The official language of Iran is Persian, also known as Farsi. Persian is an Iranian language of the Indo-Iranian group, and it is the predominant language of literature, journalism, and the sciences in Iran. Roughly 53% of the population speaks Persian, and slightly more than half of them speak a dialect of Persian. Other languages and dialects spoken in Iran come from three language families: Indo-European, Altaic, and Afro-Asiatic. The second most spoken language in Iran is Azerbaijani and other Turkic dialects, which are spoken by 18% of the population. Kurdish is spoken by 10% of the population, while Luri, Gilaki and Mazandarani, Arabic, and Balochi are spoken by 6%, 7%, 2%, and 1% of the population, respectively. Although multilingualism is not encouraged, the use of minority languages is permitted in the course of teaching minority-language literature.