Persian is a member of the Indo-European family of languages. It has many cognates with Germanic and Roman languages. Arabic, on the other hand, is a Semitic language with a radically different syntax and grammar. Due to the Arab conquest of Iran about a thousand years ago, a large number of Arabic words have entered the Persian language. In a normal Persian text today, more than half of the words may be of Arabic origin. But a somewhat similar situation exists for the English language, too. In English, which is a Germanic language, a large percentage of common words have Roman or Greek roots.