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66 Comments

  1. Jennifer
    May 22, 2012 @ 6:17 pm

    I’m a bit confused. Does big letter A stand only alone, or does it come at the beginning of words?

    • Amer Khan
      February 1, 2013 @ 8:49 pm

      big A always comes at start. and its pronounce is like (Aa)

    • Ali
      November 6, 2015 @ 3:27 am

      Hi Jennifer. I’m Ali from Iran. In persian (آ) come in begging of word and you cant use that in middle or end of word. If you want I help you , please contact me with gmail. This is my mail:
      M.kiani1400@gmail.
      Persian is hard to learn for European but it’s one of sweetest language in world.
      Good luck

  2. RC Joseph
    May 28, 2012 @ 10:44 am

    Jennifer,

    Letter A stands alone and comes at the beginning of words only – pronounced as a/ in Arm

  3. Maren
    July 12, 2012 @ 9:42 pm

    When you say at beginning, do you mean in the beginning seen from Left to right (like the big letter L is in the beginning of Left), or from right to left (like “sihT”). Great site btw!

    • Preeti
      September 7, 2012 @ 7:55 pm

      It would be from right to left.

  4. Ajay
    September 2, 2012 @ 9:50 am

    commendable efforts to make it learn effortlessly

  5. nicole
    October 5, 2012 @ 8:12 pm

    hi. im learning farsi for a story im working on (im a writer)and this site is unbelievably helpful i just have one question: how does the little a accept the long vowels, what does it look like with the big y and little y. im confused. thanks for your help.

  6. rik
    October 8, 2012 @ 5:06 am

    Omg than you so much. Do you also have an application we can download for our phone

    • helya
      September 17, 2014 @ 8:37 am

      if your Y is going at the end of your word then you would use to big Y (the squiggly line) but if its the middle word you should use the little Y (two dots below)
      hope this helps

  7. Dobbs DeCorsey
    October 19, 2012 @ 4:57 am

    You should make an app for this website. I wish I ciuld easily take it on the go, but I dont have any 3g on my tablet so when I’m in the car there’s no way that I can access this website. Really consider making this an app with interactive writing tools.

  8. Antonio Q.
    November 18, 2012 @ 9:27 pm

    Woow thank you very much! I want to learn farsi since A long time! I was trying to find a farsi teacher here im Mexico City but it is quite expensive! This site is really useful. Thank you verymuch for taking the time helping ppl to learn farsi!

  9. Richard J
    January 1, 2013 @ 3:07 pm

    “This is the big letter ‘Y’ in Persian. Only this letter can be pronounced as /i:/ sound. /i:/ as in see.” There is no “i” in see or am I missing something here. Downloads would help here so that I can hear the sound.

    • Luke
      January 1, 2013 @ 3:27 pm

      He means the ‘i’ sound, like in Italian, e.g. in the word “si”, or “pizza”. That sound is often written in English with two e’s, like “bee”, or “see”, or “teeth”, or sometimes with ea, like “sea”, and a couple of other ways too. Of course, English has a lot of irregular spellings (where the same sound is written in different ways, like “sea”, “bee”, “piece”) and irregular pronunciations (where the same letter or group of letters is pronounced in different ways, like the letter “i” in “pizza” (/i/), “bit” (/ɪ/), or “price” (/aɪ/), to name a few.), so here is the link to the Wikipedia article on the sound he means, with an audio sample (under the picture of the “i” on the top right of the article):
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_front_unrounded_vowel

      If you need any more help, (I’m not an expert at all, but) feel free to e-mail me at “[email protected]”, and I will see what I can do.

      [Note: all of the letters in /’s, like /i/, is referring to their transcription (how they are written down) in the IPA, or International Phonetic Alphabet, which you can read more about here:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet%5D

    • Richard J
      January 1, 2013 @ 3:39 pm

      Later downloads in lesson helped thanks i think ive mastered it.

  10. Mel
    January 16, 2013 @ 3:14 am

    So I have gotten up to lesson 11 and Im still a little confused about the short vowels. If Im reading a word how do I know if its going to be e, a or i. Kind of like the word – Shoma which is one of the You words. I get that ma is a long vowel But when I learned the character in shoma it was described as Shin. How do I know when Im reading Shoma in persian I dont read it as Shinma or Shima?

