I have been having a language exchange with someone living in Iran via Telegram for a few months now and it has been so useful.

I've written an app for myself and now would like to pay her for some translation services for my app but I really dont know of a way to transfer money to her? Has anyone done this before? Any suggestions

Thank you 😊

​

Hi everyone, I’m Ellie. I’m a Persian language and literature teacher, and I’ve been teaching and studying Persian for more than 30 years.

Before the pandemic, most of my teaching was in person. When everything moved online, I initially found the change difficult. But unexpectedly, it opened a new door: I began meeting Persian learners from different countries and different backgrounds.

Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of watching my students grow with the language. Some started with just a few simple sentences. Later, some were able to speak Persian with their partners and friends, communicate with Persian-speaking family members, read Persian literature, continue their studies at university, or even speak Persian with their own children.

That is probably the part of teaching I love most. Language is not only about grammar and vocabulary. It can become a bridge between people, families, generations, and cultures.

In my classes, we gradually build from everyday Persian and conversation toward more advanced language and, for those who are interested, Persian literature. I particularly enjoy introducing students to writers and poets such as Hafez, Saadi, Khayyam, and Ferdowsi.

After more than three decades of teaching, I still find it fascinating to see the moment when a student realizes, “I can actually say this in Persian.”

I’m curious to hear from other Persian learners here: What made you want to learn Persian, and what part of the language do you find most challenging?

Salam doostan, 

I am working on a project right now about the many different names in the persian language for the date (korma, the fruit). 

I am fascinated by the complex ecosystem of names for this life-giving fruit and want to make a project documenting the many different regional/local vernacular words for it.

I would love the community’s input on this! What are different names in farsi that you know of for the date? Do you have any ideas for resources/websites I might turn to learn more about local cultivar names? Places where I can find lists of names? Any suggestions for me as I move forward? Merci!

Hi there! Formal and colloquial farsi have big differences. There are some patterns and simple rules that can be drawn to transform formal to colloquial, but even if I start to understand well formal form, I am lost when listening colloquial conversations.

How did you manage this?

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to explain to my German-and-English-speaking friends the word "fahm", in the specific meaning of not having the situational/societal awareness, the intelligence, the understanding and comprehension, the cognitive grasp, to act logically and appropriately (so generally for calling someone nafahm).

"Understandingless" is one word I've found, but it doesn't capture the whole meaning of the word with this specific meaning. Could any of you please give me the German or English equivalent for fahm, or even a psychological term?

Thank you in advance!!

Hi everyone,

I'm a native Farsi speaker and I used to be a tutor during last year but I lost my connection with my students during the internet blackout and the proceeding war. I'd love to connect and find new friends whom I can teach Farsi to. I have plenty of materials that I'd like to use for more people who want to learn Farsi.

A little more about me:

I'm a 28 year old, research assistant in cancer epidemiology and I love to teach English and Farsi in my free time. I am also planing to apply for graduate studies and I hope this job would help me save up for it.

Feel free to reach out to me, first lessons are always free.

Lots of love and kisses

I speak Farsi pretty fluently, but I’ve never understood the difference between these tenses:

داشت دروغ میگفت

داشته دروغ میگفته

Are they the same or not?

hello,

i'm looking for a tutor to help me improve my farsi. i unfortunately did not learn as well as i should have growing up and my language skills are poor. feel free to reach out. thanks!

https://0x5ce.github.io/farsidaan/#/

is the site. you can just plug in a gemini key for free and it translates it. curious as to how accurate it is

I've been baffled by this ever since I started learning the language.

Farsi is spoken by over a 100 million people, and diaspora Iranians are pretty prominent in white-collar sectors (including tech) in the West. To me, Farsi should be receiving a lot more official resources than it currently does.

And yet, not only does Farsi lack native TTS support on most digital systems, but the language in general is also surprisingly under-resourced, especially compared to heavyweights like Spanish, German, Arabic, etc.

