Tārof at a Gallery

Leyla: salām bé hamegee, welcome to Lesson 65 of Learn Persian with Chai and Conversation. I'm joined today by Vijay. salām vijay!

Vijay: salām leylā, hanooz khoob-een? 

Leyla: hanooz khoob-am, merci, khaylee mamnoon! salām bé rooyé māhet! As we learned. 

Vijay: khaylee mamnoon, salām bé rooyé māhetoon! 

Leyla: As we learned in a previous lesson. Today, we're going to… speaking of “rooyé māhet,” we're going to learn more about tārof! As we're getting into more advanced vocabulary, tārof is a big part of how we converse in the Persian language. It comes up in every single conversation. It's really hard to have a conversation in Persian without using tārof, so it's really important to know these phrases, and what better way to learn than to listen to them in conversation? We're going to go ahead and listen to this full dialogue, and then we're going to go over it bit by bit as we always do. Are you ready, Vijay? 

Vijay: hāzer-am, I'm ready!

Leyla: ālee! Let's get into the dialogue: 

Professor: salām khānomé neekzād!

Parveen: salām ostād. khosh oomadeen. vāgh'an eftekhār dādeen tashreef āvordeen.

Professor: ekhteeyār dāreen. ché namāyeshgāhé bozorgee! az kojā bāyad shoroo koneem?

Parveen: befarmāyeen az een taraf. man tāblō-hārō behetoon mo'arefee meekonam.

Leyla: All right, so let's listen to it from the top, from the very beginning. 

Professor: salām khānomé neekzād!

Leyla: Okay, first, he says, “salām khānomé neekzād!”

Vijay: salām khānomé neekzād!

Leyla: As we can see here already, he's saying “salām,” ‘Miss Neekzad!’, so he's speaking to her formally. salām khānomé neekzād!

Vijay: salām khānomé neekzād!

Parveen: salām ostād. khosh oomadeen. vāgh'an eftekhār dādeen tashreef āvordeen.

Leyla: Okay, first, she starts with “salām ostād.” 

Vijay: salām ostād.

Leyla: “ostād” means ‘professor’, and it's the way that we refer to either a professor or if we want to just put a lot of respect for someone, but I have a feeling that this is literally a professor, so she goes, “salām ostād.” 

Vijay: salām ostād.

Leyla: But, yeah, anyone who's a teacher, this is how you'd want to refer to them, even music teachers or teachers at a university or your teachers at a school, just anyone that is teaching you something, you use this really respectful term to refer to them. salām ostād. 

Vijay: salām ostād.

Leyla: ‘Hello, professor’, ‘hello, teacher’. She says, “khosh oomadeen.”

Vijay: khosh oomadeen.

Leyla: And this means ‘welcome’. khosh oomadeen.

Vijay: khosh oomadeen.

Leyla: Yeah, 'you're welcome'. Here, it's 'I'm happy that you're here'. Then she goes… Now this is a major tārof phrase. She goes, “vāgh'an eftekhār dādeen tashreef āvordeen.” “vāgh'an” means ‘really’, and then “eftekhār dādeen.” This means that ‘you gave…’ what does “eftekhār” mean literally?

Vijay: I think it's ‘pride’ or ‘honor’. It's really just an amazing kind of privilege almost. 

Leyla: Exactly, ‘you brought pride’. That is a good way to translate it. eftekhār dādeen.

Vijay: eftekhār dādeen.

Leyla: ‘You brought a lot of pride’, 'you've honored us'. Then “tashreef āvordeen,” again, we had this a couple lessons ago, and it means ‘you graced us with your presence’. tashreef āvordeen.

Vijay: tashreef āvordeen.

Leyla: So 'you've brought a lot of pride by gracing us with your presence'. This is really, really respectful. She's really laying it on strong, showing that he's brought a lot of honor to this establishment by gracing them with his presence. “vāgh'an eftekhār dādeen.” 

Vijay: vāgh'an eftekhār dādeen.

Leyla: tashreef āvordeen.

Vijay: tashreef āvordeen.

Leyla: And then he responds by saying…

Professor: ekhteeyār dāreen. ché namāyeshgāhé bozorgee! az kojā bāyad shoroo koneem?

Leyla: Okay, he goes, mmm, “ekhteeyār dāreen.” “ekhteeyār” literally means ‘choice’ or ‘power’ or ‘the will’, so it's ‘the will is with you’. It's another tārof phrase, another major tārof phrase saying, “ekhteeyār dāreen,” 'no, no, no, no, it's your power. It's not that. I'm not the one with the power. It's all you!'. It's so hard to translate these phrases because they're so over-the-top, but “ekhteeyār dāreen!” 

Vijay: ekhteeyār dāreen.

Leyla: It's a way to minimize what that other person is saying, so we use it a lot in conversation. If someone says, “āh, cheghadr khoshhālam oomadeen!” 'I'm so happy you came!', you go, “āh, ekhteeyār dāreen!” 'no problem, of course I'd be here. You're the one who is the graceful one!' or whatever. ekhteeyār dāreen. 

Vijay: ekhteeyār dāreen.

Leyla: And then he immediately changes the subject by saying “ché namāyeshgāhé bozorgee!” “ché namāyeshgāhé bozorgee!” “namāyeshgāh” means ‘gallery’, and “bozorg,” of course, means ‘big’, so ‘what a big gallery!’. ché namāyeshgāhé bozorgee!

