A Separation, Part 1

A Separation Part 1

Leyla: [00:00:00] Learn Persian with Chai and Conversation, Lesson 71, A Separation with Yara Elmjouie. 

Yara: Hello. 

Leyla: Salām, Yara! Thank you so much for doing this with me today. 

Yara: Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm super pumped to, you know, bring this idea we've had to life. 

Leyla: Yeah, so this was actually Yara's idea, all credit to him. So we're going through the movie A Separation, which is by Asghar Farhadi and one of the excellent movies of Iranian cinema. There's so many but this one, particularly wonderful. And we're going to be going through five clips that Yara has chosen. We're going to talk about the clips together and watch them with you. 

So these podcasts are available in two different formats. Either you can watch the video, which I highly recommend, or, you can listen to the audio as a kind of refresher, but the video will have transcript of the clips that we're watching. It's gonna have the captions, so you can really, really learn these lessons. And as [00:01:00] always, we're going to have PDF guides for each of these lessons and clips on our website, all the learning resources that you need. But first, let's go back to what made you think of doing this project, Yara. 

Yara: Totally. So I think one of the things that really inspired me is that one of the best ways to really learn Persian, and I know this as someone who was formerly, and I suppose still is, a Persian learner, learning new things every day, was really to immerse myself in, like, an environment where people are just speaking colloquially amongst themselves, Iranians around me.

But unfortunately, you know, being in Iran and getting to do that is a little difficult. So the next best thing for me was really watching films, movies, you know, news broadcasts even. So, you know, one of the reasons I chose A Separation for us to kind of dissect and learn how people actually speak from is because I think Asghar Farhadi's films have this incredible dialogue.

And one of, one of the things I love about his movies is the dialogue is often so realistic. There's overlapping voices. People [00:02:00] speak like real Iranians in, you know, in Iran. Chatter, the colloquialisms, the idioms, it's just very natural, and the actors obviously, you know, really drive that home. 

Leyla: Amazing, yeah. And I want to begin. So we're going to have five different clips, and you'll see that kind of overlapping language. These lessons are going to be cumulative, so things that we talk about in the beginning, we're going to see over and over again. The first lesson, it's going to be me and Yara going over the clip, watching it together.

And then in the subsequent lessons for each clip, I am going to alone be going over the words and phrases we learned. So, the idea for this is to get the general idea, talk about concepts that we see in the language, but it's going to be kind of like when you go to the eye doctor when at first everything seems really fuzzy. So right now when we watch the clip together, maybe you won't be able to understand anything.

And like Yara says, there's a lot of overlapping dialogue, a lot of fast-paced dialogue. But, as we go [00:03:00] along, you'll be, it'll come clearer and clearer into focus, and by the end, hopefully, you'll watch this clip and be able to understand every word and phrase in that, in that clip, which will be really exciting.

But yeah, this is meant for people that have been studying the Persian language, so we're not necessarily going to go over every single word in the beginning. So just keep that in mind, but stay with us. It's going to be a lot of fun. 

Um, and first I want to start with the title of the movie. In English, it's called A Separation. What's the title in Persian? 

Yara: Jodāyeeyé Nāder az Seemeen. So, right. 

Leyla: Which, I love that because that's an example right off the bat of where things do get a little bit lost in translation. A Separation refers to the two title characters, Nader and Simin, who are married. So can you tell us what it means literally in Persian?

Yara: Yeah, the separation of Nader from Simin. So it's a very, very direct, it's a much more descriptive title. Yeah, [00:04:00] so who knows what focus group, yeah, decided to remove it. 

Leyla: For me, like, there's a lot of intrigue, like, oh no, what's going to happen to Nader and Simin? Why are they separating? What's going on? So already the title has so many questions that you don't get from just that English.

So without further ado, let's watch the first clip. It's about a minute long. Like we said, a lot of fast-paced, a lot of overlapping dialogue, but we're going to go over it then line by line together. So here we go.

Nader: Saré gāz naré. Een dar bāz namooné beré beeroon gom shé. Damé panjeré naré. Termé bābā, een mānto o maghna'yé madresé-ato bardār beeyār man bandāzam tō bepooshee. Man faghat saré haft o neem bāyad az khooné [00:05:00] beram beeroon. Shomā bāyad yejooree biyāyeen ké man bespāramash bé shomā beram saré kār. 

Razieh: Haft o neem deegé khayli zoodé. Man agé bekhām eentoree beeyām deegé fekr konam bāyad panj, panj o neem az khooné beeyām beeroon. 

Nader: Tā hasht meetooneen beeyāyeen? 

Simin: Beeyāyeen bālā. 

