian (Bulgarians)

Pontic (greek dialect spoken by Pontian-Greeks refugees)

Vlach-Romani language (spoken along with greek by few vlachophone Greeks)

Slavic (spoken by Slavs and few-around 4,000-slavophone Greeks)

Turkish (spoken by the muslims of Thrace)

of course there are much more.

your statistics are wrong, these are the right ones:

Persian 51%, Azeri 24%, Gilaki and Mazandarani 8%, Kurd 7%, Arab 3%, Lur 2%, Baloch 2%, Turkmen 2%, other 1%

persians are roughly 35 million,azeri's are about 23 million.

prsn4life: How can there be more Gilaki and Mazardandi speakers than Kurdish?

7% of 70 million is like 4,9 million. I can assure you that there are atleast 6 million Kurds In Iran...

There are more than 2% Lor for sure. Lors are spread all over the place.

What about Laks?  They number at about 1,000,000 - they own Kermanshah now, they invaded from Ellam 20 years ago and pushed out the Persians and city Lors & Kurds who mostly relocated to Tehran.

Cent: Population of Kordestan province is 1.5 Million at most, maybe there are 300,000 Kurds (at most) in West Azarbaijan (total population 3m), in Kermanshah 65% of the 1.8 million population  are Kurds, so that is 1.2m and there are at most 100,000 (of total 550k) at most in Illam. (3.1m)

I don't know where your 6 million figure comes from, but it is probably from uneducated hyper nationalist sources that claim Lors and everyone else in Western Iran to be Kurds. But there are about 1.5m Kurds also in Eastern Iran.

This is a very good map from 2004.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/Iran_ethnoreligious_distribution_2004.jpg - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/Iran_ethn oreligious_distribution_2004.jpg

what are your sources? the figures i have posted are from the cia world factbook, and i have also seen these same figures used in many other sources.

originally posted by zagros (im just going to post the whole map so people can see):

"maybe there are 300,000 Kurds (at most) in West Azarbaijan (total population 3m)"

Are you kidding me?

Let see now the population in the major cities in West Azarbaijan:

Piranshahr 66,363, Urmia maybe 200 000 (And the sourounding villiages, even more), Naghadeh atleast 30 000, Salmas 50 000, Mahabad 168,328, Khoy 100 000, Oshnaviyeh 53,444, Bukan 225,391, Shahindej 20 000, Chaldoran 10 000, Takab 20 000, Sardasht 50,000. Maku 15,000

And also MANY small villages with kurdish populations.  

All these together: OVER 1 000 000 KURDS, not yours 300 000...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Azarbaijan - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Azarbaijan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Azarbaija -

By the way Zagros, I've never claimed Lurs to be Kurds...

Even with that figure it is only 3.8m - and I checke dthe figure for Khorassan from a Kurdish source and it claims 700,000 (Kermanjis deported from Karabakh region by Shah Abbas)- so at a pretty accurate estimate we have 4.5 million Kurds (3.8m in western regions) of various branches of whom almost half are Shia.  Where does the 6 million figure come from?

Zagros, to be honest: Nationalist sites.

Yes, they probably do, more Lak than Luri, because if you count Luri the figure would be 10 million at least.

Laks are wild. some clans made lots of money from contraband (smuggling) my cousin told me of one family who bought a mansion in Kermanshah, and used the swimming pool as a sheep pen, because that is what they thought it was for.

And one time there was a feud between two clans they started gun battles between streets and one clan had a refurbished Iraqi tank from the Iran/Iraq war, the police were too scared to do anything, the army had to be called in.

"Yes, they probably do, more Lak than Luri, because if you count Luri the figure would be 10 million at least.

Laks are wild. some clans made lots of money from contraband (smuggling) my cousin told me of one family who bought a mansion in Kermanshah, and used the swimming pool as a sheep pen, because that is what they thought it was for.

And one time there was a feud between two clans they started gun battles between streets and one clan had a refurbished Iraqi tank from the Iran/Iraq war, the police were too scared to do anything, the army had to be called in."