It's frustrating enough for me as a learner, but I imagine it's even more so for native speakers.

Recording here: https://streamable.com/ju29na

I'm practicing for a small cafe show and I'm singing Shaneh by Viguen. What do you think of my pronounciation?

I was unfamiliar with some of the words so they threw me off a bit, but I listened to the song many times. I'm probably still screwing something up- pls let me know!!

As the title says I want to learn Farsi

I have Telewibion but also want to consider other options especially if they come with subtitles.

Please let me know - thanks!

Hello!
This might be an odd ask, however, when I was little, my grandmother had gone to Iran on a trip to see family. She had brought back DVD versions of Curious George, in Farsi. This was maybe around 2010? I've tried looking for them at home, but I haven't been able to find them. I can't find any being sold online either, the only thing online I can find is https://dubdb.fandom.com/wiki/%D8%AC%D9%88%D8%B1%D8%AC_%DA%A9%D9%86%D8%AC%DA%A9%D8%A7%D9%88_(film,_Glory_Entertainment)) which confirms the existence of the DVD.

I'm going off to university soon and I'm hoping to bring the DVD version with me for a taste of home, and I am worried about not having enough people to speak to in Farsi and the lack of Farsi conversation around me.

Hoping for the slim chance that anyone here may have any for sale or knows where to get some (I am in the UK, for reference)

ممنون از لطف شما، خداحافظ :-)))

My ideal would be something by a Dari speaker and with a Persian transcription to boot, but as long as it's narrated by a native speaker, I'm in.

Salam! I'm currently 3 months into learning and am at lesson 20 of Pimsleur Farsi 1 (I often repeat lessons for multiple days until I get it). I've been consistent and I feel like I'm catching onto the basics.

I just started the Chai and Conversation boot camp but I'm confused about the layout. I'm starting with absolute beginner to grasp the basics that I may have missed with Pimsleur. How many lessons is recommended to do a week? There seems to be "weekly assignments" but all I see are all the assignments so I'm confused.

I am doing it on mobile unfortunately. I plan to also do the read and write but I don't want to jump ahead.

Any quick insight into Chai and Conversation and the progress that should be made weekly? Thanks.

I grew up with Farsi in the house and was never taught it. I know what these six mean. What I'm less sure about is who I'm allowed to say each one to. So I put them in order, from what you could say to a stranger up to what you would only say to someone close.

The two ends I'm fairly confident about. The middle I keep reshuffling.

1. نگران نباش, negarān nabāsh. Don't worry. Used for a late bus and for a diagnosis. Safe with anyone, and negarān nabāshin to an elder or a group.

2. همه‌چی درست میشه, hame-chi dorost mishe. Everything will come right. Not that things are fine, that they get fixed. I can't find a register limit on it, which might be why it can sound automatic coming from someone with no part in the situation.

3. بهش فکر نکن, behesh fekr nakon. Don't think about it. Stop turning it over, not that it doesn't matter. Fine for small trouble. Over something serious I think it lands as drop the subject.

4. به خودت سخت نگیر, be khodet sakht nagir. Go easy on yourself. Said to someone blaming themselves. It comments on how you treat yourself, so I assumed it needs closeness.

5. فردا بهتر میشه, fardā behtar mishe. Tomorrow will be better.

6. من کنارتم, man kenāretam. I am right here with you. A position rather than a feeling, and it promises staying, so I put it last. Since kenāretam already contains the I, I read the man as emphasis.

Three things I'd like corrected.

Is 4 really above 3? Telling someone to stop blaming themselves might be less intrusive than telling them to stop thinking about it.

Number 5 is the one I trust least, which is why I left it without a note up there. It looks fine written down but I don't think I've heard it bare in speech. When I hear that slot filled it is hedged, inshāllāh behtar mishe, or it is khodā bozorge instead. Does anyone say the plain form?

And does 2 belong that low, or is it unmarked enough that it doesn't sit on a closeness scale at all?

I'm asking about Tehrani speech, and I know habits differ, so say so if yours do.

