Speak / Lesson 14
How to Talk About Places Around Town, and Possession
In this 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
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 |
Leyla: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Chai and Conversation!
Matt: esmé man matt hast, va man shāgerdé zabāné fārsi hastam.
Leyla: esmé man leylā hast, va man mo'alemé zabāné fārsi hastam. If you're new to the program, welcome! Remember that you can download all our previous lessons from our website, chaiandconversation.com, with “chai” spelled C-H-A-I.
Matt: The website also has plenty of other resources for learning the Persian language, including bonus materials for each lesson.
Leyla: The bonus materials include PDF guides that list out all the vocabulary phonetically in English as well as using the Persian script. These guides are available for a very nominal fee.
Matt: We are now in Unit Two of Chai and Conversation, and we've come a long way so far.
Leyla: And we'll continue to build our vocabulary and language skills so that you can continue gaining confidence in speaking conversational Persian. Hopefully, you've been practicing the vocabulary you've been learning with family and friends or by yourself in front of the mirror! But enough of that; matt, hāzer-ee fārsi yad begeeree?
Matt: hāzer-am!
Leyla: Let's learn Persian with Chai and Conversation!
So today, we'll be covering vocabulary for places around the town and how to talk about possession. A lot of the words we're going to learn later in the lesson will sound very familiar to you, as many of them come from Latin roots or are directly lifted from French. Let's begin, however, with a word that has nothing to do with its English counterpart, the word for ‘home’! The word for ‘home’ in Persian is “khooné.”
Matt: khooné.
Leyla: Perfect! So “khooné” is the word for ‘house’. I do want to note that this is the casual, conversational way to say ‘house’. In written Persian, the word for ‘house’ is “khāné.” This is just one of those strange aspects of Persian that you have to get used to, that nothing spoken is the same as the written version. So if you happen to hear “khāné,” though it's rare, it means the same thing as “khooné.”
Now let's learn to convey whose house it is you are talking about. In order to say ‘my house', you say “khooneyé man.”
Matt: khooneyé man.
Leyla: This may sound familiar to you because in the family episode, we learned how to talk about our family members, and, for instance, to say ‘my mother’, we would say…?
Matt: mādaré man.
Leyla: And in that episode, we explained that to link two words together in Persian, it's necessary to link them with an “-é” sound if the noun you are referring to ends in a consonant or a “-yé” sound if the noun you are referring to ends in a vowel. So, because the word “khooné” ends in a vowel, we add a “-yé” to make it “khooneyé man.”
Matt: khooneyé man.
Leyla: So the word for the informal ‘you’, as we've learned before, is “tō.” In order to say ‘your house’, informally, we say "khooneyé tō."
Matt: khooneyé tō.
Leyla: ‘You’ formal is "shomā," so, Matt, how would we say ‘your house’ to a person to whom we refer in a formal manner?
Matt: khooneyé shomā.
Leyla: Exactly, “khooneyé shomā.” And now we're going to learn a few other words we haven't learned before in order to be able to say ‘our house’ or ‘their house’ or ‘his or her house’! To refer to first person plural or ‘we’, we say “mā.”
Matt: mā.
Leyla: So ‘our house’ would be “khooneyé mā.”
Matt: khooneyé mā.
Leyla: And also, ‘their’ is “ānhā.”
Matt: ānhā.
Leyla: So, “khooneyé ānhā.”
Matt: khooneyé ānhā.
Leyla: Now, Persian is similar to English in that ‘their’ can refer to women or men. khooneyé ānhā.
Matt: khooneyé ānhā.
Leyla: So again, we have khooneyé man.
Matt: khooneyé man.
Leyla: Meaning ‘my house’. khooneyé tō.
Matt: khooneyé tō.
Leyla: Meaning ‘your house’, informally. khooneyé shomā.
Matt: khooneyé shomā.
Leyla: Meaning ‘your house’, formally, and Matt, make sure to emphasize the second “e,” “khooneyé shomā.”
Matt: khooneyé shomā.
Leyla: Perfect. khooneyé mā.
Matt: khooneyé mā.
Leyla: Meaning ‘our house’, and finally, khooneyé ānhā.
Matt: khooneyé ānhā.
Leyla: Meaning ‘their house’. So let's learn the question ‘whose house is this?’. You would say, “een khooneyé kee-yé?”
Matt: een khooneyé kee-yé?
