Learn Persian with Chai and Conversation

In this Persian/Farsi lesson, we learn how to talk about love and friendship. We learn common terms of endearment, how to compliment a loved one, and how to talk about your marital status. We also learn how to say 'I love you' in Farsi, which might be a bit more complicated than you would think. There's not a direct translation of 'I love you.' Rather, you could say 'I am in love with you' (man āsheghetam), or 'I like you' (doostet dāram) which often gets used in the place of 'I love you'. The most common term of endearment in the Persian language is jān or joon (either one works). This is often said after a loved one's name. For instance, if you are talking to your friend named Sarah, you could call them 'Sarah joon' to show them that you really care for them. You could also use it to call a family member. For instance, the word for maternal uncle in Persian is dāyee. Uncles are often called 'dāyee joon' meaning dear uncle.

In Lesson 18, we learn how to talk about the weather, and how to tell what time it is.

In this Persian/Farsi lesson, we learn all about how to describe things. We begin with the colors in the Persian language: black seeyāh سیاهwhite sefeed سِفیدred sorkh سُرخ ghermez قِرمِزorange nāranjee نارَنجیyellow zard زَردgreen sabz سَبزblue ābee آبیpurple banafsh بَنَفشbrown ghahveyee قَهوِیی After that, we go over some common descriptive words, and use them to describe chickens specifically. The descriptive words we go over include:bigsmallquickslownice lookinguglyexpensivecheapAnd more! We go over a dialogue in which we talk about expensive cars. 

It's hard to talk about Persian food without wanting to eat it, so we apologize for this lesson in advance. In this Persian/Farsi lesson, we will go over different mealtimes that come up in every culture, such as: breakfast - sobhāné lunch - nāhār dinner - shām and a few other meals in between. We learn how to call people to a meal, and talk about a few different extremely popular Persian foods.  We also learn how to leave a party. In Persian culture, leaving requires a whole ritual- it's not a simple process. So for instance, Iranians never simply say they have to go. Instead, they use the phrase 'bāyad yavāsh yavāsh beram,' which literally means 'I have to slowly, slowly go.' This begins the incremental process of leaving. They use the phrase a few times in order to warn the host that they're about to leave. It takes a few more steps to actually accoplish this task however, such as getting up, standing by the door for a while, standing by the car for a while, etc. Iranians just like to keep the party going.

Continuing with the theme of hosting and being hosted, the theme of this Persian / Farsi lesson is a visit to the in-laws on a Saturday afternoon. We follow Matt on a hypothetical visit to his in-laws house, and a potential conversation as they try to serve him food. We also talk about formal speech- as we've said before, Persian culture errs on the side of formality, especially when talking to elders. Because there's an informal and formal way of addressing 'you', it's very important to choose the correct form, especially when dealing with the in-laws. For this reason, we'll go over how to ask questions in a formal way, and speaking respectfully. This will get you a lot of points with you Iranian in-laws. We also go over how to talk about whether or not we are hungry or thirsty, because as you may know, Iranians LOVE to feed people and often will not take 'no' for an answer. KEY CONCEPTS: More about the formal and informal forms of 'you'Formal phrases to use with in-lawsHow to 'tarof' by asking someone to 'help themselves' or say 'please'Talking about hunger or thirst

In this Persian / Farsi lesson, we learn how to talk about possession. We start the lesson by learning the example of a house (khooné). To say 'my house', you simply say 'khooneyé man'. In order to talk about possession, we have to learn the different words for groups of people, which are:me: manyou (informal): tōyou (formal): shomāour: mātheir: ānhāhis/her: eeshoonWe then learn to ask who owns a certain belonging, and then learn the vocabulary words for different places around town.KEY CONCEPTS:PossessionHow to ask who owns somethingVocabulary for places around town  

in this lesson, we are going to cover the concept of being hosted, either at someone's house or at an establishment. Iranians love to host people. For instance, when you visit someone of Persian decent at their home, they will most likely immediately offer you tea. So in this lesson we learn vocabulary that is associated with hosting or being hosted, including the names of different beverages, and how to offer things to guest or accept offerings. KEY CONCEPTS: Names of beverages you'll be offered in an Iranian household (hint, chāi is at the top of the list) The names of alcoholic beverages How to offer something when you are hosting How to accept or decline an offer when being hosted Some polite vocabulary such as thank you (merci) and please (lotfan)

In this Persian / Farsi, we go beyond numbers one through twenty and learn how to say ALL the numbers. In addition, we learn the Persian words for the months of the year, the days of the week, and seasons. This is a very vocabulary rich lesson, so it might take some practice to get all the words commited to memory!KEY CONCEPTS:All numbers and how to put them togetherThe Persian days of the weekThe months of the Western calendarThe seasonsOrdinal numbers (first, second, third, etc.)How to say the date

When talking to someone in something other than your native language, it sometimes helps to know what other languages they speak. This not only helps you to learn more about a person, but can also potentially give you insight into other things you have in common with them. In this Persian / Farsi lesson, we learn how to talk about the languages we can speak, learn the words for different languages, and learn to speak about the proficiency with with we speak certain languages. Also, importantly, we learn how to tell people to slow down if they're speaking too fast for us to understand.KEY CONCEPTS:Telling others which languages we can speakTelling others the proficiency with which we can speak those languagesThe names for different popular languagesAsk others to slow down when speakingAsk others how to say something in Persian

This is the last lesson in ‘Unit 1′ of Learn Persian with Chai and Conversation. In this lesson, we review all the materials learned before, and learn some extra vocabulary that will help you to communicate effectively in the Persian language! Congratulations on reaching the end of ‘Unit 1′! The bonus materials of this lesson include exercises in which you can review your knowledge of what we've learned so far.