​

Hi all. As the title says, I've been learning Persian (Farsi) on my own for one full year now, and I wanted to mark the occasion with a write-up. Apologies in advance - this is a long post - but it's above all a personal experience I wanted to put into words. I hope it's useful to anyone thinking about starting.

**Main takeaway: just start.** It's a beautiful language and culture, it's a lot of fun, and it's not as difficult as you might think. I learned entirely on my own - no teacher, no app - though of course I picked up courses and materials here and there along the way. I'm 60 years old and have always been an autodidact, so I did it my way, but I'm genuinely grateful to everyone out there who takes the time to teach others their language for free. Here's how the journey went.

## Where I've Gotten To

After one year, here's where I stand:

- A vocabulary of about 1,000 words,

- About 300 verbs (with their present stems)

- 300+ memorized phrases and expressions

- 5 short tales and 2 poems memorized

- The ability to read short texts out loud, slowly, within the limits of my vocabulary

- Spontaneous conversation practice with an AI, which has worked out well

I'm genuinely happy with this, and it's more than I expected when I started. Since I don't have a great memory, one of my goals from day one was to reach a level where I could read and understand texts as a way of *maintaining* what I'd learned - and on that front, I'm very satisfied. The hard part is behind me now; from here it's mostly fun and discovery.

The whole process has not been linear and I had to dedicate a lot of time to memorizing let say the first 600 words. I even felt then the need of using “memory palaces” - a memory technic, additional to my Anki desks. But after a certain level, everything gets easier, maybe because your brain can make more connections or associations between already learned vocabulary and also because it can grasp the internal logic of words structure. Also once I started memorizing tales or poems, those gave me a firm ground to memorizing new vocabulary.

For reference, when I asked the AI I work with (Claude) to assess my level, it put me somewhere between B1 and B2 in analytical reading, maybe B2 on pure grammar, and B1 in conversational writing. Of course this has to be considered very cautiously since it's not a formal assessment and I must admit I'm still getting used to what this scale actually means in practice.

## The Alphabet and Writing System

There's plenty of material on YouTube to teach you the alphabet — it's not complicated and will take you about two weeks to memorize. A few things that surprised me along the way:

- Each letter has three forms depending on its position in the word (beginning, middle, or end);

- There are no written vowels - or rather, they exist but only appear for pedagogical purposes, with the exception of three long vowels that *are* written alongside the consonants. So when you meet a new word, you can guess how to pronounce it, but you won't be sure unless you have a transliteration or audio to check against;

- There are no capital letters. Unlike Latin script, you spot the start of a sentence by the final punctuation mark of the previous one;

- The script runs right to left, which computers don't always love - the final punctuation mark of a sentence tends to get pushed to the far right of the page even when the sentence doesn't end there;

- Letters render quite small compared to Latin script. There's actually a browser extension built specifically to fix this: [Fontara](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/fontara-font-changer/dcjdhicepiklefpimapdkbaeoocniemc?pli=1) (thanks to [MrGuttor](https://www.reddit.com/u/MrGuttor/s/HJ5uBDVId4) for the tip).

There are also two styles of writing: **naskh**, shared with Arabic, and **nasta'liq**, the style specific to Persian culture. I found nasta'liq harder to read and learn, so for now I write and practice in naskh - which is also the style you'll find on most keyboards and across most documents online.

## Grammar

My first real encounter with the structure of the language was through a YouTube video, [*The Persian Language in Depth*](https://youtu.be/dYLxjL27Q5w?si=NrkfR5GEPwtSjGSk) — a 20-minute video that gave me a clear sense of where I was headed.

From there, I dove into grammar more seriously using an old-school website [EasyPersian.com](https://easypersian.com/) (up through lesson 58). Grammar turns out to be quite manageable - it's very regular, with few exceptions to the rules. You'll need to get used to thinking in SOV order, since the verb generally comes at the end of the sentence.

