Transportation: نقل

Some vocabulary to help you get around. I’m trying something a little different here in that, when dealing with cognates or near-cognates, I’m going to give you the pronunciation rather than the English transliteration, which you’ll probably never need.

• car: ماشین (māshīn), اتومبیل (“automobile”)
• truck: کامیون (kāmyūn), meaning something capable of carrying freight
  
• motorcycle: موتورسیکلت (“motorcyclet”)
  
• bus: اتوبوس (“autobus”)
  
• train: قطار (qiṭār)
  
• plane: هواپیما (havāpaymā)
  
• boat/ship/ferry: کشتی (kishtī)
• bicycle: دو چرخه (dū charkhah), literally “two-wheeler”
  
• taxi: تاكسی (“taxi”)
  
• walking (verb): راه رفتن (rāh raftan)
  • “a walk”: راهروی (rāh-rūy)
    
• running (verb): دویدن (davīdan)

نوروز ۱۳۹۵

!نوروز مبارک

Severe weather and natural disasters

Following on from last time, let’s see what vocabulary we’d need if the weather got a little rougher.

• storm: طوفان (ṭūfān)
  
• thunderstorm: طوفان تندری (ṭūfān-i tundarī) OR طوفان رعد و برق (ṭūfān-i raʿd-o-barq)
  
  • thunder: تندر (tundar) OR رعد (raʿd)
    
  • lightning: برق (barq) OR آذرخش (āżarakhsh) OR صاعقه (ṣāʿiqah)
    
• monsoon: موسم بارندگی (mawsam bārandagī, “seasonal rainfall”)
  
• flood: سیل (sayl)
  
• tornado: گردباد (gardbād)
  
• blizzard: کولاک (kūlāk)
• hurricane (tropical cyclone): طوفان (ṭūfān) OR تندباد (tundbād)
• sandstorm: طوفان شن (ṭūfān-i shin)
• drought: خشکی (khushkī)
  
• volcano: آتش‌فشان (ātish-fishān)
  
  • volcanic eruption: فوران آتش‌فشان (fūrān-i ātish-fishān)
    
• earthquake: زلزله (zilzilah) OR زمین‌لرزه (zamīn-larzah)
  
• tsunami: سونامی (sūnāmī)
  
• avalanche: بهمن (bahman)
  
• landslide: زمین لغزش (zamīn-laghzish)
  

هوا (weather)

Let’s look at some basic weather-related vocabulary, shall we?

• weather: هوا (havā) — this also means “air” or “atmosphere”
  
  • sun: آفتاب (āftāb) or خورشید (khūrshīd), though the latter is more symbolic; “sunny” is آفتابی (āftābī)
    
  • clouds: ابرها (abrhā), a single cloud is ابر (abr)
    
  • rain: باران (bārān); “rainy” is بارانی (bārānī)
    
  • fog: مه (mah); “foggy” is مه آلود (mah ālūd)
    
  • snow: برف (barf — yes, “barf”); “snowy” is برفی (barfī)
    
  • hail: تگرگ (tagarg)
    
  • wind: باد (bād) OR طوفان (ṭūfān); “windy” is طوفانی (ṭūfānī)
    
  • breeze: نسیم (nasīm)
    
  • gust: تند باد (tund bād) — “fast wind”
    
• temperature: درجه حرارت (darajah-yi ḥarārat), “degree of heat”
  
  • cold: سرد (sard)
    
  • cool: خنک (khunuk)
    
  • hot/warm: گرم (garm)
    
• humidity: رطوبت (ruṭūbat)
  
  • humid: مرطوب (murṭūb)
    
  • dry: خشک (khashk)

“How’s the weather?”: هوا چطور است (havā chiṭūr ast)

“It’s sunny”: هوا آفتابیست (havā āftābīst) or simply آفتابی (āftābī); change accordingly

“It’s raining”: بارانیست (bārānīst) — “it’s rainy” — OR می‌ بارد (mī bārad) OR باران می آید (bārān mī āyad) — “rain is coming”

“It’s snowing”: برف می‌ بارد (barf mī bārad)

“It’s cold today”: امروز هوا سرد است (imrūz havā sard ast) or simply امروز سرد است (imrūz sard ast)

عید مبارک

This evening marks the start of the Festival of the Sacrifice (عید الاضحى/Eid al-Adha in Arabic and عید قربان/Eid-i Qurbān in Persian), celebrated every year by Muslims at the end of the Hajj. عید مبارک, and if you’re interested in learning more, you might want to start with this blog’s first عید قربان post from two years ago.

یوم کیپور

Sundown today is the start of Yom Kippur, so for those who are Jewish, have an easy fast. I have no interesting linguistic story to tell here, since Persian and Hebrew aren’t related the way Hebrew and Arabic are, but I thought you might want to see the holiday written in Persian (see the title, it’s yawm kīppūr).

