How to Talk About Places Around Town, and Possession

Leyla: Hello everyone, and welcome back to Chai and Conversation. Esme man Leyla hast, and I am the teacher for the course.

Matt: Esme man Matt hast, and I am the student in this course.

Leyla: As you know by now, Chai and Conversational teaches you conversational Persian in weekly lessons of about 15 minutes each. We are now at lesson 14, and we are really getting into the meat of the language!

Matt: Hopefully you've been enjoying learning the Persian language along with me. As we've mentioned in previous lessons, there are many more resources available on our website at chaiandconversation.com, with chai spelled chai. Be sure to check it out.

Leyla: These resources include pdf guides that provide explanations for all the words we learn on the lesson, as well as all the words we've learned spelled out phonetically. We've been getting so much positive feedback about the pdf guides and the enhanced podcasts. Samples are available on the website if you'd like to check them out before trying them out!

Matt: In unit two, we have been steadily building our vocabulary and learning to use Persian in practical conversation.

Leyla: And today we'll be learning how to ask where certain institutions are, and how to get simple directions to places. So enough talk, let's get right on to the lesson! Hazeree Matt?

Matt: Hazeram!

Leyla: Great, Farsi yaad begeereem ba Chai and Conversation!

Leyla: So as we mentioned, today we'll be covering vocabulary for places around the town, and how to ask for directions to how to get to them. A lot of the words we're going to learn today will sound very familiar to you, as many of them come from Latin roots or lifted directly from French. Let's begin with a word we learned in a previous lesson, cinema. matt can you repeat after me? Cinema

Matt: Cinema

Leyla: This of course means the movie theater. Next, muse

Matt: muse

Leyla: muse is the

Matt: museum

Leyla: that's correct, the museum. muse

Matt: Muse

Leyla: Another important one- bank

Matt: bank

Leyla: and bank would be

Matt: the bank

Leyla: so hopefully everyone is remembering to repeat after matt. So the theater would be cinema

Matt: Cinema

Leyla: Museum would be muse

Matt: muse

Leyla: and bank would be bank

Matt: Bank

Leyla: Next, we've learned this one already when learning about jobs but restaurant is 'restooran'

Matt: restooran

Leyla: So we've had cinema, muse, bank, restooran, and now let's learn another one that might sound familiar to you, 'bazaar.'

Matt: Bazaar

Leyla: This is the center of commerce in most Persian cities and the traditional area for shopping. And now if you want to go to the center of the town, or downtown, you call it 'vazateh shahr.' vazat means 'center', so the center of the city is 'vasateh shahr.' now if you want to go to the tourist information office in the town, you say 'edare touristee.'

Matt: Edare touristee

Leyla: We learned the word 'edare' in a pervious lesson. It means office. So tourist office, edareye touristee

Matt: Edareye touristee

Leyla: another place would be 'estakhr'

Matt: Estakhr

Leyla: this is the pool, estakhr

Matt: Estakhr

Leyla: another important place you should know is 'masjed'

Matt: Masjed

Leyla: This means mosque. you could also go to the 'keleesa'

Matt: Keleesa

Leyla: this is church. And finally synagogue is 'keneesa'

Matt: Keneesa.

Leyla: So Masjed, keleesa and keneesa. So le'ts run through all these places one more time.

cinema

muse

bank

restooran

bazaar

vasateh shahr

edare touristee

estakhr

masjed

keleesa

keneesa

so now, if you see someone in the street and you want to ask them where something is, you could always add an intonation of a question to the word and look really lost, like muse? but you could also ask the complete question, where is the museum? We've learned the word for where before 'koja'

Matt: koja

Leyla: To say where is the museum then, you would say 'Muse kojast?'

Matt: muse kojast?

Leyla: And of course knowing that in Persian words are often combined, kojast is a combination of koja and hast. Kojast. Muse kojast?

Matt: Muse kojast?