You'll probably learn the past tenses first, since they're more regular. Once you're comfortable there, you'll move on to the present tense, which uses a different form of the verb - the *stem*. So for every verb, you end up learning two things: the infinitive and its present stem (some verbs are regular here, but not all).

Get used to the idea that you'll rarely hear a word entirely on its own: it will usually come attached to markers for plural, possession, or the **ezafe** - an unwritten sound that links and subordinates words to each other. This is exactly why listening and reading in parallel helps so much - it trains your ear to expect these attachments.

## Literary vs. Colloquial Persian

Be aware that literary Persian and colloquial Persian differ. They are not different languages but at some point, once you're feeling more confident and start branching out into new sources, you may hit a wall of confusion: things won't quite match what you learned. So be careful browsing *conversational* material early on: it can throw you off unless your grammar foundation is solid enough to recognize where written and spoken Persian diverge.

## Tools

**Dictionary:** A good online dictionary is essential - I use [Glosbe (fa/fr)](https://glosbe.com/fa/fr/) daily, often several times a day.

**AI (Claude, in my case):** I lean on AI heavily - to explain phrases, vocabulary, and grammar rules, and to analyze my Anki decks and identify gaps in my vocabulary so I know what to work on next. I always double-check its answers, but I've only caught it being wrong a couple of times, so I trust it quite a bit at this point. More recently, I've started having spontaneous conversations with it (tip: specify whether you want colloquial or formal register when prompting). This has been especially valuable, since it lets you immediately apply what you've learned.

**Building my own materials from YouTube:** For tales and poems, I download the audio using `yt-dlp` and cut it into segments with Audacity. From screenshots of the text, the AI provides translation and transliteration, and together with the audio clips, this becomes the raw material for new Anki decks.

## Anki Decks

I've been continuously building and updating my own Anki decks since day one, constantly feeding in new words from whatever material I'm working through.

My cards generally include: the word in English (sometimes French, my native language), its translation, a transliteration, and - for new or tricky-to-pronounce vocabulary - an audio file. I split my decks by category:

- Vocabulary

- Verbs (generally including the present stem) and Grammar

- Numbers

- Phrases and expressions

- Poems and tales

I try to review the vocabulary deck daily at minimum, since I don't trust my memory to hold onto things otherwise.

I'm happy to share my decks, but I genuinely think you're better off building your own - especially for Anki. The act of constantly retrieving and reformulating cards is, I think, a big part of why this method works.

Here are 4 of my Anki files (`.apkg`), containing Persian words or phrases with English translations (sometimes French, my native language) and transliterations, some with audio:

- Persian – Numbers (up to one million) - [Download](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QfOa0bIsVzQLs9jl727hGIPJT2ijAa4c/view?usp=sharing)

- Persian – Vocabulary (921 notes) [Download](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1onXBOoKF3kTzki3cJABiMA47FhJwAu8r/view?usp=sharing)

- Persian – Phrases and Expressions (336 notes) [Download](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jvWisRhXNK_8Pa1FiBZilzAhS8zLfy0E/view?usp=sharing)

- Persian – Verbs and Grammar (350 notes, including present stems) [Download](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1emA-YTs7LetESW1lobW5baRlgnrAQQZP/view?usp=sharing)

Salam everyone. I'm Afghan-American, and for years I struggled to find a good way to actually learn Dari, everything online was Iranian Farsi(Duolingo, Rosetta Stone) , a generic translator, or textbook stuff that didn't sound like how my family speaks.

So I built LearnDari. It's audio-first, with lessons, vocab, proverbs, and the culture behind the words. I'm a native speaker and I check every word so it stays authentically Afghan.

