Hello everyone, Welcome back!
Last week I received a very good message from a 15-year-old Brazilian with some good suggestions in it. I wish all of your messages were like this! He had some good suggestions one of which was to present the Persian samples page bilingually. It is a good idea, but believe me that it demands a lot of work. Nevertheless, in spite of all the problems I have, I am going to update the Persian samples page and present it in both Persian and English. In the meantime, I want to make it clear right now that most of the Persian texts you see in Persian samples page are really the masterpieces of our modern literature. Honestly, it is beyond the ability of my knowledge to present a comprehensive word for word translation for all of them. Nevertheless, I am trying to give you a general idea about each work and translate parts of these works into English wherever possible. What you should keep in your mind is that the original texts are at least ten times stronger than my work. Anyway, I have tried hard during the last week to do my best to give you a very interesting explanation of the texts in English (at least I think so!). Kindly forgive me that due to many things (lack of enough knowledge, lack of resources, lack of references, lack of time! and so on) I haven’t been able to provide you with a comprehensive translation for these works.
What I am sure of is that you are going to like it! So, I strongly invite all of you to go back to the first week and Persian samples page and read the explanations of the Persian samples text from the very beginning. I have just uploaded nine explanations for the nine previous weeks. You may find each explanation on each week’s Persian samples pages (from week 1 to week 9) in their own original pages. Please take a look at them and please let me receive your suggestions or even a single message. You are going to support yourselves by supporting me through sending simple messages.
Ok. Now let’s begin.
How was the previous lesson? Let me know if you faced any problems. Today we are going to complete the part one which was about learning the letters and vowels. Most probably, we will take a very short review of the previous lessons next week. After that we will begin the main part of our work. Please try to get fluent with these basics now.
Last week, we learned four letters. Let’s take a look at them again. 
, 
, 
, 
. Click here if you want to listen to them once more.
As you know, we have two more letters for today. Right? They are as follows:
31. 
This one is the big letter ‘H’ in Persian. It is called /he/ as in hen.
It appears at the end of the words only and stands separated from other letters. Like this one: 
.
This letter has three small forms. Look at this 
. It appears at the beginning of the words and is attached to the next letter. Like here 
.
Sometimes it sits between two letters and attaches to both of them. In this case you will find it as 
. Like this word 
.
The third form is when it appears at the end of the words and is attached to the previous letter. In this case you will find it as 
.
When combined with the vowels, it may be pronounced as 
.
Note: As you see, these two letters and 
, when combined with the vowels, have the same pronounciation.
32. 
This is the big letter ‘Y’ in Persian. It is called /ye/ as in yes.
It appears at the end of the words and stands either attached or separated. Like these words: 
, 
.
And finally, this is the small letter 
/ye/.
When combined, it may be pronounced as 
.
All right. Now that we have learned the letters and the way they are pronounced, I need to explain something that is somehow necessary.
As you remember, we have six vowels in Persian, which enable us to pronounce the letters. And as you have probably noticed, I have already mentioned that we have six main sounds (vowels). Do you remember? I said that because in addition to these six vowels we have two more that can hardly be called vowels.
Let me explain it a bit more. How do you pronounce this English word ‘address’? I am sure all of you can pronounce it well. It is something like this /ædres/. Is it correct? Good! Now tell me how do you pronounce the letters ‘d’ and ‘s’ here? It’s quite clear. Your tongue simply stops or pauses on these letters without producing any extra sounds. It seems not so important in English. Nevertheless, in Persian we have a name for this. It is called pause or sokoon /soku:n/in Persian.
SokoonThe representative of this pause is what you see on 
.
Let’s see the second one. Look at this English word ‘attach’. As you see, we have two ‘T’ in this word. Just suppose that we are breaking this word like this: ‘at- tach’. What we find out here is that our tongue stops or pauses on the first ‘T’ and pronounces the second ‘T’. What the Persian grammar, or I’d better say the Arab-based grammar, is asking us to do is this: ” Whenever one letter is written twice and the first one is paused, we should simply delete the first one and pronounce the second one with an emphasis.” Is the explanation clear? I need to mention it here that this one is not used very often in Persian but it is used anyway!
This emphasis is called Tashdid /tæshdid/.
