Speak / Lesson 12
More Numbers, and the Months, Days and Seasons
In this lesson, we go beyond numbers 1-20 and learn how to say ALL of them. In addition, we learn the Persian words for the months of the year, the days of the week, and the seasons. This is a very vocabulary-rich lesson, so it might take some practice to get all the words committed 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
Listen Now
Download lesson MP3GREETINGS:
hello
سَلام
how are you?
چِطوری؟
Note: In Persian, as in many other languages, there is a formal and an informal way of speaking. We will be covering this in more detail in later lessons. For now, however, chetor-ee is the informal way of asking someone how they are, so it should only be used with people that you are familiar with. hālé shomā chetor-é is the formal expression for ‘how are you.’
Spelling note: In written Persian, words are not capitalized. For this reason, we do not capitalize Persian words written in phonetic English in the guides.
ANSWERS:
I’m well
خوبَم
Pronunciation tip: kh is one of two unique sounds in the Persian language that is not used in the English language. It should be repeated daily until mastered, as it is essential to successfully speak Persian. Listen to the podcast for more information on how to make the sound.
| Persian | English |
|---|---|
| salām | hello |
| chetor-ee | how are you? |
| khoobam | I’m well |
| merci | thank you |
| khayli | very |
| khayli khoobam | I’m very well |
| khoob neestam | I’m not well |
| man | me/I |
| bad neestam | I’m not bad |
| ālee | great |
| chetor-een? | how are you? (formal) |
| hālé shomā chetor-é? | how are you? (formal) |
| hālet chetor-é? | how are you? (informal) |
| khoob-ee? | are you well? (informal) |
| mamnoonam | thank you |
| chetor peesh meeré? | how’s it going? |
| ché khabar? | what’s the news? (what’s up?) |
| testeeeee |
Matt: Hello everyone, and welcome back to Chai and Conversation.
Leyla: We're so glad to have you here with us!
Matt: Man Matt hastam, va man shagerde zabane Farsi hastam. I am Matt and I am a student of the Persian language.
Leyla: Va man Leyla hastam, va moaleme zabane Farsi hastam. And I am Leyla and I am a Persian language teacher! We're now at lesson 12 of the program. Hopefully you've been enjoying the lessons so far.
Matt: As we remind you each week, you can find all the previous lessons of Chai and conversation on our website at chaiandconversation.com with CHAI spelled C-H-A-I.
Leyla: On the website, you'll also find bonus materials for each of the lessons. Please help to support us by becoming a premium member and gaining access to the bonus materials. These include pdf guides that provide explanations for all the words we learn in the lessons, and enhanced podcasts which provide you visuals for the phrases we learn while we're learning.
Matt: But more about that after the lesson.
Leyla: That's right, for now, Matt, hazeree Farsi yad begeeree?
Matt: Hazeram!
Leyla: Great! Pass Farsi yaad begeeram ba Chai and Conversation.
Leyla: So in this lesson, we're going to expand our knowledge of numbers. We learned the number one through ten in unit one of Chai and Conversation. Now we're going to be learning how to say the other numbers. Now, numbers are not the most exciting thing to learn, or to teach, but hopefully we'll make things a bit more interesting by learning set to rhythm.
Let's go through numbers 11 through 20-
Eleven, yazdah
twelve, davazdah
thirteen, seezdah
fourteen, chahardah
fifteen, poonzdah
sixteen, shoonzdah
seventeen, heevdah
eighteen, heejdah
nineteen, noozdah
twenty, beest
Leyla: Now let's say these numbers again, but this time, let's change the music a bit!
After beest, twenty, it gets pretty easy! So twenty one is beest o yek. This is twenty and one. Beest o yek. So together, beestoyek
Leyla: And you go on, beestodo
beestoseh
beestochahar
Leyla: how would you say twenty five?
beestopanj
beestosheesh
beestohaft
beestohasht
beestonoh
Leyla: and then thirty is see
Leyla: same thing happens for thirty and on
seeoyek
seeodo
seeoseh
seeochahar
and then forty
chehel
Leyla: same thing happens,
cheheloyek
Matt: 41
Leyla: chehelodo
Matt: 42
Leyla: cheheloseh
Matt: 43
Leyla: and on, and then we get to fifty
panja-
Leyla: then sixty
shast
Leyla: then seventy
haftad
Leyla: then eighty
hashtad
Leyla: and ninety
navad
Leyla: and finally 100
sad
Leyla: So I'm going to give you some numbers and see if you can work out what they are
Leyla: 82-
hashtad o do
Leyla: 34-
see o chahar
Leyla: 98-
navad o hasht
Leyla: So these number are easy as long as you can learn
beest
see
chehel
panja
shast
haftad
hashtad
navad
sad
Leyla: and after that you just add numbers with an 'o' to sad to make numbers over a hundred. so 105 would be sadopanj
and 142 would be sadochehelodo
super simple!
Leyla: Then when we get to two hundred, we say 'deeveest'
deeveest
Leyla: and to make more complex numbers in the two hundreds, the same concept is used. So 250 would be deeveest o panja
three hundred is seesad.
four hundred is chaharsad
five hundred is poonsad
six hundred sheeshsad
seven hundred haftsad
eight hundred hashtsad
ninehundred nohsad
and finally one thousand is hezar
so let's try a few numbers here and I'll test you on how well you remember-
642
136
try 555
Matt: How do you say '50'
Leyla: Well, we learned in the last lesson if you want to ask how to say something in Persian, you say 'beh Farsi chee meesheh'.
