Persian, which Iranians call Fârsi (فارسی), is spoken by more than 100 million people in Iran, Afghanistan (where it is called Dari) and Tajikistan (Tajik). It is the language you will hear in every taxi, bazaar and kitchen in Tehran, and even a few words will change how people respond to you.
The good news is that Persian is friendlier than it looks. Verbs follow regular patterns, there is no grammatical gender (the same word means he, she and it), and there are no articles to learn: ketâb means both “a book” and “the book”. Persian is also an Indo-European language, a distant cousin of English, so a few words will feel familiar: mâdar (mother), barâdar (brother), setâre (star).
The hard part at first is the script, which runs from right to left and joins letters together. This course takes it slowly: every word appears in Persian script, in an easy Latin spelling and in English, so you can start speaking straight away and learn to read as you go.
How this course works
There are 18 short lessons. Lessons 2 to 4 teach the alphabet; the rest build everyday Persian around real situations in Tehran: greetings, numbers and money, taxis, the bazaar, restaurants and the calendar. Alongside the lessons, our phrasebooks cover taarof, emergencies and everyday admin.
We teach the Persian you will actually hear on the street in Tehran. Where the spoken form differs from the written one, we show both and say which is which. Lesson 18 explains the differences in full.
The pronunciation key
Persian has six vowels and a handful of sounds that English lacks. This is the Latin spelling we use throughout:
| Letter | We write | Sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| آ / ا | â | long a, as in father: âb (water) |
| َ | a | short a, as in cat: bad (bad) |
| ِ | e | as in bed: esm (name) |
| ُ | o | short o, as in more said quickly: do (two) |
| ی | i | as in see: bist (twenty) |
| و | u | as in moon: dur (far) |
| خ | kh | like the ch in Scottish loch: khub (good) |
| غ / ق | gh | a gargled g at the back of the throat: ghazâ (food) |
| ژ | zh | as the s in pleasure: zhâket (jacket) |
| ع / ء | ‘ | a brief catch in the voice, as in uh-oh: sâ’at (hour) |
Two more tips: Persian has no silent letters, so pronounce everything you see, and stress usually falls on the last syllable of a word: ketâb, khiâbân, Tehrân.
Tehran tip: Tehranis are delighted when foreigners try a few words of Persian, and will often answer with a burst of encouragement (and sometimes a lesson of their own). Don’t worry about mistakes.
Practise
- Say these words aloud using the key: âb, khub, ghazâ, sâ’at, Tehrân.
- Which word means both “a book” and “the book”?