Persian phonology

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Persian phonology

The Persian language

Persian language

Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis....
phoneme

Phoneme

In human language, a phoneme is the smallest posited linguistically distinctive unit of sound. Phonemes carry no semantic content themselves. In theoretical terms, phonemes are not the physical segment s themselves, but cognitive abstractions or categorizations of them....
s and twenty-three consonant

Consonant

In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper vocal tract, the upper vocal tract being defined as that part of the vocal tract that lies above the larynx....
phonemes. It features contrastive stress

Stress (linguistics)

In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables....
and syllable

Syllable

A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of Speech communication sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter....
-final consonant cluster

Consonant cluster

In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word splits....
s.

Diphthongs
Several diphthongs occur in Persian, including , , , , , and .

These are typically not considered to be phonemic since they may be broken by morphological

Morphology (linguistics)

Morphology is the identification, analysis and description of structure of words . While words are generally accepted as being the smallest units of syntax, it is clear that in most languages, words can be related to other words by rules....
processes.

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Encyclopedia

The Persian language

Persian language

Vowel

Phoneme

Consonant

Stress (linguistics)

Syllable

A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of Speech communication sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter....
-final consonant cluster

Consonant cluster

In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word splits....
s.

Vowels

Diachronically, Persian possessed a distinction of length in its underlying vowel inventory, contrasting the long vowels , , with the short vowels , , respectively.

Word-final is rare except for "thou, you (singular)", and word-final is very rare in Iranian Persian, except for "no." The word-final in Early New Persian mostly shifted to in contemporary Iranian Persian (often romanized as "eh"), but is preserved in the Eastern dialects.

The chart to the right reflects the vowels of many educated Persian speakers from Tehran.

Diphthongs

Several diphthongs occur in Persian, including , , , , , and .

These are typically not considered to be phonemic since they may be broken by morphological

Morphology (linguistics)

Chart

Letter Grapheme In typography, a grapheme is the fundamental unit in writing systems. Graphemes include letter , Chinese characters, numerals, punctuation marks, and all the individual symbols of any of the world's writing systems....	Romanization Romanization In linguistics, romanization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Latin alphabet, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system ....	Example(s)
? , ?	a, æ	no
? , ?	a, aa, a, â, A	till
? , ?	e	that
?	i, ee	who (informal)
? , ? , ?	o	thou, you (singular)
?	u, oo, ou	in (informal)

Dipthong (in IPA International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic.... )	Letter Grapheme In typography, a grapheme is the fundamental unit in writing systems. Graphemes include letter , Chinese characters, numerals, punctuation marks, and all the individual symbols of any of the world's writing systems....	Romanization Romanization In linguistics, romanization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Latin alphabet, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system ....	Example(s)
	?	ey, ei, ay, ai	when
	?	ow, au	new

Historical shifts

Early New Persian had eight vowels: i, i, e, u, u, o, a, a (in IPA: ). The following chart describes their shifts into Tajik

Tajik language

Dari (Afghanistan)

Dari or Dari Persian , also known as Eastern Persian, is a historical name for the Persian language and, in contemporary usage refers to the dialects of the Persian language that are spoken in Afghanistan....
, and contemporary Iranian Persian

Persian language

name=Persian|nativename=|pronunciation=[f??r'si]|image=|caption=Farsi in Perso-Arabic script |states= Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Bahrain....
.

Tajik i e u u a o +?+ ? +?+ ? ? ? Early NP i i e u u o a a ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Afghan e i e o u o a a ? +?+ ? +?+ ? ? Iranian e i o u a a

See also: Tajik vowels
Tajik language

The Tajik language, or Tajik Persian, or Tajiki, is a modern variety of the Persian language spoken in Central Asia. An Indo-European languages language of the Iranian languages language group, most speakers of Tajik live in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan....

Consonants

	Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the Dental alveolus of the superior teeth....	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the Soft palate)....	Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricatives, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider them to be consonants at all....
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is produced with a lowered soft palate in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the tongue....		[]
Plosive Stop consonant A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. The terms plosive and stop are usually used interchangeably, but they are not perfect synonyms....			[]
Affricate Affricate consonant Affricate consonants begin as stop consonants but release as a fricative consonant rather than directly into the following vowel....
Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two Place of articulation close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German language , the final consonant of Bach; or the side of the tongue ag...
Tap	[]
Trill Trill consonant In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish <rr > as in perro is an alveolar trill, while in Parisian French it is almost always uvular trill....
Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and "typical" consonants. In the articulation of approximants, articulatory organs produce a narrowing of the vocal tract, but leave enough space for air to flow without much audible turbulence....

(Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a voiced consonant. Allophones are in phonetic brackets.)