Razieh: Hasht nemeedoonam... tā hasht. Tā hasht nemeedoonam. 

Nader: Shomā tā hasht khoodetoon beresooneed ham khoobé. Zangé een bālāyeeyé mā rā bezaneed. Daré pāyeeno barātoon bāz meekoné - man keleedé eenjā ram barātoon meezāram eenjā. Khoobé? 

Razieh: Bāshé. 

Nader: Ghadetoon meeresé? 

Razieh: Bebakhsheed, māhee cheghadré? 

Nader: Tashreef dāshté bāsheed, al'ān... 

Māhee seesad, khānom. 

Razieh: Khayli kamé.

Nader: Na deegé. Hamoon hodoodāst, beporseen.

Razieh: Hālā maseeram ham dooré. Chand tā khaté otoboos 'avaz meekonam tā beresam...

Nader: Bebeeneed, een cheezeest ké man dar tavānamé. Hālā deegé khoodetoon meedooneed ké... Agar fekr meekoneed ké meetooneen, man dar khedmatetoon hastam. 

Simin: Ketāb-hā rā behesh bedeen shāyad bedardash khord. 

Mover: Poolé khord nadāram, khānom. 

Nader: Ba'd az zohr bé man khabarash-o bedé choon man bā yekee deegé sohbat kardam, hadé aghal agé shomā natoonesteed beeyāyeed oon-o az dast nadam. 

Leyla: Okay, so there's a lot going on here. I do want to say too that we're just showing clips from this movie. There will be, by the end, a little bit of a spoiling happening. So we highly recommend that if you haven't seen the movie right now, you know, you can start with this lesson, but go throughout these next few weeks and watch it. It's, it's super enjoyable, super fun to watch, even though it's a kind of heavy subject line at times. You can get it on Amazon Prime, or you can purchase it off of YouTube. So just a quick note. So now [00:06:00] let's watch just a little bit of the beginning. 

Nader: Saré gāz naré. Een dar bāz namooné beré beeroon gom shé. Damé panjeré naré. Termé bābā, een mānto o maghna'yé madresé-ato bardār beeyār man bandāzam tō bepooshee. 

Leyla: Okay. 

Yara: Yep. Wow. Okay, a lot, and the end of it is quite quick. So pretty clear, you know, I think just one thing I want to point out here is there is sort of a context. This woman is being brought in, the woman in the chador is being brought in as a caretaker. He's trying to hire a caretaker to take care of his father who is suffering from some ailment, and so he's giving her directions, right? 

So he is saying, now that's the context, saré gāz naré, you know, and then een dar bāz namooné beré beeroon gom shé. Damé panjeré naré. So, he's saying, you know, we use the words sar and dam to indicate 'near' or 'close to' places. So he's saying, you know, 'near the stove, he shouldn't go', as a command. 

And then he's saying, 'This door should not be remain open 'cause then he might go out and get [00:07:00] lost, gom shé.' And then lastly, he says, "Damé panjeré naré," dam again being 'close to' or 'near' something. You say damé panjeré, damé dar, damé felān, you know, some place. 'Near the window, he shouldn't go either.'

So that's just kind of the first sort of, he's giving very clear directions about near, he, the father should not be allowed to go near certain things. 

Leyla: Okay, and then we included this Termé bābā, een mānto o maghna'yé madresé-ato bardār beeyār.

Yara: Exactly, and so that's another interesting part that I, I highlighted Termé bābā because I thought that was really interesting. It's something that we Iranians do, but I've also seen it, you know, in the Arab World and I'm sure many other places around the world. He is referring to his daughter, Termé, but he's calling her bābā.

He's calling her, what she would call him, 'Dad'. Bābā is 'Dad'. So, sometimes, he could even have said bābā if he was just referring to his daughter, he would have said, "Bābā, beeyā eenjā." Even though she's not the dad, right? He's the dad! But he's [00:08:00] using, again, that term to describe, to call to his daughter. 

Leyla: Right, and this is reciprocal. So, for example, I am a mother, māmān, and so my kids call me māmān, and I call them māmān. So, it's whatever they call you, you call them. So, if you're a uncle, dāyee, you call your nephews and nieces dāyee. So it's just a reciprocal calling.

Yara: And then, pretty clear: Termé bābā, een mānto o maghna'yé madresé-ato bardār beeyār. So here, this is one of many examples we're going to see throughout these clips, but this double verb situation, right? He's saying, grab your mānto, bardār beeyār, so grab and bring, right? He does. 