True.

Haha, nice. I know some Lak people, and they speak Kermanshahini kurdish. But what language do they regulary speak? Persian?

The numbers Cyrus has mixes the old and new numbers there were 22 million Persian speakers in Iran when population was 35 mil not now that the population is almost 70 mil. Number of Azeri speakers at that time was about 10 mil. The real numbers currently is not really known since most people moving to the bigger cities don't pass on their original language they spoke to their children and adopt Persian

The problem with Kurdish is that the official number is at 7% but many speak dialects that are closer to Persian than the language spoken by the Kurds in Turkey or Syria

Here is what Wikipedia has on this:

The number of Persian-speakers of Iran is estimated more than 42 millions, (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_people - Persian people ) ( http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=IR - Ethnologue using an obsolete and old information claims that in 1997 there were 22 million native speakers of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_language - Persian language spoken in Iran). Other major languages in Iran are http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azeri_language - Azeri (c. 16.8 million), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish_language - Kurdish (7.6 million) (Northern, Central, Southern and Laki), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilaki - Gilaki (3.265 million), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazandarani - Mazandarani (3.265 million), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luri - Luri (2.375 million), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkmen_language - Turkmen (2 million), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakhtiari - Bakhtiari (1 million).

"They have their own language, it is a mix of Luri and Bashuri (Kermanshahi). "

Nice that you use: bashuri, Zagros

prsn4life,

those maps dont tell us the whole truth. they only show where the OTHER language groups exist, without really telling us whether they are majority or w/e. The fact the matter is Persian is spoken all over Iran. and other languages are also spoken.

...plus how can CIA ever tell us what we have in our nation, there are no official statistics in Iran anyway, so those are all estimates. and we all know CIA and their propaganda. It says 54% speak persian in Iran.

well, In reality, I believe, there are 50-75 Persians (though it does not matter). and Persian is spoken by %100 of country.

also Arabic is also taught in school, so perhaps 50% know how to communicate in arabic fluently.

Demolinguistics of the province of Quebec, Canada:

Quebec is the only Canadian province where French is the only official language. In 2001 the population was:

• French speakers: 82.0%
• English speakers: 7.9%
• Others: 10.1% (Italian 5.2%, Spanish 2.3%, Arabic 1.9%, and others)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec

Greece

Hellenic languages:

Demotic Greek: The official language of Greece, the one which is teached in schools. The pronounciation of many words differs from some parts of Greece to others. Almost all inhabitants of Greece can speak this language.

Pontic Greek: Ionic origin dialect spoken by the Greek refugees from Pontus (Black sea coast). Has only a few speakers today.

Tsakonian Greek: Ancient Doric dialect, still spoken today with the same form. Spoken by only a few people in the region of Tsakonia.

Non or partly hellenic languages:

Arvanitic: The mother language of the Arvanites. Albanian based language with many Greek elements. Even if the people of Arvanitic descent are about a million in Greece, the language is spoken by not more than 140,000.

Yevanic: Language of the Greek Jews (Romaniotes) with Hebrew and Greek elements. Speakers are a very few today, as Zionism promoted Hebrew as the language of all Jews in the world.

Megleno-romanian: Language of the Meglenoromanian Vlachs. Elements from both Aromanian and Greek. A few speakers today in Macedonia.

Aromanian: Romance language, spoken by the Vlachs of Greece. The number of speakers is limited today.

Pomak: Language spoken in the Pomak villages in Northern Greece. Has Slavic, Greek and Turkish elements.

Greek-Romani: The language spoken by the gypsies of Greece. Includes some Greek elements.

Slavic Makedonski: Spoken by the Slavic minority of Northern Greece.

Turkish: Spoken by the Turkish minority of Thrace.

(I don't include the languages of the current economical immigrants to Greece who came the last years.)

Guys, don't start it again... Do you wanna have a fight every time here because what this forum gives to us is just nervosity.

Just because of Greek fear, All European Union became a toy in the hands of Greece and they did not recognize the country with its proper name. This is historically unfair.