Learn about the Persian alphabet
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| Michael: What alphabet does Persian use? |
| Negar: And has it changed over time? |
| Michael: At PersianPod101.com, we hear these questions often. In the following situation, Akhtar Akbari, a kindergarten student, is studying the alphabet with her mum, Paria Parvizi. She sees an unfamiliar letter and asks, |
| "What letter is this?" |
| Akhtar Akbari: این حرف چیه؟ (in harf chiye?) |
| Dialogue |
| Akhtar Akbari: این حرف چیه؟ (in harf chiye?) |
| Paria Parvizi: این تِ هست. (in te hast.) |
| Michael: Once more with the English translation. |
| Akhtar Akbari: این حرف چیه؟ (in harf chiye?) |
| Michael: "What letter is this?" |
| Paria Parvizi: این تِ هست. (in te hast.) |
| Michael: "It's te." |
Lesson focus |
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| Michael: In this conversation, we hear Akhtar Akbari say, |
| Negar: این حرف چیه؟ (in harf chiye?), |
| Michael: which means, "What letter is this?" Paria Parvizi responds by saying, |
| Negar: این تِ هست (in te hast), |
| Michael: which means, "It's te." |
| Michael: As a student who is new to learning Persian, you may wonder what alphabet Persian uses. In this lesson, we'll answer that question. |
| Michael: Most modern-day Iranian Persian and Afghan Persian texts use a derivative of the Arabic alphabet. This includes the Arabic alphabet, plus four additional letters. The first is |
| Negar: پ (pe) |
| Michael: or "pe," It sounds like [p] as the "p" in the English word "push." An example of this letter in Persian is |
| Negar: پروانه (parvaane), |
| Michael: which means "butterfly." Next, we have |
| Negar: چ (che) |
| Michael: or če (che), it sounds like [tʃ] as the "ch" in the English word "chain." You can find it in the word |
| Negar: چین (chin), |
| Michael: which means "China." |
| Michael: The third letter is |
| Negar: ژ (zhe). |
| Michael: This letter is pronounced "[ʒ]" like in the English word "television." |
| Negar: ژاله (zhaale) |
| Michael: is an example of this letter. This word means "dew" in English. Next, we have |
| Negar: گاف (gaaf) |
| Michael: or "ge," which sounds like "[g]" as the "g" in the English word "golf." You can hear this in the word |
| Negar: گل (gol), |
| Michael: which means "flower." |
| Michael: On the other hand, in Tajik, spoken primarily in Tajikistan and surrounding areas, the alphabet is instead written in Cyrillic script. This is because it's more heavily influenced by Russian and Turkic-based languages. |
| Michael: The Pahlavi scripts of ancient Persian texts were replaced with the modern Arabic script in the 7th century under the Sassanian Empire. The alphabet itself is made up of cursive letters that are read from right to left, save some instances, such as mathematical equations, which are written left to right. Just like in Arabic, Persian also employs the use of diacritics. These are small accent marks placed above or below letters to shift intonation or pronunciation of a word. There are four types of diacritics in the Persian language, |
| Negar: صداهای کوتاه (sedaa-haa-ye kootaah), |
| Michael: or short vowels, |
| Negar: تنوین (tanvin), |
| Michael: which are only used in Arabic loan words, and |
| Negar: تشدید (tashdid), |
| Michael: which is placed over a consonant to strengthen or double it, as well as |
| Negar: همزه (hamze). |
| Michael: Let's take a closer look at each one. First, we have short vowels that consist of |
| Negar: ◌َ (a) or زبر (zebar), |
| Michael: which is placed over a letter and sounds like "a" in "cat," as in |
| Negar: سَر (sar), |
| Michael: meaning "head" in Persian. Next, we have |
| Negar: ◌ِ (e) or زیر (zir), |
| Michael: which is placed under a letter and sounds like "e" in "bed," as in |
| Negar: کِتاب (ketaab), |
| Michael: meaning "book" in Persian, and the last short vowel is |
| Negar: ◌ُ (o) or پیش (pish), |
| Michael: which is placed over a letter and sounds like "o" in "no," as in |
| Negar: دو (do), |
| Michael: meaning "two" in Persian. The next group of diacritics is |
| Negar: تنوین (tanvin). |
| Michael: In this group, we have three diacritics. The first is |
| Negar: ◌ً (an) or نصب (nasb). |
| Michael: It sounds like (an) as in the Persian word |
| Negar: حتماً (hatman), |
| Michael: meaning "definitely" in Persian. The second tanvin is |
| Negar: ◌ٌ (on) or رفع (raf'). |
| Michael: An example for this one is |
| Negar: سلامٌ علیکم (salaamon alaykom). |
| Michael: This is an Arabic greeting that you can use in any Muslim country. The last tanvin is |
| Negar: ◌ٍ (en) or جر (jar). |
| Michael: This one is rarely used in the Persian language, and you only can find it in Arabic sentences and phrases that are used with their original Arabic form in the Persian language, like |
| Negar: علی ای حالٍ (alaa ayye haalen), |
| Michael: which means "anyway" in Arabic and Persian. Please note that tanvin can only be added to the end of a noun or adjective. |
| The next diacritic is |
| Negar: تشدید (tashdid). |
| Michael: As we mentioned before, this one strengthens the pronunciation of a consonant or doubles it. For example, we have |
| Negar: امّا (ammaa), |
| Michael: which means "but" in Persian. In this word, the letter |
| Negar: م (m) |
| Michael: is written once, but, since it has |
| Negar: تشدید (tashdid), |
| Michael: it is pronounced twice. |
| Negar: امّا (ammaa) |
| Michael: The last diacritic is |
| Negar: همزه ء (hamze). |
| Michael: Hamze is used in Arabic loaned words in Persian. It represents a glottal stop [ʔ], exactly the same way the letter |
| Negar: عین (eyn) |
| Michael: is pronounced. We have |
| Negar: متأسف (mote'assef) |
| Michael: as an example, which means "sorry" in Persian. |
| As a student of Persian, it can be helpful to occasionally refer to a transliterated text, one that has been translated from the Arabic alphabet to the Latin alphabet. In general, it's best to learn the alphabet used in Persian as soon as possible to get to know the language well. |
| In the Persian writing system, sometimes there are several letters with the same pronunciation, making writing quite challenging at the start. For example for the [s] sound, we have |
| Negar: س ، ث (se, sin) |
| Michael: and |
| Negar: ص, (saad). |
| Michael: When writing, for example, |
| Negar: صابون (saaboon), |
| Michael: which means "soap" in Persian, you need to be familiar with the correct spelling of this word. |
| Negar: Similarly, the letters ض, ذ, ز, and ظ (ze, zaal, zaad, and zaa) all pronounced as [z], ت and ط (te and taa) are both pronounced [t], ه and ح both pronounced [h], and ق and غ (ghaaf and gheyn) both pronounced [ɣ] like "merci" in French. |
| Michael: Please note that these letters have different pronunciations in the Arabic language, but they sound the same in Persian. |
| Cultural Insight/Expansion |
| Michael: It's important to note that, in Iran, these diacritics are only used in the books of the first and second grades of elementary schools |
| Negar: کلاس اول و دوم ابتدایی (kelaas-e avval va dovvom-e ebtedaayi) |
| Michael: and some Persian learning content, so you won't find them in ordinary books, newspapers, movie subtitles, etc. Therefore, reading Persian is dependent on practice and experience. |
| Negar: تمرین و تجربه (tamrin va tajrobe) |
Outro |
| Michael: Do you have any more questions? We're here to answer them! |
| Negar: خداحافظ (khodaahaafez) |
| Michael: See you soon! |
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