He, you know, I guess an expanded form ideally would be bardār va beeyār, you know, grab it and bring it. But in Persian, colloquially, we often will just snap two verbs right next to each other and say bardār beeyār, besheen bebeenam, you know, like, all these sorts of things, two verbs just quickly in close contact. Bardār beeyār, grab your mānto [00:09:00] and maghna'yé. 

Man bandāzam tō bepooshee. That's, he says that very quickly, but he's basically saying, I'm gonna throw it in the wash so you can wear it later. Throw it in the laundry machine. And the translation for this in the actual English-language subtitle script is just like, what is it? It's something along the lines of, do your lau-, Termé, get your laundry. So very, very shortened . 

Leyla: Right, right. Okay. Let's listen to the next part. 

Nader: Man faghat saré haft o neem bāyad az khooné beram beeroon. Shomā bāyad yejooree biyāyeen ké man bespāramash bé shomā beram saré kār. 

Yara: I'll just start here. Like, man faghat saré haft o neem bāyad az khooné beram beeroon. So, Leyla, pretty, pretty clear, right? It's... 

Leyla: Yeah! Right, saré. So we had saré gāz in the beginning, which was 'next to the gas'. Saré haft is also the same concept, but it's saying 'at seven o'clock'. So 'at the head', 'at the height of seven', 'at the head of seven', is how you'd say 'at seven o'clock'. 

Yara: Yeah. And it's just kind of something to think here as, right, like, as a Persian learner, [00:10:00] right? You're probably thinking dar, the word dar means at. But here, once again, you know, we're saying, we're using the word sar: saré gāz. You don't say dar gāz naro, right? 'At the stove, don't go there.' We say saré gāz. 

And same thing with time. You know, we don't say... In spoken Persian, you know, we don't say man dar haft o neem. We'll say man saré haft o neem bāyad az khooné beram. 'At the peak of 7:30, I must leave the home.' And we use sar again. It's very weird to say man dar haft o neem. 

Again, but if you're writing, if you're writing Persian, perhaps you say eeshān dar haft o neem; you know, it might makes sense formally there, but spoken, saré haft o neem is very, very colloquial and common.

And then he ends the sentence with shomā bāyad yejooree biyāyeen ké man bespāramash bé shomā beram saré kār.

Leyla: Right. 

Yara: So, bespāram. 

Leyla: Yeah, let's talk about that. That means something along the lines of, how would you translate that?

Yara: I would say like, 'entrusting'. 'I'm gonna', so 'I [00:11:00] can just entrust my father to you and go to work.' 'Come at a time so I can entrust my father to you, pass them on to you, you know, and then just go to work myself.'

Leyla: And one of the things that we're going to be talking a lot about is, you know, there's a formal way of speaking, and there's an informal way of speaking. So he is using the formal 'you' to refer to the woman. 

You know, Iran has a kind of more formal culture. So if you don't know someone, you definitely want to use that formal conjugation when speaking to someone. So even though she's of a lower class, and he's a man and she's a woman, he's speaking to her in formal 'you'. 

One other thing that I want to point out, though, is that when he's referring to his father, usually you would refer to your father as formal, for sure. But, because his father is sick, he has dementia, he's kind of in a childlike state, I think that that's why he's referring to his father as informal. 

Yara: That's a great point. I was just literally, [00:12:00] like, we literally are on the same wavelength. I was just thinking, like, he refers to his father. Again, if you wanted to refer formally to his father, let's say this was not his father. This was the father of a third individual here, right? And he does not know the father. He would have said, "Bee shomā bāyad yejooree biyāyeen ké man bespāramashoon bé shomā," rather than "bespāramash," because if you say -shoon, -shoon is now formal. It's a formal, so it's someone else's father, you don't know them, you have to be extra polite.

But he's just saying, it's my father, we have, you know, this sort of informality, supposedly, whether it's because of the father's condition, or whatever reason, and he lets it slip. Or maybe it could be it's the father, he's like, taking care of the father now, and they're not fully conscious. 

Leyla: Yeah, I think it's for sure because of the condition because if he had been, you know, he wouldn't refer to this woman with an older man, like, as informal.

Yara: Totally. That's a great point.

Leyla: Right.

Yara: Yeah. So, great, okay. 

Leyla: Okay. The next part. 

Razieh: Haft o neem deegé [00:13:00] khayli zoodé. Man agé bekhām eentoree beeyām deegé fekr konam bāyad panj, panj o neem az khooné beeyām beeroon.

Nader: Tā hasht meetooneen beeyāyeen? 

Simin: Beeyāyeen bālā. 

Leyla: Okay, let's stop it there. So now this is where kind of like interlocking dialogues are going to happen, so there's two different things going on here. Go ahead. 