TashdidThe representative of this emphasis or Tashdid is what you see here on ‘A’: 
. For example 
. You don’t need to worry about this. Maybe you will see it once in one hundred words and probably you won’t use this rule at all!
Click here if you need to listen to the four items you learned today.
He to TashdidAll right. With this we come to the end of lesson 9 or the end of part one. I hope you have enjoyed it. Please be in touch!
Don’t forget to check the Let’s write and the Useful drills pages now.
And don’t forget to check the updated Persian samples pages from week one once more!
Feel tired? Hit me.
Ali Abid Shah
April 13, 2012 @ 10:11 am
Dear Mr Hassas! Aslamo Alaikum!! i hope that you eill be fine.am a big fan of farsi (paersian) because it is a sweat language and most important thing that our most of history written in farsi.Also farsi language ias also famous for his grat poet like Sherazi and sadi and most others famous names in history.So from my child hood i like to learn pharsi.I belong to pakistan and my mother tongue is Urdu and we have same alphabet as yours and some words also.
Due to my intrust in farsi while checking on internet that how can i learn the farsi i found your side and now i learning your lesson.
i can read pharsi most of the words but my main problem is grammar and lack of vocabalary.
I want that i can read,speak and write farsi fluently.
i think most most important think of any language is the daily pharasis which are used be the person who belong to the same language.so please also add persian day to phrasis with their meaning used by the local person.
Please give me advise that which books i should read to improve the language.i belong to pakistan and now a days i am working in Dubai.
Thank you that you prepared a side where any one can learn the great language.
Best regards,
Ali Abid Shah
Joy
July 13, 2012 @ 4:51 pm
Agha Hassan… your site is just wonderful. I am learning and enjoying a lot. Right now I just completed Lessons 1 – 9. I can speak Urdu and thus am familiar with the Persian alphabet, but your site is really helping me to understand the differences in pronunciation between the two languages.
Tanya
September 18, 2012 @ 4:21 pm
It seems that at the point in the lesson when new letter is introduced and a word containing that letter is presented, we should be able to click on the word to hear how the new letter sounds in that word. For example, after the statement “It appears at the end of the words only and stands separated from other letters. Like this one: Maeh” we should be able to to click on “Maeh” and hear the word.
By the way…I love you website!
Salahi
November 20, 2012 @ 4:43 pm
such a good site, thanks!!!
marchella
December 22, 2012 @ 3:54 pm
I can’t believe how Kind you are to create such a Site. There are hundreds of us in our group using this weekly to learn persian. We are now reading and writingthanks to your giving spirit. Your hard work has helped us tremendously to communicate as we volunteer in the US to to help the people of Iran. Thank you
Douglas
January 29, 2013 @ 12:12 am
Did we not allready learn the “he” in a previous lesson? i will just keep on going. but i have to say it is a little confusing.
nontheless , great site! thanks a lot lot!
Ella Press
February 14, 2013 @ 2:56 pm
You make this seem so easy! I loved learning the alphabet and can’t wait to get into the next lessons. Thank you, thank you!
Monika Vikić Vidljinović
June 27, 2013 @ 9:00 am
سلام
حالث چطوره؟
Thanks to you, I can write this now. I knew a few words but I couldn’t write it. I was looking for site like yours for a long time and I couldn’t find it. I was happy as a child when I found this. Thank you very much!
Ziyoda Shukhratkhon
July 8, 2013 @ 10:04 am
Dear agha Hassan!
You are a great teacher! Thanks a lot for taking pains for creating this website and teaching us:)
Ziyoda.
Marion
July 19, 2013 @ 11:54 am
Hi!
Thank you for your website you’re doing great with the explanations! I was wondering if it was normal that the small form of /he/ doesn’t look like the same form on the writing page? It confuses me a bit.
Aamir
December 9, 2013 @ 8:07 am
Hi…Love your work. I just had one doubt. Is persian spoken in Iran is same as that which is spoken in India and pakistan?
Lise Strieder
December 28, 2013 @ 2:41 am
Hassan,
I’m back. I started the lessons and then lost the interest for a while but now plan on 30 minutes every day. Farsi is fun! Your lessons are superb.
