Farsi, also known as Persian, is spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Bahrain, Iraq, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, as well as other area. A total of around 61 million people speak Farsi as a native language and at least another 49 million speak it as a second language. It is a member of the Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family.
The Farsi alphabet is based on the Arabic alphabet, although it has some additional letters that do not exist in Arabic. The Farsi alphabet consists of 32 letters. Some of letters, like "be", represent sounds that are familiar to English speakers. Others, like "gheyn", represent sounds that are not used in English. Most of the letters of the Farsi alphabet are consonants, with the exceptions of the letters "alef", "vaav", and "yaa". The letter "alef" is a long vowel, while "vaav" and "yaa" can be either consonants or long vowels depending on their placement within a word.
Farsi is usually written using only consonants and long vowels. Short vowels are not shown in writing, as if the word "container" were written as "cntnr". There are small marks which can be used above or below letters to indicate short vowels, but these diacritic marks are normally used only by children or by people learning Farsi as a foreign language. The short vowels are pronounced even though they are usually not written.
Farsi is written in a flowing script that runs from right to left, the opposite of English. Most Farsi letters connect to the letters preceding and following them, just as in English cursive writing. Because of these connections, letters often change shape depending on their placement within a word. Generally, a letter will have one shape at the beginning of a word, another shape in the middle of a word, a third shape at the end of a word, and a fourth shape when it is standing by itself.
The Farsi language has many loanwords, most of which come from Arabic, English, French, and the Turkic languages. Farsi has likewise influenced the vocabularies of many of these languages in turn.
Farsi grammar is comparatively simple. Farsi nouns do not have gender and there is only one case marker (used for the accusative case). Farsi adjectives usually follow the nouns they modify, although there are special constructions in which they may appear before the nouns. Verbs are conjugated by adding prefixes and suffixes to indicate tense, mood, and person. The most common word order is Subject-Object-Verb, although other orders are often possible.
Regular practice is important to learn to speak Farsi well. That's why good
Farsi software programs can be so useful. It's easier than ever to learn Farsi and to begin to speak Farsi with the language resources and Farsi language software from Transparent Language, such as
Languages of the World. We wish you the best of luck in your endeavors to learn Farsi!