Yara: So haft o neem deegé khayli zoodé. So here's the first time we really, we're really starting to see a couple things here. Deegé. Deegé is a term that, you know, we've kind of discussed this before, Leila and I, but it's, it's kind of an added word that you can interject in the middle of a sentence, at the beginning of a sentence, at the end of a sentence, sometimes for sass, as I like to think, other times just to kind of say, then. You know, like 'then, uh', or sometimes it literally just translates into a sound in English, like 'uh'! 

Leyla: Right. 

Yara: As we've discussed. 

Leyla: Right! 

Yara: 'So 7:30 is very early, uh, ay,' you know, added emphasis there. 'It's kind of early, you know.' And [00:14:00] then, and then man agar bekhām eentoree beeyām deegé fekr konam bāyad panj, panj o neem az khooné beeyām beeroon deegé.

Leyla: Right. Which you actually read it as deegar, but it's deegé, or, yeah, or, wait, no, no. Yeah.

Yara: Yeah. Both, again. 

Leyla: Okay, so deegar is the written version, but deegé is how we say it. 

Yara: So, man agé- and then same thing with agar and agé, so man agé bekhām eentoree beeyām deegé fekr konam bāyad panj, panj o neem az khooné beeyām beeroon. So again, here, there's two "deegé"s in this, and you can just see that we just distribute this word liberally as Persian-speakers throughout our sentences for, again, like I said, so many different reasons. 

Leyla: Right. Well, it's a way of kind of, it's kind of like the concept of tārof. She doesn't want to just come out and say something. They're trying to negotiate some terms here, so she's trying to be soft about it. She's trying to [00:15:00] dance around the subject. Haft o neem deegé khayli zoodé. She could have said haft o neem zoodé. That's getting to the point. 

Yara: Yeah, yeah, yeah, very direct! 

Leyla: And in fact, she's just, "deegé," you know, there's not a direct translation, and trying to translate it in this sentence particularly makes my brain hurt a little. 'Can you deegé?' Anyway. 

Yara: Yeah, exactly. 

Leyla: It's really 'anyway', 'um...' 

Yara: 'Anyway', 'uh', 'then', kinda, you know, 'just', you know, deegé, yeah, it's kinda like dilly-dallying in the middle of a sentence. 

Another thing I wanted to point out actually, I didn't initially mark this, but I marked it now. She says, "Beeyām deegé fekr konam bāyad..." Instead of saying bāyad, she says bād. If you kind of listen very closely, man bād beram. 

You know, if you like, listen to someone say man bād, bā-ad, it's almost not, it's not bāyad. It becomes, let me just think of how I would say it. Āré, man bād- It almost turns into bā-ad, but then even, even more contracted, it just becomes bād. Man bād beram oonjā. And she does that here.

So that's definitely a [00:16:00] colloquialism. When you want to say bāyad, you're speaking quickly, you might even just get away with saying bād, you know, man bād beram. Bā-ad, it's really bā-ad, ooh! It's tough, but yeah. 

Leyla: Yeah! Okay. And then he says, "Tā hasht meetooneen beeyāyeen?" Again, he's using that formal, but the less, the less, the not written version of the formal.

Yara: Yes. He doesn't say... 

Leyla: Meetooneen instead of meetooneed. 

Yara: And that's kind of, you know, who knows if we could read into that, but it's still formal, like you said. It's a little looser. It's just a slightly more spoken, looser version. He could have, if he wanted to be super formal, he could have said meetooneed beeyāyeed, but you know, but that's, you know, that's that. So we'll let it play out. 

Razieh: Hasht nemeedoonam... tā hasht. Tā hasht nemeedoonam. 

Nader: Shomā tā hasht khoodetoon beresooneed ham khoobé. 

Leyla: So, tā hasht nemeedoonam. 

Yara: Exactly. 

Leyla: Tā hasht nemeedoonam. I don't know, I don't know if I can until 8. 

Yara: So that's pretty, that's pretty clear. [00:17:00] And then he says, "Shomā tā hasht khoodetoon beresooneed ham khoobé," so pretty self-, you know, explanatory there. If you can, oh, looks like I got a notification. If you can reach out, you know, basically make it here by eight, that's good, you know. 

He's kind of almost imposing this circumstance. He's like, she's like "ah, I don't know. I dunno." He's like "look, if you come by eight, that," actually, no, sorry, not even 'if', 'if...' yeah, yeah. 'You come by eight; that's good.' And then the next line here is, is what we're gonna break into, get into. 

Leyla: Okay.

