I don't think that you can talk in Persian with less than 300 words. Just maybe some basic level. Maybe you can speak but you will not completely understand. The source of article you read is ambiguous, too. Farsi language contain of so many other language words including :Arabic, English, Turkish, French and so on. However after all is said and done it is a very sweet and powerful language, yet.

I'm just learning Persian, so I'm not sure, but I wouldn't say that Farsi has fewer words, they're just different. For example, verbs are often compound, so maybe whoever wrote that article was considering anything that ended in کردن as the same thing. I'm not sure. But it would also be helpful if you posted what types of interactions you were concerned about? For example, a conversation about school would be entirely different than one about a movie you saw last week.

Hi dear friend, first of all i should said i cannot understand what do u mean by LESS WORDS, it is somehow correct we have a lot of words in Persian but actually it is not more than words of English language. yes we need less than 300 words usually for daily use. we use some expression usually like: salam=hello, khoobi or hale shoma khoob ast=How r u? sobh be kheyr=good morning,khoda hafez(God save u)=good bye i hope i could answer your question Have a nice day

i don't understand