Persian Vowels Explained: Short and Long Sounds in Farsi (Beginner Guide)

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Hi everyone, welcome to my Persian corner. My name is Ponta and today we're going to talk about vowels in Persian.

[00:00:06]So if you're just starting out learning Persian and studying the alphabet or maybe you speak a little but you want to learn the script, then this video is perfect for you. So let's go ahead and get started. The good news is that unlike English, Persian vowels are regular. But also unlike English, Persian vowels are sometimes invisible.

[00:00:27]What does that mean? Well, there's six vowels in Persian. Three letters and three diiocritics. Let's look at the letters first.

[00:00:36]Starting with alf. And um I write this as the phonetically as the a with a little like arrow on top. And the pronunciation is a like car or father.

[00:00:51]Then there's y um which at you know depending on its position as a vowel sound it can be e like green but sometimes it can also be y like yellow and we'll talk about the difference. And then there's vv uh which is a master of disguises and we'll talk about you know the different pronunciations but as a vowel sound it's pronounced oo like blue and then we have three diiocritics. Now it's the diiacitics that are usually omitted in writing and that's what I mean by sometimes the vowels are invisible. We don't write them and you just have to know that there's a vowel sound there. So with these diiocritics, these are the ones that I've put in little red rectangles. If we place this diarritic as a little slash above a letter, the sound becomes a like cat or black. If it's under a letter, it becomes e like red. And then if you take it kind of looks like a little v a tiny v above a letter, it becomes o like orchid. So let's start with our letter alf which is pronounced a like father.

[00:02:10]Now there's two forms to this. The pink one with a little hat on its head as we say is only for the beginning of a word.

[00:02:17]And then the blue one which is just a straight line is for the middle of a word or the end. Both of them are pronounced a. So um for the beginning of a word we have water or calm and again this this alf is only at the beginning of a word. Um oddly enough my name ends with this letter which is very unusual. I don't know any other words that do this but anyway um bo dad roy dream.

[00:02:52]Now the letter Y which it gives us our vowel sound E as in green and this is for the middle or the end of a word like she milk lion or faucet machine car he none of sunny and I've also highlighted all the alifs here. Now, we said this e sound is for the middle or end of a word. But what if we want this e sound at the beginning of a word? Well, then we have to add al if um and the best way to remember this is just with the word iron. See, we have the al if and then the y and we get this e sound. Iron in here is station.

[00:03:45]Okay. Now let's look at vv as a vowel sound which is oo as in blue and this is for the middle or the end of a word as in soup. Soup pool money shampoo shampoo kohoo lettuce. Quick interruption. If you're ready to learn real conversational Persian, the way people actually speak in Iran, please consider becoming a channel member. You'll get early access to new videos, plus membersonly lessons.

[00:04:19]Levels two and three members also get downloadable PDF lesson files. It's an awesome way to support this channel and show your love for the Persian language.

[00:04:28]All right, now let's add in the diiocritics. Ao.

[00:04:33]So if you ever just want these sounds at the beginning of your word, you place them above the al if right. So we have a ab cloud e name o omid hope and it's also a man's name. And then a few more words with this al if we have oimon for which this o is in the middle. Um e idea he or she. Just remember that diiocritics are omitted. So what you'll actually see is the words that I've put in the square because Persian is a continental language and these diiocritics are just understood. Um but we do write them just to avoid any confusion if especially with some words that are spelled the same otherwise. Um and you can always write them. It it's not wrong to write them. It's just that we don't. But if you're just starting out learning, by all means, write them and just for practice and then little by little you can start to omit them as well. So we said that if we want this e sound at the beginning of a word, we have to add al if like Iran. But what happens if we don't? Well, then it becomes y like yellow as in y friend or sweetheart. Yak ice yik one. Now let's add these vowels to our letters. So if we just have this letter b, it's just b. But then when we add the diiocritics and the vowels we get b or our letter s so j j lu And sometimes in typing when um we do law, it kind of goes crisscrosses like that, but it's law. Um you give it a try. How about with C? What would it be?

[00:07:05]Adding the vowel sounds.

[00:07:10]Oh, fatty. K.

[00:07:15]So, let's look at some examples.

[00:07:18]Calf shoes. K when co where car work key who coo which is a very delicious Persian dish.

[00:07:35]Just notice here that K and key are spelled the same. It's just the diiocritic that makes all the difference, right? K key. Um and again we don't write the diiocritic. So how do we know just by context or else we write it just to be clear? Let's do another example with our letter P. we get poo poo for example param and I've written all the diiocritics here just to be clear param flag pesk doctor or physician port orange pompoot comput okay so Now, let's talk about VVE because as I said, it's a master of disguise.

[00:08:33]Um, we said at the be at the in the middle or the end of a word, it's pronounced ooh, right? And we had our examples. How is it pronounced at the beginning of a word? Well, it's pronounced v like victory.

[00:08:48]Vali, but v time. Vatan homeland voodi entrance volleyball volleyball. So notice that with vudi we have it twice right at the beginning it's v and then in the middle it's u vudi.

[00:09:10]But guess what? Sometimes in the middle of a word it's also pronounced vv. So how do you know? Okay. Well there's a couple of ways. um if it starts a new syllable often it's v and if it's preceded by a vowel sound it's v. So if we look at lavoim supplies well we see that before the vv we have an a sound right la a. So that's our vowel sound and it's also the beginning of a syllable la vim right.

[00:09:47]So again we have that a that vowel sound before it and it also starts a syllable bov belief m fruit havo weather to voose to peacock and again we have the vv twice here um but then you you'll You'll notice here that when the vauv is in the middle of the word, but it's part of the syllable, then it's oo like hook. It's just one syllable. Pig m r. So here, m r today.

[00:10:34]Um the v is part of the syllable ruse.

[00:10:38]May moon monkey.

[00:10:41]Uh hulu peach. Geru walnut.

[00:10:48]Um here we have nov uh ship div demon and both of these okay you can say that well there's a vowel sound in front of them but ov member I'm not really sure what's going on here but it's pronounced as a v at the end. Um maybe we're considering the a as a vowel sound or maybe it's Arabic influence.

[00:11:13]I'm not really sure. Um, as always, there's going to be a few exceptions to everything. Um, but these are just, you know, some guidelines that will help distinguish the pronunciation of VV.

[00:11:28]Um, another slightly different pronunciation. Here we have no, which is new. So, notice we're not saying no.

[00:11:37]We're saying no because um this is actually like writing the diiocritic, right? But we cannot write one letter and a diiocritic. It just doesn't exist.

[00:11:51]So what do we do? We turn it into a vauve, but we still pronounce it null.

[00:11:56]Now notice on the left, if we add another letter and we get n, it changes again back to that oo sound like blue n. So it's no.

[00:12:10]Same thing happens here with to um to meaning you as a singular or informal.

[00:12:17]We can't just write t and put a dioritic above it. So we write we write the v.

[00:12:24]But then if we want to say in or inside we say to right. So to to finally just a few examples of some words with the diiocritics. So what we'll see is this word in green but depending on context it can be pronounced s head s numb n numb or sore slippery.

[00:12:50]This word depending on context can be g mud or g flower or like a goal in soccer or football.

[00:13:01]This can be par, feather, poor, full.

[00:13:06]This can be bab, tiger, or the imperative bear. Take it. And that's our lesson. I hope it was helpful and you feel a little better about using Persian vowels. Please don't forget to like the video and subscribe to my channel. And let me know in the comments if you'd like to see more videos like this related to reading and writing. Thank you for watching this video and until our next lesson.