  11. HAZ
    January 24, 2013 @ 12:15 pm

    dear Mel, “Shin” is the name of the character having the sound “sh”. I’m sure as you go on with the lessons it will be easier to differentiate between reading it has Shoma or Shima, you will get a sense of it, although it seems hard at first.

  12. Despina
    February 22, 2013 @ 5:06 pm

    Dear Mr Hassan,
    your lessons are absolutely dettailed with a rare method. The whole project is wonderful. Congratulations. Thank you for this site.
    yours faithfully
    Despina Asimakopoulou (Athens-Greece)

  13. wafaa
    April 15, 2013 @ 7:20 pm

    Hello,
    I know Arabic and English , Any one could trade ?I could teach you one of these languages and you could teach me Farsi :)
    My yahoo
    [email protected]

    Regards
    Wafaa

  14. Amir
    May 23, 2013 @ 5:59 am

    Hi,
    I am a native Iranian and living in Iran.
    I will be happy to help everyone that wants to leering Persian.
    This is my email: [email protected]

  15. Sarah
    May 28, 2013 @ 1:31 am

    Wow this is amazing! I look forward to learning Persian through your site. This is perfect! Thank you!

  16. Luis Alfonso
    June 24, 2013 @ 2:05 pm

    Greetings all and Dear Professor,
    Thank you for this valuable tool, I am enjoying it immensely!

    • mohammad
      June 28, 2013 @ 4:06 am

      good boy:D

  17. Irfan Ali
    June 27, 2013 @ 6:28 am

    i like the pronunciation of farsi very much

  18. mohammad
    June 28, 2013 @ 4:07 am

    hi
    I’m iranian
    add me to teach you persain
    [email protected]

    • Taraneh
      March 19, 2014 @ 2:26 am

      Persian

  19. Antonio
    June 29, 2013 @ 8:16 pm

    I don’t exactly understand one thing. Do long vowels “attach” do letters while short vowels don’t?

  20. Pooja
    July 28, 2013 @ 4:57 pm

    In last chapter in terms of vowels there was no big no small..here it is and usage is only described with big vowles. I am not understanding it here.

  21. Vel
    August 14, 2013 @ 2:02 am

    does persian have long “e” sound? I mean, “e” like in “bed” only longer pronounced.
    and, does persian have short “i” sound? I mean, “i” like in “fit”.

    thanks

    • Bob
      August 6, 2015 @ 1:09 pm

      About long e , yes it does.but In standard dialect of persian wich we speak in Teheran, we dont have short “i” at all. But in Dari dialect and tajiki persian wich they speak in afghanistan and tajikistan, they have short i.

  22. Cindy
    September 8, 2013 @ 12:56 am

    Salam, Can you see this comment? I am looking to learn Farsi. Please email me if you can help. [email protected]

  23. Kamran
    October 9, 2013 @ 7:35 am

    Hi,
    Thank you!

    I have one question from this lesson:
    So are the long vowels just letters that can express a sound (act as a vowel) but CAN be a letter with different pronunciation (act as consonant)? However the short vowels are NOT letters, correct?

  24. Margaret Zambrano
    October 10, 2013 @ 12:24 pm

    thank you very much for the great job!! I love the persian language!!!!

  25. Micah
    October 10, 2013 @ 5:12 pm

    I’m also confused with the long vowels. As Kamran above me said, are the long vowels BOTH letters and sounds (vowels) that attach to words, while the short vowels are ONLY sounds that do NOT attach to words? There seems to be much difference between the short vowels and long vowels. Thanks

    • Brian
      October 10, 2013 @ 8:25 pm

      Micah, you are correct. The terms long and short in the way Hassan is using them don’t have the same meaning that you may be used to in discussing linguistics. In fact, using the terms may cause too much confusion. You don’t have to think in terms of long & short. For now, it’s probably enough to know that there are three unwritten vowel sounds and three written letters with vowel sounds.

      • Kamran
        October 26, 2013 @ 9:03 am

        Thank you!

