How Persian writing works

This course uses Standard Tehran Persian. Persian writing runs right to left, with spaces between words and no capitals.

Listen to water and bread. These four orientation pages have no quizzes. You can listen without being expected to recognise any sign yet.

Persian has 32 letters: the Arabic letters plus four of its own. Spoken Persian has six vowels: short a, e, o and long ā, ī, ū.

Its 32 letters join in context, so one letter can have up to four shapes. ا د ذ ر ز ژ و never join to the next letter on their left; they leave a small gap inside a word.

Short a/e/o vowels are normally unwritten. کتاب is ketāb and گل is gol, although neither e nor o appears on the page. Long ā, ī and ū are written with letters.