Matt: Ah, beh Farsi chee meesheh.
Leyla: Great, so you have no excuse now not to ask in Persian. Ok, now you know all the numbers you'll probably need to know in Persian at least for now. You just need to repeat this part of the podcast and memorize as much as you can. As you can imagine, knowing numbers really comes in handy when speaking a language.
There are a few other things we need to do in this podcast and one is how to say the days of the week. First, the word for 'week' in Perisan is 'hafte'
Matt: hafte
Leyla: Now that we've got the numbers down, this is extremely easy! In Iran, the first day of the week is Saturday, and this is shambeh
shambeh
Then Sunday is yekshambeh
yekshambeh
Monday is doshambeh.
Tuesday is sehshambeh
Wednesday, chaharshambeh
Thursday is panjshambeh
Friday is jomeh and that is the last day of the week, and the one day you get off in Iran! There aren't two day weekends there as we have in many other countries in the world.
So, you should have picked out the pattern. Saturday is basically zero, or just plain shambeh, then Monday adds one or yek to shambeh, so yekshambeh, Tuesday adds two or do to shambeh, so doshambeh, and so on. So now let's try those all again,
Shambeh
Yekshambeh
Doshambeh
Seshambeh
Chaharshambeh
Panjambeh
Jomeh
And jomeh. And often you'll hear the phrase jomeh tateeleh, meaning Friday is off!
Leyla: Now, Iran is on it's own very special calender, and the days of the month go along with the astrological signs in the west as well as with the seasons. As many of you know, the Persian new year is on the first day of Spring.
We will list the names of the Persian calendar on the bonus materials pdf guide along with their corresponding Gregorian calendar dates. On the podcast right now, we are going to learn how to pronounce the months of the Gregorian calendar in Persian. Most of these correspond with the French pronunciation, and some of them are hybrids of the English pronunciation as well. Listen carefully-
Janviye
Fevriye
Mars
Aapril
May
Joon
July
August
Septembre
Octobre
Novembre
Decembre
Again, these are the way you would pronounce the words in conversational Persian. There isn't a science behind the words and you won't find them in a dictionary, but most Persian speakers in the United States at least stick to these pronunciations of the month. If you observe Persian speakers in your part of the world using different words, by all means do learn from them!
Now let's learn the words for the seasons.
Leyla: Right now, we are currently in the end of the season of bahaar, or spring. Bahaar
Matt: Bahaar
Leyla: Next we have summer, tabestoon
Matt: tabestoon
Leyla: Then fall, pa-eez
Matt: pa-eez
Leyla: And finally, winter, zemestoon.
Matt: zemestoon.
Leyla: Now there's one final thing that I'd like to cover before we end this lesson and that is how to say the date. To know that, we have to learn how to say the Persian equivalents of first, second, third, etc.
Leyla: First would be aval.
Leyla: So to say the first of July, we say avale July.
Matt: Avale July
Leyla: Just like when we want to link two words together like 'my mother', Madare man, we have to link the date with the month. AvalE July.
Leyla: Second is dovom.
Matt: Dovom
Leyla: So, dovome July
Leyla: Third is sevom
Leyla: Sevomeh
Leyla: Fourth is chaharom
Matt: chaharom
Leyla: And now we can talk about the pattern. If the number ends in a vowel, you add a 'vom' sound to the end, and if the number ends in a consonant, you add a 'om' sound. So what would fifth be Matt?
Matt: Panj-om
Leyla: So how would you say the fifth of July?
Matt: Panj om- E July.
Leyla: Perfect!
Leyla: And then let's try the twenty eight of January. Twenty second as we learned before is beest o hasht
Matt: beest o hasth om e Janviye.
Leyla: Exactly! So to say today is you say 'emrooz beest o hast om e Janviye hast.'
Leyla: Emrooz is the word for today. Emrooz.
Matt: Emrooz.
Leyla: to say the date, you add 'om' to the end of the number of the
Leyla: the word for today is 'emrooz'
Leyla: So you can say 'Emrooz chaharome July hast.' What does this mean Matt?
Matt: Today is the fourth of July.
Leyla: Exactly. And say today is December 15. Can you figure out how to say that Matt?
Matt: Emrooz poonzdah- ome Decembre hast.
Leyla: Wonderful!
Leyla: And with that we wrap up the lesson. We've covered quite a bit of material in this lesson, but don't worry if you haven't gotten it on the first try.
Matt: You can go back and listen to the podcast as many times as you need to become comfortable with the vocabulary.
Leyla: In addition, download the bonus materials for this lesson from our website for a very nominal fee in order to get all the words written out in phonetic English.
Matt: Please don't forget to spread the word of Chai and Conversation, and let any of your friends or family interested in learning Persian know about us!
Leyla: In addition, we would love to hear your thoughts. Please contact us with any questions or concerns or suggestions you may have. We love to hear your thoughts!
Matt: And as always, thank you for joining us this week. We look forward to you joining us next time! Until then, khodahafez from Matt.
Leyla: And beh omeede deedar from Leyla!