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About Easy Persian

About Easy Persian

Hassan and Mimi 2013
Easy Persian is a totally Free source for you if you are looking for comprehensive Online lessons to learn Persian or Farsi as spoken in Iran. It also helps you write in Farsi with step by step instructions. Please note that the Farsi in Iran, mostly the spoken language, is a bit different from the the Farsi in Tajikestan and the Dari language currently spoken in Afghanistan. Yet, they are very similar and very much understandable.

In addition to Free Lessons, this site provides you with some Persian music with English translation, introduces great contemporary poets of Iran such as Nima, Ahmad Shamlu, Sohrab Sepehri, Forough Farrokhzad, and Fereydoon Moshiri with brief notes on their works in English, and presents their poems with English translation. You may also enjoy the free Persian chat room now!

Easy Persian was started on 19 October, 2001. If you’re interested to know more about the author’s life – read all about it in his life story The Flagless Ones.

Each and every content throughout this site including all lessons, all poetry explanations, and all personal stories are copyrighted to Easy Persian. Any kind of reproducing the contents of this site without the written permission from the webmaster is strictly forbidden.

Please help keep Easy Persian free for everyone.




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Persian or Farsi?

I would love to express my deepest respect and sincere love to all of you who have been visiting this site from across the globe and do care for our language and culture, as well as for our country.

I would also love to express my special thanks to those Iranians for their corrections. There is one term they have been focusing on repeatedly as ambiguous or insufficient on this site. This term is the word ‘Farsi’.

Farsi is the ‘Arabized’ equivalent for ‘Parsi’. Since there is no /p/ sound in Arabic language, the Arabs replaced /p/ of Parsi with /f/ after they invaded Iran. Parsi refers to Persia and means ‘of Persia’ or ‘of Iran’, the English version of which is Persian, while ‘Farsi’ conveys no message about the background of Iran (known as Persia in history). In this regard, ‘Persian’ is equal to ‘Iranian’.

Today, the Iranians use the term Farsi for their language only. The English equivalent of ‘Farsi’ is ‘Persian’ (Like Deutsch and German). Iranians prefer Persian to Farsi since Persian has a broader meaning and could be used for all Iran-related items (such as Persian language, Persian cat, Persian rug / carpet, Persian literature, Persian Gulf, and so on) while Farsi fails to do so.

In short, Persian language is the official language in Iran. The Iranians call this language ‘Farsi’. There is one more thing to add to this short explanation and that is about ‘Persian’ and ‘Iranian’. Remember that all native Persians are Iranian, or at least were Iranian at some point in history (like those in Tajikistan and Afghanistan), but not all Iranians are Persian! EX: All native New Yorkers are American, but not all Americans are New Yorkers! Iran today has wide variety of ethnic groups one of which is Persian. The contemporary ‘Persian’, as an ethnic group, in Iran mostly refers to those whose native language is the language of the capital city named Tehran. Such ethnic groups like Kurd, Turk, Turkman, Balouch, Gilak, Mazan, even Arab and others who are originally from Iran are also Iranian. However, not all of them are Persian.

I know some of you maybe still not satisfied with this Persian or Farsi discussion. However, this is the shortest way I could present here and you’d better dive into the history to find more if interested (and if you think history is true)!!

More About This Site

The Links page will also give you all you have been looking for; such as

  • Free Farsi Word processing programs, Windows, Software, and Persian dictionary to use online or to download
  • Online Farsi Language Learning and Poetry Resources and Calligraphy Lessons
  • Daily news about Iran broadcasted by different online radios, newspapers, and TVs
  • Persian name with English meaning
  • Daily weather forcast in different cities of Iran

And many other valuable pages that will take you months to find.

You have probably had the unpleasant experience of spending some time with people who are speaking a language that you don’t understand. They spend hours talking and having fun together but you might find it even boring if you asked them to translate their conversations.

Each language has it’s own structure, complexity, images, ambiguity, simile, metaphor, as well as many other kinds of figure of speech, and more important the local color that make it difficult to render into another language. That is to say, no translations can fully replace the original message. That’s why I have created this site!

In creating this site, I have tried hard to choose the best applicable way, which starts from the very scratch and takes you to the very advanced level. It goes beyond memorizing some single expressions.

Although lack of enough resources and facilities have imposed breathtaking impasse on me for many times, my deep and pure love has been my biggest support to let me believe in my success. That’s why I have tried my best not to let the quality of the lessons be overshadowed by these factors.

During these lessons you’ll experience four basic skills in learning Persian: Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing. You’ll learn how to write, read and speak Persian from the very beginning. Although the explanations and hints of the lessons are comprehensive enough to let you learn the words correctly, some very short recorded sounds are inserted in appropriate places to help you correct your pronunciations through listening, if necessary. These all can be satisfactory enough to help you get your career in gear even if you know nothing at all about Persian language.

Just try it once and you’ll find yourself addicted!!