Leyla: Let's break down the sentence. We know the word “khooné," obviously. “een” means ‘this’, and “kee” is the word for ‘who’. “kee-yé” is a combination of “kee” and “hast.” “hast,” as we learned before, means ‘is’. So the full question “een khooneyé kee-yé?” means ‘whose house is this?’. een khooneyé kee-yé?
Matt: een khooneyé kee-yé?
Leyla: Let's say it’s your house! “een khooneyé man-é.”
Matt: een khooneyé man-é.
Leyla: And again, as you remember, that's the same way we talked about our family members, for instance, saying “een zané man-é” or “een pedaré man-é," meaning ‘this is my wife’ or ‘this is my father’, respectively. So “man-é” is the combination of “man” and “hast.” So when the word ends in a consonant, you add “-é” to substitute for “hast.” “man hast” equals “man-é.”
Matt: man-é.
Leyla: Now, if the word you're referring to ends in a vowel, things are a bit different. Instead, you add S-T, or “-st,” to the end of the word, so, for instance, “tō” + “hast” = “tō-st."
Matt: tō-st.
Leyla: So “een khooneyé tō-st.”
Matt: een khooneyé tō-st.
Leyla: So “ānhā” also ends in a vowel. Adding “-st” to it makes it “ānhā-st.”
Matt: ānhā-st.
Leyla: So “een khooneyé ānhā-st.”
Matt: een khooneyé ānhā-st.
Leyla: And finally, if you want to make “mā” possessive and add an “-st” to the end, can you figure out what it becomes, Matt?
Matt: mā-st.
Leyla: Exactly, mā-st, so it's “een khooneyé mā-st.”
Matt: een khooneyé mā-st.
Leyla: So ‘this is my house’, een khooneyé man-é.
Matt: een khooneyé man-é.
Leyla: een khooneyé tō-st.
Matt: een khooneyé tō-st.
Leyla: een khooneyé shomā-st.
Matt: een khooneyé shomā-st.
Leyla: een khooneyé ānhā-st.
Matt: een khooneyé ānhā-st.
Leyla: And een khooneyé mā-st.
Matt: een khooneyé mā-st.
Leyla: We've learned the word “eeshoon” before. In written Persian, it's actually “eeshān,” but it's rarely said that way in spoken Persian. It means ‘his’ or ‘her’ and is used when the person to whom you are referring is in your presence. So “een khooneyé eeshoon-é” means ‘this is her house’ or ‘this is his house’ when that person is present. In other words, if I was at Matt's house and he was in the room with me, I could point to him and say, “een khooneyé eeshoon-é.”
Matt: een khooneyé eeshoon-é.
Leyla: I could also use his name and say “een khooneyé matt-é."
Matt: een khooneyé matt-é.
Leyla: Similarly, you could use my name, Matt, and because my name ends in a vowel, you have to add an “-st” to it. Again, Matt, can you figure out how to say ‘this is Leyla’s house'?
Matt: een khooneyé leylā-st.
Leyla: So let's cover one more. The word for ‘his’ or ‘her’ when that person isn't necessarily present is “oo.”
Matt: oo.
Leyla: Again, this word is not gender-specific, and it is used whether the person you are referring to is formal or informal in relation to you. “een khooneyé oo-st.”
Matt: een khooneyé oo-st.
Leyla: Let's go through all these one last time. een khooneyé man-é.
Matt: een khooneyé man-é.
Leyla: een khooneyé tō-st.
Matt: een khooneyé tō-st.
Leyla: een khooneyé ānhā-st.
Matt: een khooneyé ānhā-st.
Leyla: een khooneyé mā-st.
Matt: een khooneyé mā-st.
Leyla: een khooneyé eeshoon-é.
Matt: een khooneyé eeshoon-é.
Leyla: een khooneyé oo-st.
Matt: een khooneyé oo-st.
Leyla: een khooneyé michael jordan-é.
Matt: een khooneyé michael jordan-é.
Leyla: een khooneyé oprāh-st!
Matt: een khooneyé oprāh-st! So why is Michael Jordan not “jordān-st,” because of the consonant, right?
Leyla: Yeah.
Matt: Okay.
Leyla: I was trying to think of names of people everyone knows! So to make it a little more complicated, let's think of a few scenarios that combine language we've learned in previous lessons. What if, for instance, you're in your mother's house? You would say “een khooneyé mādaré man-é.”
Matt: een khooneyé mādaré man-é.
Leyla: So a simple thing about Persian is no matter how many adjectives you wanna add to describe a place, you just keep adding the “-é” or the “-yé" and linking them together, so een khooneyé mādaré man-é.
