Persian/Lesson 4

In lessons 1, 2, and 3, you learned some greetings, the first twenty-nine letters of the Persian Alphabet, and how to spell and pronounce several words with those letters.

In this lesson, you will learn the final three letters (ﻭ ‹vâv›, ﻩ ‹he› and ى ‹ye›), diacritics, and the remaining rules for reading and writing Persian vowels. You will also learn about a Persian tradition called ‹haft sin›.

Dialogue: ‹esm-e šomâ ci e?›
Reza meets Shirin:
 * The dialogue below and those in subsequent lessons are shown in both Persian script and UniPers. Some of the Persian letters used below are explained later in this lesson, so read the UniPers transcription for now, then come back to read the Persian script version after completing this lesson.


 * }

Explanation
 * Shirin meets Reza.

Vocabulary

 

و ‹vâv›
The letter و does not connect with the following letter. It is pronounced in different ways, depending on the word: ‹v›, ‹u›, or ‹o›.



The word is shown on the right, demonstrating that و ‹vâv› is pronounced as the consonant ‹v› in some words.



The word is shown on the right, demonstrating that و ‹vâv› is pronounced as the long vowel ‹u› in some words.



The long vowel sound ‹u› may also occur at the beginning of a word, in which case it is spelled with initial او, as demonstrated on the right in.



Some Persian words that were originally pronounced with the long vowel sound ‹u› are pronounced today with the sound ‹o›, but their spelling has not changed. So و sometimes represents the sound ‹o› in Modern Persian:



ه ‹he›
The letter is often pronounced like ‹h›, just like the Persian letter. To distinguish between them, a Persian speaker may specify by saying ‹he-ye jimi›, in reference to the similar form shared with. Or, because of the traditional arrangements of letters in chronograms, they may be distinguished as for  and  for.

The connecting forms of ه ‹he› are shown on the right in a typical Persian style. There are several variations, though, so you may run across any of the following:

At the end of a word, often is not pronounced as ‹h›, but just indicates that the word ends in the sound ‹e›:



ی ‹ye›
The last Persian letter,, has a few different pronunciations: ‹y›, ‹i›, or ‹ey›. Its isolated and final forms vary significantly from its initial and medial forms: It has a tail and no dots in the isolated and final forms, but it has two dots and no tail in the initial and medial forms,.



In, ی as the first letter of the word is pronounced ‹y›.



As the examples and  show on the right, ی as the second letter of the word is pronounced as ‹i›.

In, ی as the last letter of the word is pronounced as ‹i›.






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Ligatures
Certain combinations of letters are written in a combined form known as a ligature.



When is followed by, they combine to form the ligature , as shown on the right.

The lâm-alef ligature appears in the greeting.



In an ezafe construction after a word ending in ‹he›, the ی is sometimes written in a small form over the ه, i.e. as. It looks like a hamze, and is considered such by some, but others consider this a ligature of ه‌ی.

Diacritics
Like the accent mark over the e in café, Persian diacritics (symbols written above or below the letters) are not actual letters in the Persian alphabet.



Tashdid is a mark that looks like a small, curly w, placed above a consonant to double or strengthen it. It may be omitted, but is used in many situations for clarity.

The symbol on the right is called. It is never at the beginning of a word and has different pronunciations, depending on whether it is in a native Persian word or one borrowed from Arabic.



In Persian words, hamze may be written over silent final ‹he› ( هٔ ), as shown on the right, to represent the sound ‹ye› in a construction called ‹ezâfe› that will be explained in Lesson 6. The hamze for this purpose is usually left unwritten and is only added for extra clarity. Rarely, it is used in the same way with words ending in ی (that is, ئ ).

Historically, Persian words with the sounds ‹âi› or ‹ui› were written with a hamze (that is, with ائی or وئی ) to show that the vowel sounds were separate, but today such words are usually written with a doubled ی (that is, ‹âi› is written as ایی and ‹ui› as ویی ) instead. Similarly, words ending with ‹ei› were once written as هٔ, but today that ending is written as ه‌ای.



As shown on the right, ئـ is used in some foreign words, like (from French juin), to show a transition between vowels.

<br style="clear:both" /> In words taken from Arabic, like the ones on the right, hamze may appear anywhere after the first letter of a word to represent a glottal stop [ʔ], i.e. the same ‹’› sound that represents. Usually, though, أ is written without the hamze, e.g.,.

<br style="clear:both" />

At the end of an Arabic word, ء is usually silent and written by itself, e.g..

Arabic loanwords ending with a final are sometimes still spelled that way, but the final hamze in such words is silent, so the hamze is usually omitted. For example, is now usually written.

Short vowel marks
In children's books and some other learning resources, short vowel are marked using the following symbols:
 * , called or , is used to represent short ‹a›. E.g.
 * , called or, is used to represent ‹e›.
 * , called or, is used to represent ‹o›.

The short vowel diacritics may be doubled at the end of an Arabic loanword to indicate that the vowel is followed by ‹-n›, known as (also, ). In Arabic, the signs indicate grammatical case endings: (nominative),  (accusative), and  (genitive).

A related mark is, also called. It is used to indicate the absence of a vowel and is written as a superscripted o:

Exercises

 * What are the names of and sounds represented by the following letters?


 * Non-connecting letters.
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 * }
 * }
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 * Read these words by breaking them down into their component parts.


 * }


 * Determine which of these words has unwritten vowels (vowels not included in the spelling of the word).


 * }


 * See if you can recognize these familiar words.


 * }

Review
In this lesson, you learned the final letters of the Persian Alphabet and some diacritics. You also learned about a Persian tradition called ‹haft sin›.

Congratulations! You now know how to read, write, and pronounce Persian words!