Arabic and Persian and English

Arabic, Persian, and English is an unusual and intellectually demanding combination that opens three of the world's great literary and cultural traditions simultaneously. Arabic carries the Quran, a vast classical literary heritage, and the contemporary voice of more than 300 million speakers across the Middle East and North Africa. Persian, one of the oldest continuously written languages, is the literary medium of Iran and Central Asia and underpins a poetic tradition of extraordinary richness, including the work of Rumi, Hafiz, and Omar Khayyam.

English literature adds a third strand, connecting you to a tradition that spans Anglo-Saxon origins through to contemporary global writing.

At St Andrews this five-year full-time programme allows you to develop genuine proficiency in Arabic alongside serious engagement with Persian and English, all three offering opportunities for comparative analysis that would be impossible to achieve with a single language. As St Andrews notes, Arabic is especially valuable in combination with other subjects because it opens possibilities for thinking across languages, literatures, cultures, histories, and political systems in ways that are otherwise closed. You will receive practical linguistic training in Arabic and Persian, developing your reading, writing, and comprehension skills in both while also engaging with the literary and intellectual traditions they carry.

The English element allows you to bring a further critical perspective to bear, drawing on a body of scholarship and theory that intersects with and sometimes illuminates the study of non-European traditions.

Graduates who develop competence across Arabic, Persian, and English are genuinely rare and exceptionally well placed in a range of demanding careers. Diplomacy, international affairs, intelligence analysis, area studies research, journalism, and academic scholarship in Middle Eastern and South Asian studies are natural destinations. Roles in international development, cultural organisations, and non-governmental organisations working across the regions where these languages are spoken are also open to graduates with this combination of skills.

Many go on to postgraduate study in Middle Eastern studies, comparative literature, linguistics, or related fields.