Matt: een khooneyé mādaré man-é.
Leyla: Or how about if you're in my father's house, Matt? Can you figure that out?
Matt: een khooneyé pedaré tō-st.
Leyla: Perfect! So Matt, I'm going to ask you a question, and you come up with an answer from all the answers we've learned. matt, een khooneyé kee-yé?
Matt: een khooneyé ānhā-st.
Leyla: Okay, great, so ‘this is their house’; now, you ask me!
Matt: een khooneyé kee-yé?
Leyla: fekr meekonam een khooneyé eeshoon-é. In this case, I'm pointing to someone, referring to them as “eeshoon,” meaning either ‘his’ or ‘her’. I added a phrase in there, “fekr meekonam.” “fekr meekonam” means ‘I think’. fekr meekonam.
Matt: fekr meekonam.
Leyla: A useful phrase to know! So again, I'm saying “fekr meekonam een khooneyé eeshoon-é,” so ‘I think this house is his' or ‘hers’. So now, let’s switch gears a bit, and now that we've learned the word for ‘house’, let's learn the words for a few institutions around town that you might encounter. First, let's learn the word for ‘coffee shop’ because it incorporates the word for ‘house’, which we've just learned, and the word for ‘coffee’, which we learned last week. The word for ‘coffee shop’ in Persian is “ghahvekhooné.”
Matt: ghahvekhooné.
Leyla: You already know the word “ghahvé.” It means ‘coffee’, and “khooné” is ‘house’. ‘Coffee house’, “ghahvekhooné.”
Matt: ghahvekhooné.
Leyla: These next few words come from Latin roots and therefore should be very simple for you to remember. The word for ‘movie theater’ in Persian is “cinemā.”
Matt: cinemā.
Leyla: Next, let's learn another simple word: moozé.
Matt: moozé.
Leyla: “moozé” is the…?
Matt: Museum!
Leyla: That's correct, ‘museum’, “moozé.” Another important one: bānk.
Matt: bānk.
Leyla: And “bānk” would be…?
Matt: The bank!
Leyla: So hopefully, everyone is remembering to repeat after Mat, so ‘theater’ is cinemā.
Matt: cinemā.
Leyla: ‘Museum’ is “moozé.”
Matt: moozé.
Leyla: And ‘bank’ would be “bānk."
Matt: bānk.
Leyla: Next, we've learned this one already when learning about jobs, but ‘restaurant’ is “restoorān.”
Matt: restoorān.
Leyla: So we've had cinemā, moozé, bānk, restoorān, and now, let's learn another one that might sound familiar to you, “bāzār.”
Matt: bāzār.
Leyla: And 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 “vasaté shahr.”
Matt: vasaté shahr.
Leyla: Because it's extremely hot in Texas right now, let's learn the word for a very important place that Texans like to go: “estakhr”!
Matt: estakhr.
Leyla: And this means ‘pool’. estakhr.
Matt: estakhr.
Leyla: Another important place you should know is “masjed.”
Matt: masjed.
Leyla: This means ‘mosque’. You could also go to “keleesā.”
Matt: keleesā.
Leyla: Which is ‘church’, and finally, ‘synagogue’ is “keneesé.”
Matt: keneesé.
Leyla: So “masjed," “keleesā,” and “keneesé.” So let's run through all these places one last time. ghahvekhooné.
Matt: ghahvekhooné.
Leyla: cinemā.
Matt: cinemā.
Leyla: moozé.
Matt: moozé.
Leyla: bānk.
Matt: bānk.
Leyla: restoorān.
Matt: restoorān.
Leyla: bāzār.
Matt: bāzār.
Leyla: vasaté shahr.
Matt: vasaté shahr.
Leyla: estakhr.
Matt: estakhr.
Leyla: masjed.
Matt: masjed.
Leyla: keleesā.
Matt: keleesā.
Leyla: keneesé.
Matt: keneesé.
Leyla: And with that, we'll end the lesson.
So, how are you feeling Matt?
Matt: Hah, pretty good!
Leyla: Okay, we're learning a lot of new words in these recent lessons, so 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 vocabulary from each lesson. These can be found after each lesson on the website at chaiandconversation.com.
Leyla: There are plenty of other learning materials on the website as well. 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, or just right? Please do let us know! Any feedback you could provide is invaluable to the development of the lessons.
Matt: Also, please spread the word of Chai and Conversation in any way that 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, bé omeedé deedār from Leyla.
Matt: And tā hafteyé deegé from Matt!