Vijay: ché namāyeshgāhé bozorgee!

Leyla: Now, I do want to speak about the word “gāh” here because that's pretty interesting. “gāh” is the ‘place’, and “namāyesh” is a ‘play’, but it's also ‘to present’ something, so this is a place where things are presented. namāyeshgāh.

Vijay: namāyeshgāh. 

Leyla: We can use this word “gāh.” We see it often, so you can say “bāshgāh…” 

Vijay: bāshgāh.

Leyla: And that is a ‘gym’, a place where you work out, “bāshgāh.” You can say “foroodgāh.” “forood” means ‘landing’; “gāh” means ‘place’. A ‘landing place’ is an ‘airport'! Yeah, you see it in a lot of different words where it's combined with another word to mean something, so he could also say “ché gālleryé bozorgee!” but this is more translated directly. It is a very common word, but “namāyeshgāh” is more the Persian, the old Persian word for it, “namāyeshgāh,” so ché namāyeshgāhé bozorgee!

Vijay: ché namāyeshgāhé bozorgee!

Leyla: And then he goes, “az kojā bāyad shoroo koneem?”

Vijay: az kojā bāyad shoroo koneem?

Leyla: “shoroo kardan” is ‘to start’, so ‘where should we start? Where from should we start?’ az kojā bāyad shoroo koneem?

Vijay: az kojā bāyad shoroo koneem?

Leyla: So she answers…

Parveen: befarmāyeen az een taraf. man tāblō-hārō behetoon mo'arefee meekonam.

Leyla: Okay, great! She goes “befarmāyeen az een taraf.”

Vijay: befarmāyeen az een taraf.

Leyla: “befarmāyeen” is another tārof phrase. It means ‘please, please go ahead. Please come this way’. befarmāyeen. 

Vijay: befarmāyeen.

Leyla: It's a word that we often use. For example, if you're standing at a door and you ask someone to go in front of you, you say, “befarmāyeen.”

Vijay: befarmāyeen.

Leyla: Or if food is served at the table and you want everyone to go get the food, you say, “befarmāyeen.”

Vijay: befarmāyeen.

Leyla: Again, ‘please go ahead’, and then “az een taraf.” “taraf” is this ‘way’, so “een taraf,” ‘this way', “az een taraf,” ‘from this way’. befarmāyeen az een taraf.

Vijay: befarmāyeen az een taraf.

Leyla: Why is this tārof? It's because she's not saying, “eenjā bereen!” being just very direct. Instead, she's saying ‘please go ahead. Come from this way’. She's drawing it out. Instead of saying fewer words, she's drawing it out, saying more words to show her respect to the ostād. befarmāyeen az een taraf.

Vijay: befarmāyeen az een taraf.

Leyla: Great, and then she goes, “man tāblō-hārō behetoon mo'arefee meekonam.” Again, very nice phrase, but she goes, “man,” ‘I’, “man,” me. man.

Vijay: man.

Leyla: Then “tāblō-hārō.” “tāblō-hā” means ‘the paintings’. tāblō-hā.

Vijay: tāblō-hā.

Leyla: We have that direct object marker “-rō,” so she's talking about these particular paintings. tāblō-hārō.

Vijay: tāblō-hārō.

Leyla: Then “behetoon,” ‘to you’. behetoon.

Vijay: behetoon. 

Leyla: And then a compound verb here, “mo'arefee kardan” means ‘to introduce’. mo'arefee meekonam…

Vijay: mo'arefee meekonam.

Leyla: …means ‘I will introduce, so ’I, these paintings, will introduce to you' is what she's saying. She's going to personally take him around and show him these paintings. man tāblō-hārō…

Vijay: man tāblō-hārō…

Leyla: behetoon mo'arefee meekonam.

Vijay: behetoon mo'arefee meekonam.

Leyla: Perfect! Is there anything else that you want to point out with this conversation, Vijay? 

Vijay: No, just, I think this is our first conversation where we've really just been going deep into tārof. We've kind of been having a few little teasers into tārof in the last couple of conversations. The first two lessons we recorded, I think we just kind of had more or less ordinary conversations. Then we kind of started getting into a little bit more tārof, and now we're really… this conversation is all tārof!

Leyla: That's right. Yeah, we have a little power dynamic here! She's the painter, and then he's the professor, so she's really trying to play it up and really tārof with him. That's a good point. Yeah, this is a short and sweet dialogue. Let's listen to the full thing and see if we understand it this time!

Professor: salām khānomé neekzād!

Parveen: salām ostād. khosh oomadeen. vāgh'an eftekhār dādeen tashreef āvordeen.

Professor: ekhteeyār dāreen. ché namāyeshgāhé bozorgee! az kojā bāyad shoroo koneem?

Parveen: befarmāyeen az een taraf. man tāblō-hārō behetoon mo'arefee meekonam.

Leyla: Amazing, and hopefully, you understood all the words in that conversation! As always, go through this dialogue, really practice saying the words, practice doing the tārof scene here, and check out the lesson guide! We have all these words listed out individually so you can really understand them. We have our exercises that you can practice, and ways to practice this in conversation as well. Thank you so much for listening, and tā daf'éyé ba'd, khodāhāfez from Leyla…

Vijay: And bé omeedé deedār from Vijay!