Chart

Letter Grapheme In typography, a grapheme is the fundamental unit in writing systems. Graphemes include letter , Chinese characters, numerals, punctuation marks, and all the individual symbols of any of the world's writing systems....	Romanization Romanization In linguistics, romanization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Latin alphabet, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system ....	Example(s)
?	p
?	b
? , ?	t
?	d	????
?	k
?	g	????
? , ?	' , Ø	????? ???
?	ch, c, c
?
?	f
?	v
? , ?, ?	s
? , ? , ? , ?	z
?	sh, š
?	zh, ž	?????
?	kh, x
? , ?	gh, q, g
? , ?	q, gh
? , ?	h
?	m
?	n
?	l
?	r
?	y

Allophonic variants

Alveolar stops and are either apico

Apical consonant

An apical consonant is a Phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the apex of the tongue . This contrasts with laminal consonants, which are produced by creating an obstruction with the blade of the tongue ....
-alveolar

Alveolar consonant

Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the Dental alveolus of the superior teeth....
or apico-dental

Dental consonant

In linguistics, a dental consonant or dental is a consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as , , , and in some languages....
. The unvoiced stops are aspirated

Aspiration (phonetics)

In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of Earth's atmosphere that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents....
much like their English counterparts: they become aspirated when they begin a syllable, though aspiration is not contrastive

Complementary distribution

Complementary distribution in linguistics is the relationship between two different elements, where one element is found in a particular environment and the other element is found in the opposite environment....
. Farsi does not have syllable-initial consonant clusters (see below), so unlike in English, are aspirated even following , as in "I am".

When occurs at the beginning of a word, it is realized as a voiced uvular plosive

Voiced uvular plosive

The voiced uvular plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some Speech communication languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is G....
. In Classical Persian, ? and ? denoted and , respectively. In modern Tehrani Persian (which is used in the Iranian mass media), there is no difference in the pronunciation of ? and ?; both represent or , depending on their position in the word. However, the classic pronunciation difference for ? and ? is preserved in the eastern variants of Persian (i.e. Dari

Dari (Afghanistan)

Tajik language

The Tajik language, or Tajik Persian, or Tajiki, is a modern variety of the Persian language spoken in Central Asia. An Indo-European languages language of the Iranian languages language group, most speakers of Tajik live in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan....
), as well as the southern dialects of the modern Iranian variety (e.g. Yazdi and Kermani dialects).

Alveolar flap can have a trilled

Alveolar trill

The alveolar trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental consonant, alveolar consonant, and postalveolar consonant trill consonant is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r....
allophonic variant at the beginning of a word.

Phonotactics

Syllable Structure

Syllables may be structured as (C) V (C) (C) .

Stress

One syllable in each word (or breath group) is stressed, and knowing the rules is conducive to proper pronunciation.

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", /'cera/ "why", /'agar/ "if", /'mersi/ "thanks", /'xanom/ "Ma'am", /'aqa/ "Sir"; cf. IV-3 infra.

III. Never stressed are: 1) personal suffixes on verbs (-am "I do..", -i "you do..", .., -and "they do..") (with one exception, cf. IV-1 infra); 2) a small set of very common noun enclitics: the ezafe (-e/-ye) "of", -ra "[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 supra); 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. kar in kar mi-kardam); 3) the last syllable of all other words, including the infinitive ending -an and the participial ending -te/-de in verbal derivatives, noun suffixes like -i "-ish" and -egi, all plural suffixes (-ha, -an), adjective comparative suffixes (-tar, -tarin), and ordinal-number suffixes (-om). Nouns not in the vocative are stressed on the final syllable: /xa'nom/ "lady", /a'qa/ "gentleman"; cf. II supra.

V. In the informal language the present perfect tense is pronounced like the simple past tense. Only the stress distinguishes between these tenses: the stressed personal suffix indicates the present perfect and the unstressed one the simple past tense:

Formal	Informal	Meaning
di'de-am	di'dam	I have seen
'didam	'didam	I saw

In transcription, enclitics (like the ezafe) 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. They include:

The sequence in the formal or written language is nearly always pronounced . The only common exceptions are high prestige words, such as "Qur'an
Qur'an

The Qur?an is the central religious text of Islam. Muslims believe the Qur?an to be the book of divine guidance and direction for mankind, and consider the original Arabic text to be the final revelation of God....
", and "Iran
Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran and formerly known internationally as Persian Empire until 1935, is a country in Central Eurasia, located on the northeastern shore of the Persian Gulf and the southern shore of the Caspian Sea....
," which are pronounced as written. A few words written as are pronounced , especially forms of the verb "to come".

The unstressed direct object suffix marker is pronounced , or after a consonant.

The stems of many verbs have a short colloquial form, especially "he/she is" is colloquially shortened to after a consonant or after a vowel.

The 2nd and 3rd person plural verb subject suffixes
Persian grammar

Persian language grammar is similar to that of many other Indo-European languages, especially those in the Indo-Iranian languages family. Since Middle Persian it has had a relatively simple grammar, having no gender and few Grammatical case markings....
, written and respectively, are pronounced and .

Many frequently-occurring verbs are shortened, such as "I want" ? , and "I go" ? .

Example

Broad IPA Transcription	Native orthography Perso-Arabic script The Perso-Arabic script is a writing system that is based on the Arabic alphabet. Originally used exclusively for the Arabic language, the Arabic script was modified to match the demands of being a writing system for the Persian language, adding four letters: ? , ? , ? , and ? ....	Gloss
	?? ???? ??? ???? ?? ?????? ?? ?? ???? ???????? ?? ??? ???? ??? ????? ???	[One day] the North Wind and the Sun The North Wind and the Sun *The North Wind and the Sun* is a fable attributed to Aesop. The story concerns a competition between the Wind and the Sun to decide who was the stronger of the two.... were disputing which was the stronger.

Persian phonology

Vowels

Diphthongs

Chart

Historical shifts

Consonants

Chart

Allophonic variants

Phonotactics

Syllable Structure

Stress

Colloquial Iranian Persian

Example

See also

External links