Useful Drills 2
As you know, practice makes perfect! Every week, along with each lesson, you are given some words to practice. I know that, as a beginner, you will find it difficult to read the entire words by yourself. Therefore, you are not asked to either read or write these words at this stage. Please do not try to pronounce these words on your own or you will remain in an insolvable confusion for good. All you have to do is identify the letters you have already studied. So, first go to the This week and study the new lesson carefully. Then click on the Useful drills button to get connected to this page. On this page you will find some words that seem quite stranger to you at the first glance. Nevertheless, you must at least be able to recognize the letters you have just studied on This week. And this is all I want you to do.
NOTE: as you see in the following words, there are no symbols (signs) on or under the letters. We, as beginners, use these symbols during our lessons to learn the correct pronunciation of the words. Later, after you got enough familiarity with the words and the way they are pronounced you would find it redundant to use these symbols with letters, except for some ambiguous words that are not used very often. I have eliminated these symbols on purpose to let you see the real Persian words that take no symbols with them.
Notes: 1- it is recommended that you visit Let's Write page first before doing these exercises. It will certainly help you a lot with detecting the letters.
2- please pronounce the letters that we have already studied. For those letters that we haven't studied yet, just find the long vowels but don't pronounce them.
3- as you see, the majority of the long vowels are the combination of two letters. Here, all you need to do is find a letter combined with 
or 
or 
or 
, and 
that stands alone.
Examples:
<= 
pronounced as /ba:/ in barter.
<= 
pronounced as /bi:/ in beat.
<= + pronounced as /i:/ in eat.
Note: Although the letter or (the small form of the same letter) can be potentially pronounced as long /i:/ at the time of combining with long vowels, they must come after a letter to accept long /i:/. Otherwise, when alone, is pronounced as /ye/, not /i:/. Here, the small letter lets us pronounce as long /i:/, not /ye/. You may also see the combination of , which pronounced as /bi:/.
<= 
pronounced as /bu:/ in boot
Questions:
In the following words, how many. do you detect?
1. long vowel /a:/?
2. long vowel /i:/?
3. long vowel /u:/?
Please try to answer the questions first. Then, if you want to be sure, find the correct answers at the bottom of the following words.
The answers:
1. 21 ===> Please note that
the letter at the start of the last word in the 4th line ( 
), and the one at the start of the second word in the last line (
) do not pronounce /a:/. They help us pronounce which is next to /alef/, as long /i:/ , not /a:/.
2. 12 ===> If comes before , it is pronounced as 
/ya:/. Like this word: 
3. 3
Pictorial answer:
1 - 2 - 3