Nader: Zangé een bālāyeeyé mā rā bezaneed. Daré pāyeeno barātoon bāz meekoné - man keleedé eenjā ram barātoon meezāram eenjā. Khoobé? 

Razieh: Bāshé. 

Nader: Ghadetoon meeresé?

Yara: So, that, this part I've highlighted 'cause I think it's interesting: Zangé een bālāyeeyé mā- zangé een bālāyeeyé mā rā bezaneed. So here, it's just really the interjection of een, right? If you're kind of wondering, if someone's reading this and learning as a Persian-learner, right? They're, they're probably might be wondering what, why is een, why is, you know, 'this' in the middle of this phrase? It should just be zangé bālāyeeyé mā rā bezaneed or just zangé bālāyee rā bezaneed. [00:18:00] 'Tap the top buzzer bell,' whatever, 'to basically on the intercom machine to, to ring my apartment.'

But here it's just kind of symbolic of how he's talking. He's pointing to a thing, you know, so he's doing "zangé een! Een bālāyee," 'up here'. Bālā- and then he adds a mā, possessive, zangé een bālāyeeyé mā rā bezaneed. Just kind of, you know, as you're kind of talking, you're in between words and you're kind of pointing something out to someone, you can throw an een as well yourself, so it's just kind of a little bit of that.

And then he goes on, "Daré pāyeeno barātoon bāz meekoné," 'that'll open the door at the bottom for you' by tapping this buzzer or the spell. Man keleedé eenjā ram... Oh, this is very important 'cause this is gonna come up in Lesson 2. "Man keleedé," he says, "man keleedé eenjā ram barātoon meezāram, meezāram eenjā." So, "Khoobé?" Anyways, so what happens here is, he's really saying "man keleedé eenjā rā ham," "rā ham," right? 'Also'. But he contracts it! This is [00:19:00] so, so common. 

If you want to learn how to speak Persian colloquially like an Iranian, this is a super, super common thing that we do, is we will contract rā and ham together, and it will become ram. It will always become ram. There is no variation on this. 

Uh, and so that's just kind of something, keleedé eenjā ram beeyār, leevān... yā, masalan, eenjā... We'll get into a more complex version of this in Lesson 2 and I don't, it's really fun, but yeah. 

Leyla: Right, and one part that, he said, "Ghadetoon meeresé?" 'Is your height gonna reach it?' Ghadetoon meeresé? 

Yara: The key, yeah. And then, bebakhsheed, oh yeah, then, sorry, she goes on.

Razieh: Bebakhsheed, māhee cheghadré? 

Nader: Tashreef dāshté bāsheed, al'ān... 

Māhee seesad, khānom. 

Yara: Very good. We have another good one coming up, so... 

Leyla: Yeah! 

Yara: You wanna kinda take the first line? 

Leyla: So... sure! So he said, "Bebakhsheed." She says, "Bebakhsheed, māhee cheghadré?" 'Excuse me, how much [00:20:00] is it per month?' And then he says, "Tashreef dāshté bāsheed, al'ān..." so he's talking to the guy coming up the stairs. He says tashreef dāshté bāsheed, and that's a great phrase to know. So what does that mean? 

Yara: Yes, exactly. So tashreef is such an interesting word. It comes from, you know, my understanding, the Arabic sharaf, which is kind of like 'honor', 'loyalty', something like 'honor', I guess. Maybe that might be a way... yeah, bee sharaf becomes 'dishonorable'. So yeah, sharaf is 'honor'. So here, it's like, we use this word تشريف to kind of, in very formal situations when you want to be very formal and very polite, you know, we use this phrase. 

He could have just said, if it was just his buddy, you know, he would have just said like eenjā, you know, eenjā bāshee, yā yé lahzé eenjā, you know, eenjā bā āhestā, 'wait here, stand here for a second'. But what he ends up saying is tashreef dāshté bāsheed, like, 'royally, royally, wait here, sit tight, hold on', right? And we use tashreef for [00:21:00] these to be extra, extra formal and extra polite. Um, so that's what he's doing here. Tashreef dāshté bāsheed means 'sit tight', but extremely kindly, 'please grace us with your honorableness here for a second'.

Leyla: Right, right. And he says, "Māhee seesad, khānom." Okay, so, seesad. So, 'each month, 300, ma'am'. So seesad is referring to 300 thousand toman, which, you know, with the rate of inflation at this point is nothing, but yeah, we think when this movie came out was maybe like $250 a month or something like that.

