The Good and Bad News:

The good news is that the Persian (a.k.a. Farsi) language has six basic vowel sounds that are consistent throughout word usage. This makes pronunciation in Persian relatively simple. Compare this to English where vowel sounds are filled with irregularities. In English, the letter "a" can have up to 40 different sounds. Take the word "America." The letter "a" here has a short "u" sound and the word is pronounced "uh-meri-kuh."

In addition, several vowels, and sometimes consonants, can come together and form completely different new sounds. For example, "eau" in beautiful is pronounced the same as "you." Now let's take that "ou" out of "you" and see how different it sounds when we put it in the word "out" and then in "enough." Now take a look at "eight", "ate", "great" and "bait". Same sound, different vowel combinations. And how is one supposed to pronounce "Phoenix"?

So you see, a person learning to read Persian doesn't have to put up with all that vowel craziness that English speakers do. Think of how much this must simplify Persian phonics.

But wait! What's the bad news?

Short Vowels: zir-o-ze-bar

The bad news is that the Three short vowels in the Persian language are rarely shown in writing. These vowels are represented by "zir-o-ze-bar" - vowel signs - as follows:

fat-he: A slash placed just above the consonant it follows. Gives the short "a" sound as in "man" or "apple".	a
kasreh: A slash placed just below the consonant it follows. Gives the short "e" sound as in "bed".	e
zammeh: A mini"vAv" placed above the consonant it follows. Gives a short, quick "o" sound as in "oh"	o

A literate person is expected to know how to read a word without seeing the short vowels. Even dictionaries often don't show them. Try this English sentence without its short vowels:

Th Ct St n th Mt.

What does that say? "The Cat Sat On the Mat", of course.

In our transliteration section, we explain why we don't use zirozebar in our Persian Word Magnet Kits. The short answer is, it's to help your mind identify words without the marks, and also because a consonant string that makes up a word can have different vowels and be different words. Click here to go to the transliteration page for the full explanation.

ezAfe

Important note about modifiers: In Persian, the modifier and the modified are connected with an “ezAfe”. This is an “e” sound which is never shown but always pronounced that comes at the end of the modifier. While it looks like “Pedar shomA”, you have to sound it out as “Pedar-e shomA”. It can be translated to mean "of" (e.g., "father of you").

Long Vowels - A, u, i

Practice: The wind, the willow, the buddha and the benz

Here are some handy words to practice the vowels with. Let's start with the long vowels. Get your Persian friends to help you say the following:

We chose these words because they all start with "b" and end with "d".

Now here are words that use the invisible zirozebar. We show them here, but remember, usually, you wont' get that luxury.

Now say:

OK, let's put it all together, without the zirozebar, as it would appear in a book. This gives us a lovely poem that says "There was wind. There was a willow. The buddha was on the (mercedes) benz":