Persian, also known as Farsi and Parsi, is a Western Iranian language, belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. Persian has official status in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. In these places, Persian is commonly referred to as Farsi, Dari, and Tajiki, respectively. Farsi and Dari are both written with the Perso-Arabic alphabet. However, Tajiki is written with the Cyrillic.