Vowels - a, e, o, A, u, i

The English language has five letters that represent vowels. These are a, e, i, o and u. While they only have five letters, they have hundreds of vowels SOUNDS. The letter "a", for example, has up to forty different sounds, including: the short a in cat, the long a in father, or the "u" sound in America ("uh-meri-kuh").

The Persian language, in contrast, has six vowel SOUNDS. [For more explanation on vowels, see the vowel section]. That means these sounds are constant. They don't change. Here is a chart that shows the English letter we use in our transliteration and the ONLY sound it represents in Persian. [Regionalisms may vary].

The challenge in transliterating vowels, then, is to clarify the vowel sounds associated with the English letters as we use them - limiting them to their Persian sounds.

MORAL: a, e, o, A, u, i. Make sure to consistently sound out each vowel in the transliteration line of our word magnets, and you will have the word down. Let's practice with a few tricky sample words.

An English reader seeing the transliteration "bale" might be tempted to pronounce it as "bail". In fact, it is pronounced "ba" (as in bat) + "le" (as in let). Ba-le. bale. Yes, it is. Some people said: put in an extra h after the short vowels. Transliterate it as "bahleh". But why? There is no "h" sound there.

Now let's take a look at the name "Babak." In English, of course, you use the same letter "a" to show two different "a" sounds, a long a as in "father" for the first syllable, and a short a as in "cat" for the second syllable. No wonder people are always mispronouncing poor Babak's name. The first syllable is supposed to sound like the English name "Bob" and the second like "back." If you use our transliteration vowels consistently, you'll get it right. bAbak.

We also like using the capital "A" in our transliteration because it looks like a mountain, and your voice is drawn up, lifted, to "climb" the mountain and pronounce the long "A". Also, in a way, having a capital letter in the middle of an English word evokes Persian script, which has no "capital letters" per se. Instead, words are broken up and the "final" or "detached" forms of letters appear in the middle and end of words. These forms give the impression of "capital" letters, but they aren't. (See Cursive section for more details).

Finally, let's take a look at the expression "bi xiAl". Pronounce the "bi" as "bee". Not "bye". And the xiAl is xee - all. (the "x" is a guttural that doesn't occur in English, see "unfamiliar consonants" below). We translate "bi" as "without" and "xiAl" as imagination, but the words together mean "don't worry about it" or "don't even think about it" (e.g., be without a thought).

And now we have some cool sentences:

bale, bAbak. bi xiAl.
Yes, Babak, don't worry about it.

Coming soon: Discussion of "ow" and "ey" sounds.

Unfamiliar Consonants

The Persian language has several consonants that are very difficult for English speakers to grasp. These sounds relate to the letters "qeyn", "qaf", "xeh" (all guttural sounds), "eyn" (a glottal stop), "zhe" (a "French" j) and "re" (Persians roll their R's). As Persian has consonants that English does not have, the transliteration challenge is to choose an English letter symbol for an unfamiliar Persian consonant sound. In the following table, we show our transliteration choices. For more information on unfamiliar consonants, click here.

	x	A guttural sound that doesn't occur in English. Similar to "ch" in the German "ich" or Scottish "loch".
	q	A guttural "g" accompanied by a rattling. The French "r" is an approximation. Some use "gh" to transliterate this. We use "q".
	q	A strong guttural like the sound made while gulping. We also show this as "q".
	'	This is a glottal stop. We show it with an apostrophe ('). However, in some cases when you see this letter, it is just acting as a placeholder for a short vowel sound.
	r	Persian's roll the "r". It sounds much more dramatic than the English "r".
	zh	This is the French "j" as in "je" or the "s" in "treasure". We show it as "zh". Many Persian names with this sound are written with "j" (Like "Bijan" or "Jaleh"), but you need to French-ify it.

Familiar Consonants

A chart of the transliteration of familiar consonants is shown in the right column. These letters are easy to transliterate as they have the same sound in English and in Persian. A few points to notice:

Lost in Transliteration

A note on our Persian Word Magnet kits: The three short vowels (a, e, o) in the Persian language are represented by small vowel signs (called “zirozebar”) placed above and below the consonant they follow. In a sense, many Persian words are just a string of consonants. (Compare "cat" with "ct").

Zirozebar are rarely shown in writing. Persians are expected to know how to read without seeing them. We use them in our alphabet card (included with the Magnetic Word Kits) and poster (coming soon), but not on the Magnetic Words themselves because we want people to get used to reading the words without them.

Also, we want the kit to be as versatile as possible for native speakers. The omission of vowels adds to the functionality of a word kit because some consonant strings can be several different words. For example, the string "shkr" could be “shekar” (sugar) or “shokr” (thanks). If we were to add zirozebar, it would limit us to just one pronounciation and definition. We like to keep our options open. Unfortunately, we don't have this luxury on the English side of the magnets. We have to choose one transliteration and stick with it. Don’t let this restriction on the English side limit your use of the word on the Persian side.

Note that throughout the website, we use the definition of the word as needed in the context we are using the word. If you get a magnet kit, the definition may vary from what you see on the website, since in general we tried to go for the shortest definition of the word on the magnets.

Coming soon - Sound recordings

Until then, here is a website that has recordings of Persian words and phrases online. You have to scroll down a bit and click on the type of phrase you want to listen to.