section_path: Demographics/Language and ethnicity
section_name: Language and ethnicity
paragraph_text: Language and ethnicity
  
  With its cosmopolitan atmosphere, Tehran is home to diverse ethnic and linguistic groups from all over the country. The present-day dominant language is the Tehrani variety of the Persian language, and the majority of people identify themselves as Persians. Historically the native language of the Tehran–Ray region was not Persian, which is linguistically Southwest Iranian and originates in Fars, an extinct Northwestern Iranian language.
  
  Iranian Azeris are the second-largest ethnic group, comprising about 10-15% of the population. Ethnic Mazanderanis are the third-largest, comprising about 5% of the population. Tehran's other ethnic communities include Kurds, Armenians, Georgians, Bakhtyaris, Talysh, Baloch, Assyrians, Arabs, Jews, and Circassians. In the 2010 census by the Sociology Department of the University of Tehran, in many districts of Tehran across various socio-economic classes in proportion to population sizes of each district and socio-economic class, 63% of the people were born in Tehran, 98% knew Persian, 75% identified themselves as ethnic Persian, and 13% had some degree of proficiency in a European language.
  
  There was a drastic change in ethnic-social composition in the early 1980s. After the political, social, and economic consequences of the 1979 Revolution and the years that followed, many Iranian citizens, mostly Tehranis, left Iran. The majority of Iranian emigrations have left for the United States, Germany, Sweden, and Canada. With the start of the Iran–Iraq War, a second wave of inhabitants fled the city, especially during the Iraqi air offensives on Tehran. With most major powers backing Iraq at the time, economic isolation gave yet more reason for many inhabitants to leave Tehran and the country. Having left all they had and having struggled to adapt to a new country and build a life, most of them never came back when the war was over. During the war, Tehran received a great number of migrants from the west and the southwest of Iran bordering Iraq. The unstable situation and the war in neighbouring Afghanistan and Iraq prompted a rush of refugees into Iran, who arrived in millions. Tehran was a magnet for many seeking work, who helped Tehran to recover from war wounds, working for a far lower pay than local construction workers. Many of these refugees are being repatriated with the assistance of the UNHCR, but there are still sizable groups of Afghan and Iraqi refugees in Tehran who are reluctant to leave, being pessimistic about the situation in their own countries. Afghan refugees are mostly Dari -speaking Tajik and Hazara, speaking a variety of Persian, and Iraqi refugees are mainly Mesopotamian Arabic -speakers who are often of Iranian and Persian ethnic heritage.