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. 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!