PERSIAN PHONOLOGY

The Persian language (Tehrani dialect) has six vowels and twenty-three consonants, including two affricates, // and //.

Contents

Vowels

Diphthongs

Chart

Historical shifts

Consonants

Consonants

Chart

Stress

Colloquial Iranian Persian

References

See also

External links

Vowels

Diachronically, Persian possessed a distinction of length in its underlying vowel inventory, contrasting the long vowels , , with the short vowels , , respectively.
Word-final does not occur frequently (except for ''to'' - 'thou'), and word-final is very rare in Iranian Persian (except for ''næ'' - 'no'). The word-final in Early New Persian mostly shifted to in contemporary Iranian Persian (often romanized as ), but is preserved in the Eastern dialects.

The vowel phonemes of Persian

Diphthongs

Persian has two diphthongs, and .

Chart

Phoneme (in IPA)	Letter	Romanization	Example(s)
	َ , ا	a, æ	نه   ''no''
	آ , ا	a, aa, ā, â, A	تا   ''till''
	ِ , ا	e	که   ''that''
	ی	i, ee, y	کی   ''who''
	ا , ُ , و	o	تو   ''thou'', ''you (singular)''
	و	u, oo, ou	تو   ''in''
	ی	ey, ei, ay, ai	کی   ''when''
	و	ow, au	نو   ''new''

Historical shifts

Early New Persian had eight vowels: i, ī, ē, u, ū, ō, a, ā (in IPA: ). The following chart describes their shifts into Tajik, Afghan Dari, and contemporary Iranian Persian .
Tajik i e u ů a o
┌↑┐ ↑ ┌↑┐ ↑ ↑ ↑
'Early NP' i ī ē u ū ō a ā
↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓
Afghan e i ē o u ō a ā
↓ └↓┘ ↓ └↓┘ ↓ ↓
Iranian e ī o ū a ā
''See also: Tajik language''

Consonants

Alveolar stops and are either apico-alveolar or apico-dental. The unvoiced plosives are aspirated much like their English counterparts: they become aspirated when they begin a syllable, though aspiration is not contrastive . When occurs at the beginning of a word, it is realized as a voiced uvular plosive .

Consonants

	Labial	Apical	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal
Stop
Fricative
Tap
Approximant

and are postalveolar affricates, not palatal stops.

Chart

Phoneme	Sound (in IPA)	Letter	Romanization	Example(s)
		پ	p	پارسی
		ب	b	بانو
		ت , ط	t	توران
		د	d	دنيا
		ک	k	كشور
		گ	g	گروه
		ء , ع	' , Ø	عمل / مسائل
		چ	ch, č, c	چوب
		ج	j,	جوان
		ف	f	فارسی
		و	v	ويژه
		س , ص, ث	s	سايه
		ز , ذ , ض , ظ	z	آزاد
		ش	sh, š	شاه
		ژ	zh, ž	پژوهش
		خ	kh, x	خانواده
		غ , ق	gh, q, ġ	باغ
		غ , ق	q, gh	غذا
		ه , ح	h	حال
		م	m	نام
		ن	n	نان
		ل	l	لب
		ر	r	رستوران
		ی	y	يا

In the classic Persian, غ and ق denoted as and , respectively. In the modern Tehrani accent of Persian (which is used in the Iranian mass media), there is no difference in the pronunciation of غ and ق (both of them representing or , depending on their position in the word). However, the classic pronunciation difference (for غ and ق) is preserved in the eastern variants of Persian (i.e. Dari and Tajiki), as well as the southern accent of the modern Iranian variant (e.g. Yazdi and Kermani accents).

Stress

One syllable in each word (or breath group) is stressed, and knowing the rules is conducive to proper pronunciation. One of the few textbooks to state the rules is Mace's ''Persian Grammar'', from which they are synopsized as follows.
''General rule:''
'I.' Stress falls on the last stem syllable of most words.
''Exceptions and clarifications:''
'II.' Stress falls on the first syllable of interjections, conjunctions and vocatives. E.g. /'bale/ "yes", /'nakheir/ "no indeed", /'vali/ "but", /'cerā/ "why", /'agar/ "if", /'mersi/ "thanks", /'xānom/ "Ma'am", /'āqā/ "Sir"; cf. 'IV-3' ''īnfrā''.
'III.' Never stressed are: '1)' personal suffixes on verbs (''-am'' "I do..", ''-i'' "you do..", .., ''-and'' "they do..") (with one exception, cf. 'IV-1' ''īnfrā''); '2)' a small set of very common noun enclitics: the ''ezāfe'' (''-e''/''-ye'') "of", ''-rā'' "[direct object marker]", ''-i'' "a, an", ''-o'' "and"; '3)' the possessive and pronoun-object suffixes, ''-am'', ''-et'', ''-esh'', &c.
'IV.' Always stressed are: '1)' the personal suffixes on the positive future auxiliary verb (the single exception to 'III-1' ''suprā''); '2)' the negative verb prefix ''na-/ne-'', if present; '3)' if ''na-/ne-'' is not present, then the first non-negative verb prefix (e.g. ''mi-'' "-ing", ''bi-'' "Do!", and the prefix noun in compound verbs (e.g. ''kār'' in ''kār mi-kardam''); '3)' the last syllable of all other words, including the infinitive ending ''-an'' and the participial ending ''-te'' in verbal derivatives, noun suffixes like ''-i'' "-ish" and ''-egi'', all plural suffixes (''-hā'', ''-ān''), adjective comparative suffixes (''-tar'', ''-tarin''), and ordinal-number suffixes (''-om''). Nouns not in the vocative are stressed on the final syllable: /xā'nom/ "lady", /ā'qā/ "gentleman"; cf. 'II' ''suprā''.
In transcription, enclitics (like the ''ezāfe'') and personal suffixes should be written separated from their words by a hyphen, to show that they are unstressed. Stressed prefixes should be joined with a hyphen. Interjections &c. should be marked with an acute diacritic on their initial syllable.

Colloquial Iranian Persian

When spoken formally, Iranian Persian is pronounced as written. But colloquial pronunciation as used by all classes makes a number of very common substitutions. As synopsized from Mace's ''Persian Grammar'', they include:

★ Written ''-ɒn-'' is nearly always pronounced /-un-/. The only common exceptions are high prestige words, like the Qur'an , and Iran , which are pronounced as written. A few words with ''-ɒm-'' are pronounced /-um-/, especially the verb "to come".

★ The unstressed direct object suffix marker ''rɒ'' is pronounced /ro/, or /o/ after a consonant.

★ The stems of many verbs have a short colloquial form, especially ''æst'' "he/she is" is colloquially pronounced /e/ after a consonant.

★ The 2nd and 3rd person plural suffixes ''-id'' and ''-ænd'' become /-in/ and /-æn/, respectively.

★ Many frequently-occurring verbs become shortened, such as ''mixɒhæm'' "I want" to ''mixɒm'', and ''mirævæm'' "I go" to ''miræm''.

References

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See also

★ Persian alphabet

External links

★ Farsdat – Persian speech database