L. S.
Annalisa
January 9, 2014 @ 4:07 pm
I just want to thank you for this great and helpful web site!!!!!!! THANK YOU!!!!
Nick Towns
January 18, 2014 @ 8:13 am
Agha Hassan Joon, This site is great. I am half Persian, Half Black(African-American), and I just returned from a month and half in Iran. i’m ready to learn.
Nick Towns
January 18, 2014 @ 8:14 am
One more think, I didn’t really understand what a sokoon was in lesson 9. If you have more time, could you give more detail.
Manaar
May 17, 2014 @ 2:39 am
Sokoon: It indicates that the consonant to which it is attached is not followed by a vowel; this is a necessary symbol for writing consonant-vowel-consonant syllables.
John Manning
February 21, 2014 @ 4:54 pm
Hello, Hassan —
I share the gratitude expressed by others. Thank you for all your hard work in putting this site together.
As I make written notes on the regular lesson, I find it useful to have both the regular lesson and the writing lesson open in two windows of my browser, but each time I want to open the writing lesson I have to go to the end of the regular lesson to find the link. Would be useful to have a link to all the writing lessons at top of home page — like Lessons 1-50, only Writing Lessons 1-50.
Thanks —
John in San Francisco
Karen Wang
April 5, 2014 @ 1:49 am
Hello~ Thanks for posting these lessons. I love the writing system of language like arabic and persian, and I heard that Persian is easier than arabic so I chose to learn this. I know Persian would still be difficult to me since my home language is Mandarin and Cantonese, and then I move to America so I can speak English. I really love this website, and thank you so much again because this make this less difficult for me.
Abu Haladi
April 16, 2014 @ 5:22 am
Dear Mr Hasan, I have comment for pronounciation of /sokoon is close to second /se ken/ instead of address /ed dres/, even I’m Indonesian, I hope, the english tounge is able to correct my opinion. That’s all, later in case I find it again, I’ll convey it to you.
Best Regards,
Tasripin Adiwijaya
Abu Haladi
April 16, 2014 @ 5:32 am
or Second / sæ kæn/ between æ and u , or : /sæ kun/ , Is it right? From Tasripin A
Jules
April 29, 2014 @ 7:21 pm
I’m so proud of myself! I finished the whole alphabet in two days! I’ll need a few more days to really get it down pat. My dad is from Iran and I can’t speak to that side of the family who can’t speak English, so I’m hoping to learn Farsi so I can talk to people and read/write poetry. (It also gives me a break from the other language I’m learning for work/school.)
Thank you for this site. It’s very well done! It breaks things down and makes it less intimidating.
Julia
May 19, 2014 @ 6:12 pm
I’m from Spain and I’m going to Tehran next summer. Thanks, for these Persian lessons which are very very useful for me.
Rachele
February 28, 2015 @ 10:57 pm
Youu actually make it see so easy with your presentation but I find this topic to be really something that I think I would ever understand.
It seems tooo complicated and extremely briad for
me. I’m looking forward for your next post, I wiill try to get the hang of it!
JUN
June 23, 2015 @ 3:15 am
yeah. a good website to learn Farsi. if putting some daily dialogues people used often. (both texts and sounds),it will be more excellent for us to know about the attractive persian culture . And thank youfor your lectures.
Sasha
July 26, 2015 @ 3:38 pm
I have a question about one additional letter which appears in Farsi keyboard, and it is: ئ
How is this letter used and pronounced?
alptekin
December 6, 2015 @ 9:26 am
I can’t believe how easy it was to learn the alphabet with your technique. Many thanks and congratulations.
Cena
June 22, 2016 @ 8:55 am
We dont have that word,we have just ی and in English is ye.
Mauricio
January 16, 2016 @ 2:57 am
Hi! I really enjoyed learning the Persian alphabet. You made it so easy and simple to understand!! Now I can write and type some words in Persian with my Iranian friends. I’m very happy! Greetings from Mexico. Thank you, thank you so much!! Mamnoon!
armaan
February 1, 2016 @ 8:41 am
Salam o alekom .. i don’t know how to pronounce persian and how to write it. but little bit i m trying to speak farsi .. but confusing is there that i dont understand that zal, ze, zhe, zad, za, this letters used in which words .. plzz tell me,, its very hard