حج مبارک

With today marking the beginning of the Hajj, I thought I’d rerun this blog’s first post on Hajj and other pilgrimage vocabulary.

عید فطر ۱۴۳۶

عيد مبارك و سعید

As I do every year, I’ll link to the first Eid-e Fetr post on this blog, which has more information about the holiday for those who are interested.

رمضان ۱۴۳۶

Sundown tonight will be the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan for some people around the world (moon observations make it hard to pinpoint these things exactly), so if you’re interested please enjoy my past writing on the topic.

Persian Word a Day

There’s much more about the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which begins this evening for most Muslims around the world, over on the Arabic blog, if you’re so inclined.

My purpose here is only to give you some Persian greetings you can offer for the month. If you’ve read that Arabic entry then this will be pretty simple, because we’re just using the same Arabic greetings, رَمَضان مُبارَك (ramażān mubārak), “Blessed Ramadan!” and رَمَضان كَريم (ramażān karīm), “Generous Ramadan!” The only difference is in pronunciation, where you’ll notice that the Arabic ramaḍān, with a deep “d” sound, is in Persian pronounced ramażān, with a regular “z” sound. The letter ض, which has a deep “d” sound in Arabic, takes a “z” sound in Persian, which you already knew because you read our guide to Persian pronunciation, obviously.

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Persian Numbers III: 11-1000

For the numbers 1-10, see here.

Like English, Persian has slightly altered forms for the numbers 11-19 (though they all tack on the number ten, دَه, at the end, like the English “-teen” for ten) but then everything after that just takes the form “x and y” (in Persian, a number like twenty-four would read “twenty and four”), which is lucky for us because it means that after we get through 19 we just have to hit a few examples and we’ve got all the numbers covered to 1000 (really we could go past 1000, but numbers are infinite and our time here is not, so 1000 is where we’re stopping for now).

English name	Western Arabic numeral	Persian numeral	Persian name	Persian name transliterated
eleven	11	۱۱	یازده	yāzdah
twelve	12	۱۲	دوازده	davāzdah
thirteen	13	۱۳	سیزده	sīzdah
fourteen	14	۱۴	چهارده	chahārdah
fifteen	15	۱۵	پانزده	pānzdah
sixteen	16	۱۶	شانزده	shānzdah
seventeen	17	۱۷	هفده	hifdah
eighteen	18	۱۸	هجده	hijdah
nineteen	19	۱۹	نوزده	nūzdah

 

Now we can count by 10s or more:

• 20 (twenty): ۲۰ (بیست, bīst)
• 30 (thirty): ۳۰ (سی, sī)
  
• 40 (forty): ۴۰ (چِهِل, chihil)
  
• 50 (fifty): ۵۰ (پَنجاه, panjāh)
  
• 60 (sixty): ۶۰ (شَصت, shaṣt)
  
• 70 (seventy): ۷۰ (هَفتاد, haftād)
  
• 80 (eighty): ۸۰ (هَشتاد, hashtād)
  
• 90 (ninety): ۹۰ (نَوَد, navad)

And now by hundreds:

• 100 (one hundred): ۱۰۰ (صَد, ṣad)
  
• 200 (two hundred): ۲۰۰ (دِویست, divīst)
  
• 300 (three hundred): ۳۰۰ (سیصد, sīṣad)
  
• 400 (four hundred): ۴۰۰ (چَهارصد, chahārṣad)
  
• 500 (five hundred): ۵۰۰ (پانصد, pānṣad)
  
• 600 (six hundred): ۶۰۰ (شِشصد, shishṣad)
  
• 700 (seven hundred): ۷۰۰ (هَفتصد, haftṣad)
  
• 800 (eight hundred): ۸۰۰ (هَشتصد, hashtṣad)
  
• 900 (nine hundred): ۹۰۰ (نُهصد, nuhṣad)
  
• 1000 (one thousand): ۱۰۰۰ (هِزار, hizār)

Combining numbers is easy:

• 21 (twenty-one): ۲۱ (بیست و یک, bīst-ū-yik, “beest-oh-yek”)
• 84 (eighty-four): ۸۴ (هشتاد و چهار, hashtād-ū-chahār)
  
• 562 (five hundred sixty-two): ۵۶۲ (پانصد و شصت و دو, pānṣad-ū-shaṣt-ū-du)
  
• 1357 (one thousand three hundred fifty-seven): ۱۳۵۷ (هزار و سیصد و پنجاه و هفت, hizār-ū-sīṣad-ū-panjāh-ū-haft)

To somebody accustomed to a left-to-right writing system, it seems like Persian strangely writes its large numerals left-to-right (above, “562” is ۵۶۲), even though the rest of the language is written from right-to-left, and, frankly, this is strange in the case of Persian. However, this is how you write numbers in Arabic script because Arabic reads numbers from smallest to largest, not largest to smallest like us we do in English (or like they do in Persian). This is one case where the adopted script doesn’t completely map to the particulars of the language.