    • Bob
      August 6, 2015 @ 1:43 pm

      Dont be confused. The “Long” and the “short” that he said is not about the sounds ,its all about the letters and alphabet. all of your problem is about the persian script rather than Persian language itself. Our alphabet like hebrew and arabic is Abjad , that means alphabet without any letters for vowels included. We just have consoant letters in our alphabet. Actualy they invented some small signs like َ. ِ. ُ. to show the vowels. This small signs come above or under the consonants to show the sound as in this alphabet all vowels attach to each cosonant of a word. For example if you want to write an english word like “International” in persian alphabet it would be : ایـنـتِـرنَـشـنـال wich includes ایـ for I sound, ن for N , تـ for T ,this little ِ. for E sound, ر for R, again نــ for N, a َ. for A sound, شــ for “tio” as its prounounced /sh/, نــ for N, ا for the A (its the only vowel that has a letter in persian alphabet altough literarly it also doesnt but practicaly it has), and a ل for L. So learning persian alphabet maybe is a bit difficult even for some native speakers, but the Language itself is so easy.

  26. anushaw askari
    October 23, 2013 @ 8:41 am

    wonderfully explained. very precise and helpful! amazed to find such a wonderful site to learn persian, finally!!

  27. majalmirasol
    October 30, 2013 @ 2:17 am

    Typo: Toady we will pronounce it with the long vowels too.

  28. Iris Marquela Santamaria Jurado
    November 8, 2013 @ 10:27 pm

    felicidades al señor q tomo esta iniciativa de este curso

  29. Rewend
    December 22, 2013 @ 12:24 pm

    I can’t find the next lesson,how I can find it? Please help me.

    • Jafar
      December 22, 2013 @ 6:25 pm

      https://www.easypersian.com/lesson-archive-1/

      Go to that website and click on the lesson you need, also at the bottom of each lesson is a “next lesson” button.

      • Rewend
        December 22, 2013 @ 6:28 pm

        Thanks a lot.

  30. Asrar
    March 13, 2014 @ 8:06 pm

    Amazing teaching methods and explanations. Very accurate and realistic! Thank you for providing these free online lessons to the public.

  31. Taraneh
    March 19, 2014 @ 2:19 am

    You forgot one of the vowels of the alefba alphabet amongst other mistakes made upon the Farsi language on your website.

  32. Carl P.
    April 20, 2014 @ 1:46 pm

    Wow! Thx so much. You explain everything so clearly! :)

  33. OMID
    May 14, 2014 @ 5:10 am

    WOW this is legit if i was white and i wanted to learn farsi it would be great too bad i type farsi like an old person and can’t use it in a practical sense
    مرسی

  34. sean
    June 16, 2014 @ 3:12 am

    “Now that we are familiar with the long vowel /a:/ in Persian,” you never said that /a:/ was the first long vowel. s: bit of confusion there. s:

  35. sean
    June 16, 2014 @ 3:15 am

    so the “y” is a vowel?

    • Cataphract
      October 8, 2014 @ 5:50 pm

      both vowel and letter

  36. Soi
    June 17, 2014 @ 8:47 am

    I’m confused with the “long A” sound that you are describing. To me, the long A sound is in the word “hay” and the word “arm” sounds more like a short sounding A.

    • Cataphract
      October 8, 2014 @ 6:16 pm

      There is no difference between big A and little a in pronunciation.one of the differences is placing
      the second one is about vowels.
      the big “A” ” آ ” NEVER accept vowels and always sound like ” hay” that you mentioned
      but as a letter small “a” ” ا ” accept all other vowels. while the small a as vowel can attach to other letters like : ب+ا=با (ba:means “with”)
      as a letter:
      small a ” ا ” + ” َ ” = ” اَ ” that sound like “bad”
      small a ” ا ” + ” ِ ” = ” اِ ” that sound like “bed”
      small a ” ا ” + ” ُ ” = ” اُ ” that sound like “chord”
      small a ” ا ” + ” ی ” = ” ای ” that sound like “milk”
      small a ” ا ” + ” و ” = ” او ” that sound like “rude”

  37. David
    January 15, 2015 @ 4:11 am

    You showed in lesson #1 how short vowels are written using signs on or under letter, and in normal writing they aren’t usually written out, you just learn to recognize the words. In this lesson #2 long vowels appear to be actual letters, so unlike short vowels, are they always written out?

