Farsi Lesson 91 - Relative Pronouns Review Drills

Salam bacheh ha! Cheh khabar?! /cheh khæbær/.

If you pay more attention to your Iranian friends when talking to each other, you will notice that they use several sentences for the same meaning!

Whenever I call my relatives or friends (which I don’t do very often!) I spend several minutes asking and answering the questions that convey the same message!! It’s not my fault! This is also a piece of culture!! Different nations use different way for greetings. Most probably our Iranian ancestors had no idea how expensive the telephone fees would be in future!! And more important, they didn’t know, for sure, that many of their offspring would have to call them from abroad! That’s why they have created lots of phrases for a simple greeting! One of them is what you see above (Cheh khabar?), which means: What’s the news OR What’s new.

You will find yourself exploring your mind to find fresh news and talking for several minutes (if you are lucky!). If not, you will have to keep on speaking until somebody stops you! Don’t laugh! That’s true! And you know what? When you finish your stories, they may say: ‘Khob, digeh cheh khabbar?!’ which means ‘what else then?!’ OR ‘what more fresh news do you have?!’ They could use this second phrase each time you finish your story and make you speak more!! In this way, they don’t need to talk since all they have to do is listening!

Khob digeh cheh khabar

Actually, this is not a question at all. This is just an opening phrase to start conversation; like ‘good weather, isn’t it?’ or something like this.

Fortunately, this phrase (Cheh khabar?) has a very short answer. To avoid speaking, all you need to say is Salamati /sæla:mæti/. In a broad meaning, Salamati means ‘everything is ok’.

Salamati

Sometimes, you could say Salamati ye shoma, which means ‘my good news is that you are safe and sound!’ Don’t worry if the person is in a hospital bed!! This one is more polite than the first one. Just use it!

Khob, Digeh che khabar?!!!

OK,

If you remember, we talked about Relative Pronouns in lessons 84 and 85. To review those lessons and to make sure that you have not forgotten what you learned, I give you some more drills today to enjoy! Then, let me see what we can do next week!

Have a great time and Khoda Hafez!

Quiz:

1- Listen to the audio files first (preferably once). Repeat it for a couple of times. Write it down on a paper. Find their English equivalents. (Seen)

One

Two

Three

2- Find the Persian equivalent for the following words and make four sentences with each of them (one in simple past tense, one in present perfect tense using ‘for’, one in simple future tense, and one in present continuous tense).

To change

To lose

Parents

Job

3- Say these numbers in Persian:

13 – 303 – 301 – 103 – 131 – 311 – 113 – 130

4- Follow the examples, combine the letters, and make words using the given letters. You’ll have to change the big letters into the small ones whenever needed.

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