Leyla: And if you see someone in the street and you'd like to stop them to ask them a question, you say 'I'm sorry'- bebakhsheed

Matt: Babakhsheed

Leyla: This literally means pardon me, or excuse me. Babakhsheed

Matt: bebakhsheed

Leyla: So to say excuse me, where is the museum, you say 'bebakhsheed, muse kojast?'

Matt: Bebakhsheed, muse kojast

Leyla: How would you say excuse me where is the bank?

Matt: Bebakhsheed, bank kojast?

Leyla: How about where is the restaurant?

Matt: Bebakhsheed, restooran kojast?

Leyla: And what about where is the tourist information office?

Matt: Bebakhsheed, edare tooreestee kojast?

Leyla: There are several ways to ask for the location of a place, and one could be that you have a map, and they're going to point out the location on the map. To say this, we need to learn a couple of phrases. If you ask where a museum is, and they're going to point out the location to you, they could say 'eenjast'

Matt: eenjast

Leyla: meaning 'it's here'. or muse eenjast

Matt: muse eenjast

Leyla: The museum is here. Now, if you're asking for directions in the street, and the building you are looking for is straight ahead, the person could answer, 'befarmayeed jelo'

Matt: Befarmayeed jelo

Leyla: This is a polite way of saying 'proceed forward, or the place you are looking for is right ahead. If it's not straight ahead, you'll need to know the word for turn. In Persian, turn is 'bepeecheed'

Matt: bepeecheed

Leyla: Now, to say turn right, you say rast bepeecheed

Matt: Rast bepeecheed.

Leyla: So the word for right is 'rast'. And the word for left is 'chap'

Matt: Chap

Leyla: chap bepeecheed

Matt: Chap bepeecheed.

Leyla: One more thing, you might be looking for a particular thing in town and you've identified what it is and the person might have told you directions. And you might want to ask, is it near? or is it far? The word for near is nazdeek

Matt: Nazdeek

Leyla: so you'd simply say 'nazdeeke'

Matt: nazdeeke?

Leyla: so you know the word for here, it's eenja

Matt: eenja

Leyla: so to say is it close to here, you simply say 'nazdeeke eenjast?

Matt: And to say is the museum close to here, you could say 'muse nazdeeke eenjast?

Leyla: So to ask the question, raise the tone at the end- muse nazdeeke eenjast?

Matt: Muse nazdeeke eenjast?

Leyla: Or to make a statement, the museum is near here you say muse nazdeeke eenjast.

Matt: Muse nazdeeke eenjast.

Leyla: The opposite of near is far which in Persian is 'door'

Matt: door

Leyla: So doore?

Matt: Doore

Leyla: that's is it far. To ask is it far from here, we have to flip things around a bit. To say is it far from here, the phrase is 'az eenja doore?'

Matt: Az eenja doore

Leyla: and to say is the museum far from here, it's

Matt: muse az eenja doore

Leyla: And that brings us to the end of lesson 14

Leyla: How are you feeling Matt?

Matt: Ha, pretty good

Leyla: We're learning a lot of new words in these recent lessons, but hopefully enough of them have been familiar to not be so overwhelming.

Matt: The vocabulary lists at the end of the pdf guides definitely help when reviewing the vocabulary from each lesson. These can be found on the website after each lesson on the website at chaiandconversation.com

Leyla: There you'll find plenty of other learning materials. You'll also find information about how to contact us and let us know what you think about the lessons. Are we going too fast, too slow,just right? Please do let us know! Any feedback you can provide is invaluable to the development of the lessons.

Matt: Also, please spread the word of Chai and Conversation in any way you can. We have a facebook page at facebook.com/learnpersian. There, you'll receive notifications every time we update the website or post a lesson.

Leyla: Thank you so much for joining us this week, and we look forward to you joining us next time on Chai and Conversation. Until then, beh omeedeh deedar from leyla

Matt: And ta hafteyeh deege from Matt!