Asking “Why” in Persian

Learn how to ask "Why?"

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Lesson Transcript

Salam be hamegi, Sāre hastam! Hi everybody! I’m Sareh.

Welcome to PersianPod101.com’s “Persian in 3 minutes”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Persian.

2 In the last lesson, we learned how to ask "Who" questions in Persian.

This time, we are going to ask questions with the interrogative word "Why?"

Imagine your boss is giving you a call because you are not at work today... He will certainly ask you Cherā emrooz be sare kār nayāmadid?

[slowly] Cherā emrooz be sare kār nayāmadid?

It means “Why haven’t you come to work today?”

So let’s break down this question:

First we had:

Cherā, which is the basic translation of "Why" in Persian.

Then Emrooz which is "today"

nayāmadid is the 2nd person plural of the verb amadan in the negative form

Then be sare kār which is "to office"

All together, it is Cherā emrooz be sare kār nayāmadid?

So in Persian, Cherā is the exact translation of "Why", used to ask the reason for something.

So for example, if your boss is asking you "Why are you late today?" he will say Cherā emrooz dir karde-id?

Here, he uses "Why" in order to get explanations and reasons.

Note that here, the form is formal, as we used the 2nd person plural pronoun id, which makes the verb into the polite form for "you".

You can also change places between “why” and “today”, depending on your emphasis.

Cherā emrooz dir karde-id? Emrooz cherā dir karde-id?

Now it’s time for Anita's Advice

A famous expression in Persian is Cherā ke na! which means, like in English, "Why not?"

You can use it to accept a proposition if you agree but aren’t really keen to do it. Or, if it was not planned in advance.

For example if a friend asks you suddenly "How about we go to the cinema tonight?"

You can answer Cherā ke na? "Why not?"

Also, when someone asks you if you don’t want to do something, or any negative questions, you can start your answer with “Cherā” which means “well” or “yes”. For example, Cherā, miram, which means “Well yes I go.”

Before ending this lesson, let’s review all the ways to translate "Why" in Persian:

- Cherā is the basic translation of "Why," as in Cherā dir karde-yi? "Why are you late?"

And, Cherā ke na? is "Why not?"

This lesson is the last lesson of this Absolute Beginner video series.

But it’s hopefully not the last you learn about the Persian language! To take your language ability to the next level, check out our other series at PersianPod101.com, the fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Persian.

Khodāfez!

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