    Also, as far as I can tell, Long “a” is pronounced like the English word “awe.” This seems closer to what I’m hearing than “arm” does. Please CORRECT ME if I’m wrong on that, it just seems like every other time a word with “ar” or “er” has been used for help with vowel pronunciation they wanted me to pronounce the “r” as well, like in French. This time it didn’t seem to be the case, so I was just checking, but it’s been bugging me.

    Finally, I got the impression that the Persian letter “y” already has a prescribed vowel associated with it [ye] for when it’s not used as the long vowel [e:], but I may be wrong. I’m sure I’ll figure it out once we get to the rest of the alphabet.

    Oh, and thank you so much for this website, it’s the best one of it’s type that I’ve ever seen!

  38. Olla
    May 13, 2015 @ 2:28 pm

    Hello, I speak and write Arabic and I’m familiar with the Farsi differences, can I just skip the letters intro?

    • Persian boy
      August 16, 2015 @ 8:23 am

      no because there are 4 letter in persian that there are not in arabic

  39. Ding Yi
    May 15, 2015 @ 4:40 am

    Can you show me an example how to use those small letters of [a:], [i:], and {u:]? I noticed b+a, just use the big A. Thanks

    • Sam
      January 19, 2016 @ 6:29 pm

      The example in the text above uses b+small a – as Hassan says in the text, I believe large A is a standalone letter only and cannot be joined with any other letters.
      Similarly, he says that there is only one letter used for u – so there is no such thing as big u or small u, they are both the same.

      However, I am a little confused as to how to write small [y] (or [i:] alongside another letter – can anybody help?

  40. Carroll
    October 16, 2015 @ 3:15 am

    全然不同的語言及文字系統,我對波斯語充滿好奇且深深著迷。感謝網站版主的熱心讓我有機會學習這有趣的語文,也期盼自己能繼續學完所有課程。
    Totally different language system compare to what I used to use in my country,I’m very enjoy in learning. Thanks very much for the website builder(s). I wish I can finish all the courses in the future.

  41. sally
    November 30, 2015 @ 9:55 pm

    اوه خدای من
    فکر نمیکردم انقدر فارسی اسون باشه
    خیلی هم زبان شیرینیه
    عاشقشم

  42. ahmad
    December 23, 2015 @ 4:12 pm

    زبان فارسی بر گرفته از زبان فارسی میانه و فارسی میانه بر گرفته از زبان پهلوی و زبان پهلوی برگرفته از زبان فارسی باستان و فارسی باستان برگفته از زبان های ایرانی شرقی منجمله اوستایی ست

  43. Samar
    February 29, 2016 @ 5:26 pm

    Thk u so much

  44. Richard Zelnicek
    May 2, 2016 @ 7:56 pm

    Excellent way to teach copletelly new language. I pased 2 weeks in 1 evening. I am not so in a hurry, but I think that it is one chapter. Mainly I enjoyed writing. It is so easy. Keep on.

    I would appreciate link to some Persian “caligraphy” (art of writing). In my country the handwriting is considered as highest sign of good education.

  45. Ric Reifel
    May 19, 2016 @ 3:02 pm

    Loving this site, VERY good work. Two things. In this lesson above you miss-spelled TODAY as TOADY. Near the top.

    You identified a, and y but not the third other than with it’s sound. What letter is it and I would love to know their names… aleph etc.

    THANKS

  46. Mpho Mokoena
    August 28, 2016 @ 12:08 pm

    This website is a rarity. Textbooks hardly have this kind of user friendly language, someone always assumes prior knowledge, skipping something, trying to sound learned for impressions and does not consider his/her audience. Clearly this website should be archived as an achievement. Well done, Mr Hassan. I have gone through only two lessons and I have learned more than I did using other sources. As difficult as Farsi is to learn, I think for absolute beginners a less than academic but naive approach is necessary. You came through. Dazzling!

  47. Muhammad Rusydi
    February 10, 2017 @ 1:34 am

    I really enjoy your lesson in this site. I actually want to study more but because I cannot online every time I really need this lesson in the pdf version. If you have it, please tell me. خيلي ممنون برادر

    اسم من محمد رشدي هستم
    من دانشجو در اندونزي هستم

    (hopefully my introduction above is correct)

    • Hassan H.
      February 24, 2018 @ 9:14 pm

      Thank you, Muhammad. Currently pdf is not available. Sorry about that. Best.