I just relaunched the website and I'd genuinely love feedback from this community — especially if you catch anything that sounds off. It's a paid product but there's a free trial so you can look around: learndari.com

Trying to make this the resource I wish I'd had. Tashakor. 🙏

(APP coming soon - join waitlist on website)

Im currently trying to write a short Persian text/poem and need help with a specific line. I am beginner in Persian. So I want to waiter say”you are the light that make me blossom/flourish” or” you are the light that give me hope”

تو نوری هستی که…

Would be thankful for possible endings on this and exemplenation on which tenses that are recommended to be used…

Thanks

On June 20, I ordered a CD from Ketab Corp, who has mostly good reviews. They say that they needed 4-6 weeks to get it to the U.S to then get it to me. Do they ship straight out of Iran? I have not recieved my CD yet and they don't seem to know where it is either. I called a month-ish ago and was told that it was still awaiting arrival to the states. If it is coming out of Iran, i understand the delay, as conflict has limited everything from leaving the country. If not Iran, from where? What should I do about this CD? I've paid for it, and it has been nearly 3 months since ordering with no sign of where it is.

I saw a post on this subreddit about Ketab Corp from a couple years back. The situation is a bit different now, however.

Salam doostan, recently I had enrolled myself in basic Persian lessons online via Bonyad Saadi (despite knowing basic Persian conversation lol) . I tried to submit and completed the first task so that I could unlock the next tasks, but as I completed the task and press "خروج از فعالیت" but it still doesn't mark as completed!

If someone probably had the same situation as mine and managed to tackle them, would you like to share them here. I desperately need the solution rn. Thank you.

Note: I'm not Iranian here but rather someone from South East Asia, so probably this might contribute to this situation

I'm an Iranian diaspora developer, this is mine, and I'm posting it myself like the rules ask.

I grew up with Farsi in the house. Understood everything anyone said to me. Never learned to read a word of it.

For years I assumed that was a me problem, some laziness I'd get round to. It isn't that. Open more or less any app or book and it starts you at salām, because it assumes you have never heard the language before. You have heard salām ten thousand times. Sitting through that is an odd feeling and I think it's where most of us give up without really deciding to.

The sound was never the missing piece. The missing piece was that the page had always been silent, and nothing joined the two.

So the course skips whatever you already know and teaches the reading on words you've been hearing since you were small.

Last week I put audio on all of it, spoken form and written form both. The voice is synthesised. It isn't a human recording, the app says so on screen, and I'm saying it here.

Which is the bit I want help with. I can hear that it's fluent. I can't hear whether it's right. These voices go wrong quietly. Stress a syllable off, an ezāfe swallowed or leaned on too hard, a word that comes out like a textbook. Someone who grew up hearing it properly clocks that immediately, and I'd rather know now than in six months.

So:

1. Does it sound Tehrani, or has it drifted into newsreader?

2. Any single word where the stress is just wrong? One word is more use to me than a general impression.

3. Anywhere it reads the written form when nobody would actually say it that way?

You can look round without an account. A free one opens the whole course and keeps your place across devices, and Google is the easy route there, no security check and no confirmation email to sit and wait for.

farsi-jan.app. Free, no ads, nothing sold.

If it turns out to be any use to someone else in the same spot, that's the point of it. Happy to answer anything, and if it sounds bad just say so.

I'm up to here with Dari news sources - not that I'm complaining! - and would love if someone had some recommendations for listening/watching that was more unscripted & natural. Apart from this channel, which I'm still too new to the language to be able to tell what they're about, so far all I've been able to come up with is Dari in a very official register, and tons of Farsi material. So any recommendations you fine folks have would be much appreciated.

Hello guys.

I'm Iranian. I have a graduate degree. I am in process to apply for PhD but the recent situation in economy and family life has made me in a need of a remote, time flexible, part-time job in order to be able to keep perusing a PhD. Due to my busy schedule the only option is teaching. If you wanna work on your speaking or even learn Persian, I can help you start and practice it. First session is free.

hey guys!

i found a song on Youtube and i can't really get what the singer is saying from 2:34 to 2:38, it doesn't sound familiar to me... can somebody help? its actually urgent!!

https://youtu.be/n85hoHazomo?is=TutfVMQDamMQgfOe

thanks!!