Persian is a rare case of a language that looks completely foreign and turns out to be family. مادر (mādar) is mother, برادر (barādar) is brother, دختر (dokhtar) is daughter and نام (nām) is name: Persian and English are both Indo-European, and these words have been cousins for thousands of years. That's the first piece of good news for anyone who wants to learn Persian. The second is the grammar, which has no grammatical gender, no articles in the English sense, and verbs that behave once you know their two stems. The hard part is the alphabet, and that's a matter of weeks.
Farsi, Dari or Tajik
Persian is the official language of Iran, where it's called Farsi. In Afghanistan its local standard, Dari, is one of the two main languages, and in Tajikistan the national language, Tajik, is Persian written in Cyrillic letters. Speakers of the three understand each other reasonably well, with differences in accent and vocabulary and, for Tajik, alphabet; if Central Asia is your goal, read how to learn Tajik. Native speakers number in the tens of millions, and with second-language speakers the total passes 100 million. Iranian communities in Los Angeles, Toronto, London, Germany and Sweden keep the language going abroad, and many second-generation learners speak it at home but can't read it.
Most learning material, and this guide, follows the standard of Iran. You'll be understood in Kabul and Dushanbe as well, with a few smiles at your Tehran accent.
Persian travelled well beyond its borders. Urdu took a large share of its vocabulary from it, so anyone who later wants to learn Urdu will meet old friends, and English picked up bazaar and caravan along the way.
The alphabet: how to learn Persian script in a few weeks
Persian uses the Arabic script with four extra letters for sounds Arabic doesn't have: پ (p), چ (ch), ژ (zh, as in "measure") and گ (g). That makes 32 letters, written right to left and joined within words. Each letter changes shape slightly depending on its position, and seven letters (ا د ذ ر ز ژ و) never join to the letter after them, which is why Persian words often look broken into pieces.
Short vowels are usually left out. کتاب (ketāb, book) is written k-t-ā-b, and you supply the e because you know the word. That sounds alarming; in practice, after a few hundred words, your eye stops missing them.
The real oddity is that Persian kept Arabic spellings for Arabic loanwords, so several letters share one sound:
| Sound | Letters | Note |
|---|---|---|
| z | ز ذ ض ظ | three of the four appear mainly in Arabic loanwords |
| s | س ث ص | ث and ص mainly in Arabic loanwords |
| t | ت ط | ط mainly in Arabic loanwords |
| h | ه ح | ح mainly in Arabic loanwords |
| gh | غ ق | pronounced alike in Iran, kept apart in Dari |
Reading is therefore easier than spelling. With twenty minutes a day, most of the alphabet is manageable within two or three weeks; spelling catches up over months.
Why the grammar is kinder than it looks
There's no grammatical gender at all. او (u) means both "he" and "she", and adjectives never change to agree with anything.
Verbs have two stems, past and present, and you have to learn both for each verb, but the personal endings are almost the same in both tenses and very regular. رفتن (raftan) is "to go": رفتم (raftam) is "I went", and میروم (mi-ravam) is "I go".
Many verbs are built from a noun plus a light verb: کار کردن (kār kardan), "to work", is literally "work do", and گوش دادن (gush dādan), "to listen", is "ear give". Learn kardan, dādan and shodan early and a large part of the dictionary opens up.
Two small pieces of glue need attention. The ezafe is an unwritten -e- that links a noun to whatever describes it: کتابِ من (ketāb-e man) is "my book", خانهٔ بزرگ (khāne-ye bozorg) is "the big house". And را (rā) marks a definite direct object: کتاب را خواندم (ketāb rā khāndam), "I read the book", with the verb at the end, where Persian normally puts it.
Spoken Persian is not written Persian
Everyday Tehran speech shortens much of what you read. میروم (mi-ravam) becomes miram, است (ast, "is") shrinks to -e, so خوب است (khub ast, "it's good") becomes khube, and ketāb rā becomes ketābo. Learn both from the start, the written forms for reading and the spoken ones for talking, or you'll sound like a newspaper.
Then there's taarof, the elaborate politeness of Iranian life. A taxi driver may wave your money away with قابل نداره (ghābel nadāre, "it's not worthy of you"). He doesn't mean it. Pay.
First Persian words
- سلام (salām): hello
- خوبی؟ (khubi?): how are you?, informally; the answer is خوبم (khubam), "I'm good"
- مرسی (merci) or ممنون (mamnun): thanks; متشکرم (moteshakkeram) is more formal
- بله (bale) and نه (na): yes and no; آره (āre) is the casual yes
- اسم من ... است (esm-e man ... ast): my name is ...
- آب (āb): water
- خداحافظ (khodāhāfez): goodbye
Yes, the everyday thanks is the French word, and nobody in Tehran finds that odd.
A first month to learn Persian
Spend the first two weeks on the alphabet, reading short words aloud every day and learning the greetings alongside. In week three, add the present tense of a few common verbs, the numbers to ten and forty everyday nouns. In week four, start forming your own sentences with the verb at the end, write a few lines a day about yourself, and try them out on a Persian speaker or another learner.
Keep expectations in proportion. The US Foreign Service Institute, which rates languages by how long English speakers need, puts Persian in its Category III, about 44 weeks of full-time study for professional working proficiency. A month gets you through the alphabet and partway into A1, and the rest is steady weekly work.
How Qlango helps
Qlango teaches Persian at A1 and A2. Choose the language you learn through, your native language or another one you know well, and start from the first greetings. While the alphabet is new you can show a Latin transliteration under the words and hide it as you start reading on your own. Sentence-building exercises drill the verb-last word order until you place it without thinking, spaced repetition keeps letters and words coming back, and the chat lets you write to other learners, with message translation and AI help to write a reply. On Premium you can learn offline and put unlimited questions to an AI teacher about verb stems, the ezafe or anything else in the grammar. Every course and level is on the languages page.
The alphabet takes two or three weeks, and after that the verbs start settling at the end of the sentence. Qlango's A1 course is a steady way through that first month, and by the end of it you'll hear ghābel nadāre for what it is, and pay anyway.