Yara: Something like that, 250 to 300, yeah, I'd say, yeah. Because thinking back to 20... no, is it, when this come out...? 12 years ago, 13 years ago, something like that. So, when the exchange rate was like a thousand toman to a dollar or 1400 toman to a dollar. My gosh, and now today, we're at 50,000 toman to a dollar. So you can just imagine that the 300,000 toman is now $6! 

Leyla: Wow! [00:22:00] Oof!

Yara: Um, but back then, it was more, so... oh, and just one thing, one thing to mention, the "tashreef dāshté bāsheed!" is an interjection. He's not referring to this woman anymore. He's now talking to someone who's in the stairwell that his wife is, is speaking to. He's like, "hold on for a second, sit tight, wait for a moment. I'm going to address this woman that I'm interacting with. I'll get back to you." 

Leyla: Right, so at this point we're going to have two inner, like, comingling dialogues, by the way. 

Razieh: Khayli kamé. 

Nader: Na deegé. Hamoon hodoodāst, beporseen. 

Razieh: Hālā maseeram ham dooré. Chand tā khat otoboos 'avaz meekonam tā beresam... 

Nader: Bebeeneed, een cheezeest ké man dar tavānamé. 

Yara: Ooh, alright! So... I guess we can start here with "na deegé. Hamoon hodoodāst, beporseen." So she says, first off, she says, "Khayli kamé," 'it's very little', and then he says, "Na deegé. Hamoon hodoodāst, beporseen." And then he says 'no', and then here we see deegé once again. It's kind of a little bit of a dilly-dallying... 

Leyla: 'Not really.' 'Not anymore.' 'Not then.' 

Yara: Yeah. 'Not really.' She's like 'it's too little.' He's like 'not really,' [00:23:00] hamoon hodoodāst, and hodood is kind of like a word for 'vicinity', but in common speak, he's saying, 'No, it's around that area, like 300,000. That's the price. It's around that area. That's normal. Go ahead and ask.' Beporseen. You know, 'go ask around', you know, so yeah. And then, of course... 

Leyla: And then she says, "Hālā maseeram ham dooré." Again, we're talking, they're negotiating. She doesn't want to get right to the point. She's throwing in words to elongate this negotiation. 'Now my way is very far.' "Maseeram ham dooré," 'my commute is very far.' "Chand tā khaté otoboos 'avaz meekonam tā beresam." 'I have to change several lines of the bus to get here.' 

Yara: Right, exactly. And great point with hālā. Hālā is another word we throw in there. 'Now', 'well', 'again', like you were saying, though, this, this, I guess, is "dalliance" the word? "Dilly-dallying"? I don't know, maybe that "dalliance", I dunno. But again, elongating, [00:24:00] really just deegé, hālā, ké, you know, like, all of this is coming out as, as a way to be kind of coy and maybe about her dis-, dissatisfaction with the, the low price that he's suggesting. 

Leyla: Right. Um, and he says, "Bebeeneed, een cheezeest ké man dar tavānamé." Yeah, let's go over that! 

Yara: That's a fun one, and I highlighted this as well. This, great phrase, highly recommend, you know, anyone who's listening to this podcast to use. It's like, it's, it's polite, it's good. It means 'this is the thing that is within my ability.' Een cheezeest, 'this is the thing', ké man dar tavān-... You don't even need man. You can just say ké dar tavānamé, that is, dar tavān, tavān. Meetavānam, meetavānee, meetoonam, meetoonee. It's 'to be able to', so he's saying, 'This is the thing that is within,' dar tavānamé, 'that within my abilities', super nice way of just saying... 'this is what I can do. This is what I can do for you.' 

Leyla: And he starts it off by "bebeeneed," 'look', 'look'. Okay.

Yara: And then, [00:25:00] yes, next slide. 

Leyla: I think we, I think we did see that. 

Yara: Oh, we did that, okay. 

Leyla: Hālā deegé khoodetoon meedooneed ké... So again, he's like elongating. 

Yara: He's doing it as well! 

Leyla: And hālā and deegé are two filler words. 

Yara: Yeah, yeah, just, again, perfectly, he's doing it as well! She's doing it, he's doing it, she's like hālā, and then he's like hālā deegé, you know, hālā... very....

Leyla: 'Now then, you know yourself', "hālā khoodetoon meedooneed." 'You know.' Like 'look at it and you figure it out.' Okay, let's go back a little bit and, and listen to this again. 

Razieh: ...dooré. Chand tā khaté otoboos 'avaz meekonam tā beresam... 

Nader: Bebeeneed, een cheezeest ké man dar tavānamé. Hālā deegé khoodetoon meedooneed ké... Agar fekr meekoneed ké meetooneen, man dar khedmatetoon hastam. 

Simin: Ketāb-hā... 

