Persian (/ˈpɜːrʒən, -ʃən/), also known by its endonym Farsi[9][10] (فارسی fārsi [fɒːɾˈsiː] (About this soundlisten)), is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan (officially known as Dari since 1958),[11] and Tajikistan (officially known as Tajiki since the Soviet era),[12] Uzbekistan[13][14][15] and some other regions which historically were Persianate societies and considered part of Greater Iran. It is written right to left in the Persian alphabet, a modified variant of the Arabic script, which itself evolved from the Aramaic alphabet.