Learn Persian With Chai And Conversation

Lesson 30 is a review of all that we learned in Unit 3!

Lesson 29 teaches how to emphasize the present continuous tense and how to form imperative statements.

Lesson 28 teaches how to talk about habitual actions.

Lesson 27 teaches the present continuous tense.

Lesson 26 teaches prepositions.

Lesson 25 teaches compound verbs. Most compound verbs are constructed using the verbs shodan, to become, and kardan, to do. We'll conjugate these verbs, and learn how to construct compound verbs with them. We'll then conjugate those verbs in the past tense.

Lesson 24 goes over the concept of ‘ezafe,’ which will allow you to communicate many things in the Persian language, including adjectives.

Lesson 23 goes over the simple past tense, including how to talk about what you did over the last weekend.

Lesson 22 is all about the verb ‘to have,’ which will come in handy very soon in our upcoming grammar lessons.

Lesson 21 is the first lesson in Unit 3 of Chai and Conversation! In this unit, we will be going over the fundamentals of grammar of the Persian language. This entire lesson is devoted to the verb ‘to be,’ and its many different forms.

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 سیاه white sefeed سِفید red sorkh سُرخ ghermez قِرمِز orange nāranjee نارَنجی yellow zard زَرد green sabz سَبز blue ābee آبی purple banafsh بَنَفش brown 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: big small quick slow nice looking ugly expensive cheap And 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-laws How to 'tarof' by asking someone to

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: man you (informal): tō you (formal): shomā our: mā their: ānhā his/her: eeshoon We then learn to ask who owns a certain belonging, and then learn the vocabulary words for different places around town.KEY CONCEPTS: Possession How to ask who owns something Vocabulary 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 together The Persian days of the week The months of the Western calendar The seasons Ordinal 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 speak Telling others the proficiency with which we can speak those languages The names for different popular languages Ask others to slow down when speaking Ask others how to say something in Persian