Leyla: Okay. And I don't even know how he scripted this. This is such a, "Agar fekr meekoneed ké meetooneen, man dar khedmatetoon hastam." So, 'if you think that you can, I am at your service.' 

Yara: Exactly. And kind of again, another sort of example [00:26:00] of being extra polite. "Tashreef beeyāreed," "tashreef dāshté bāsheed!" means 'wait here!'. Here, man dar khedmatam. He's basically, look, he's forcing this price on her. He's saying, '300,000. This is what's within my ability.' And now look at, look at this, this Persian way of negotiating. 'If you can accept it, if you like this price, I am at your service.' 

Even though she is at his service! She is performing the task of caretaker for her, his father. He's saying, 'now, if you can do this low price, I'm lowballing you. I am at your service, ma'am.' And it's just so, man dar khedmatetoon hastam. It's classic. Also, again, you want to negotiate in the Iranian bazaar or even go down to Tehrangeles or, you know, Tehronto, great phrase to, to learn. 

Leyla: Absolutely. Absolutely. 

Yara: Yeah. So, yeah, anywho.

Leyla: And then now we go back to the wife and see what she is. So she just went and got some money, as we saw, from her purse. And now she's at the stairwell talking to the guy [00:27:00] who tashreef āvordé now. Now he's up there. 

Simin: Ketāb-hā rā behesh bedeen shāyad bedardash khord. 

Mover: Poolé khord nadāram, khānom. 

Leyla: She says, "Ketāb-hā rā behesh bedeen shāyad bedardash bokhoré. Shāyad bedardash khord." So, 'give them these books, maybe it'll alleviate some pain of theirs,' like, 'maybe it'll be useful.' It, literally, bedardash khord means 'it's useful to them', but literally, it means 'it alleviates some of their pain'. Bedardash khord. Very visually descriptive sort of phrases that we see in Persian. We'll see so many.

Yara: That's one of the things in Persian is that... you've talked about this before. It's just, it's such a visual language. And it's not just, this is not some fancy idiom like 'oh, you', like, you know, like you have an English like 'oh, he jumped the gun' and, you know, whatever. It's not an idiom. This is literally, like, a way to say, "Een bedard meekhoré?" 'Is this useful?' It's just for usefulness, but yet, it's such a descriptive, visual phrase, and it's common, yeah, so... [00:28:00] 

Leyla: Very much so. And then he says, "Poolé khord nadāram, khānom." So, 'I don't have change.' Poolé khord means 'pieces of money', which means 'change'. Okay. And then in the background, we're also hearing the conversation continue with, with the negotiation.

Nader: Ba'd az zohr bé man khabarash-o bedé choon man bā yekee deegé sohbat kardam, hadé aghal agé shomā natoonesteed beeyāyeed oon-o az dast nadam. 

Leyla: Okay. 

Yara: Very fast. Yeah. 

Leyla: Yeah. Very, very fast. So "ba'd az zohr bé man khabarash-o bedé." So 'in the afternoon, give me the news of it.' Behem, bé man khabarash-o bedé, 'tell me the news of it,' choon man bā yekee deegé sohbat kardam. So here, deegé literally means 'another'. So 'because', choon, 'because' "man bā yekee deegé sohbat kardam," 'I've talked to someone else', hadé [00:29:00] aghal agé shomā natoonesteed beeyāyeed oon-o az dast nadam. So, 'at least if you can't come', hadé aghal means 'at least', agé shomā natoonesteed beeyāyeed, 'if you couldn't come', oon-o az dast nadam, 'I won't lose them'. And az dast na-, yeah, let's talk about that last phrase. 

Yara: Yeah, exactly, so very clearly, he's like 'tell me by,' you know, 'afternoon because I have these other prospects,' you know, "man," 'I've spoken to', "bā yekee deegé sohbat kardam." You know, he's trying to hire someone to be a caretaker. And then 'at least', hadé aghal, like you said, yeah, he basically wants to say, 'give me an answer, because I have to respond to some other people, and I don't want to lose those people, I don't want to lose that person.'

Oon-o az dast nadam. Another very visual phrase, just like the previous one, bedard bokhorad, bedardash khord, 'I don't want to lose it from my', az dast nadam. Again, very visual, but extremely common. This is not some sort of unique idiom that you throw out there to be fancy. Super common. Az dast dādan. Az dast bedam. Az dast meedee. Az dast meedé. 'Losing' something. 'I don't [00:30:00] wanna lose', 'I don't wanna drop it from my hand'.

Leyla: Right. Wonderful. So, so again, we're gonna watch the clip one more time together. Let's watch the whole thing. 

Nader: Saré gāz naré. Een dar bāz namooné beré beeroon gom shé. Damé panjeré naré. Termé bābā, een mānto o maghna'yé madresé-ato bardār beeyār man bandāzam tō [00:31:00] bepooshee. Man faghat saré haft o neem bāyad az khooné beram beeroon. Shomā bāyad yejooree biyāyeen ké man bespāramash bé shomā beram saré kār. 

Razieh: Haft o neem deegé khayli zoodé. Man agé bekhām eentoree beeyām deegé fekr konam bāyad panj, panj o neem az khooné beeyām beeroon. 

Nader: Tā hasht meetooneen beeyāyeen? 

Simin: Beeyāyeen bālā. 

Razieh: Hasht nemeedoonam... tā hasht. Tā hasht nemeedoonam. 

Nader: Shomā tā hasht khoodetoon beresooneed ham khoobé. Zangé een bālāyeeyé mā rā bezaneed. Daré pāyeeno barātoon bāz meekoné - man keleedé eenjā ram barātoon meezāram eenjā. Khoobé?

Razieh: Bāshé. 

Nader: Ghadetoon meeresé? 

Razieh: Bebakhsheed, māhee cheghadré? 

Nader: Tashreef dāshté bāsheed, al'ān... 

Māhee seesad, khānom. 

Razieh: Khayli kamé. 

Nader: Na deegé. Hamoon hodoodāst, beporseen. 

Razieh: Hālā maseeram ham dooré. Chand tā khaté otoboos 'avaz meekonam tā beresam... 

Nader: Bebeeneed, een cheezeest ké man dar tavānamé. Hālā deegé khoodetoon meedooneed ké... Agar fekr meekoneed ké meetooneen, man dar khedmatetoon hastam. 

Simin: Ketāb-hā rā behesh bedeen shāyad bedardash khord. 

Mover: Poolé khord nadāram, khānom. 

Nader: Ba'd az zohr bé man khabarash-o bedé choon man bā yekee deegé sohbat kardam, hadé aghal agé shomā natoonesteed beeyāyeed oon-o az dast nadam.

Leyla: All right, so again, a lot to learn here, a lot of words and phrases, but hopefully you could understand a little bit more this time. So as we go through the subsequent lessons, we're going to go through them word by word, phrase by phrase, so that you can really get the language down. And then you're going to listen to this and understand the entire thing and feel very, very empowered. But we're going to be back with Yara for four more clips after this. And so, like we said, go ahead and listen to these lessons, go watch this movie, and we'll be back with Yara next time. Any imparting thoughts as we start this journey of A Separation? 

Yara: Yeah, just kind of wanted to review some of the key things that have popped up in this lesson for people to keep in mind as they're trying to improve their speaking skills. [00:32:00] One thing that we saw here is this double verb situation, bardār beeyār, lotf koneed, or sorry, we haven't done that yet, bardār beeyār. That's kind of a thing that's going to repeat throughout the coming lessons. 

Another thing is little interjections like deegé and hālā. These sorts of things are strewn throughout to kind of dilly-dally as you're speaking, to add a little bit of sass and emphasis. And then kind of the other thing that we're really gonna see come back, one of my absolute favorites is, I feel like I'm introducing characters in like a, in like a show, is the rā ham, which is kind of truncated to ram. Eenjāram, oono, you know, leevāneram, and we'll see that come up. 

And really just the formality of it all. Like, look at these, you know, this is when you don't know someone, you know, as Leyla was mentioning, right? You were mentioning, you use hyper-formal language for people you don't know in Persian. We're seeing this happen with both parties, but what we're going to see later on is how sometimes as a reflection of the class status or the [00:33:00] class difference between people, one party may sort of not fully always use the most formal language, whereas the other party may continue to do so. So we'll see that kind of pop up. Lots of class discussions to be had, but this was super fun. 

Leyla: And this is a movie where a lot of different themes come up. A lot of different issues. One is the class issues. Another is the difficulties of living in Iran we're, we're dealing with, that Simin wants to leave Iran, and why is that? So we'll get to see that, and you know, the, the life of people living in Iran, the difficulties that they have, we'll see that come up a lot. 

So this is a very political movie, very ejtemā'ee. What do you, how do you say ejtemā'ee? 

Yara: Social, yeah. 

Leyla: Social, yeah. 

Yara: Society. 

Leyla: Lots of societal issues. So we'll see all of that continuing forward, and I'm really excited to go on this journey with you. So thank you, Yara, and until next time! 

Yara: Thank you. 

Leyla: Khodāhāfez. 

Yara: Khodāhāfez.