Persian (Farsi) Numbers 1 to 10 With Audio

Here are the ten, in order. Say each one out loud as you read it, and listen to the recording to hear how it is said in Tehran. Spellings in English letters vary between books, so you will see Shish written another way and Yek written Yeh. This guide uses the spelling Finglish uses everywhere, which follows how the number sounds in everyday speech.

Yek has a short form worth knowing from the start. Before a noun it shrinks to ye, as in Ye chai, a tea, or Ye dige, one more. You will hear ye far more often than yek, because people use it as the English word a.

Chahar is the number English speakers get wrong, and the reason is the h in the middle. It is written but barely spoken. In careful speech it is cha-HAAR, with a light breath between the two a sounds. In fast speech it often shrinks to chaar. Either is fine, and what matters is the long second a, which is deeper than the a in English cat and closer to the a in father.

Do not say chair or char. The ch is the same as in English church, and the last sound is the long aa. If you remember the word for tea, Chai, it helps to hear how the two start the same and end very differently.

A few other pairs are worth a second listen. Noh, nine, sounds close to Na, no. Dah, ten, is not Do, two. Haft, seven, and Hasht, eight, have the same shape, so remember seven has the f and eight has the sh. Say them in pairs a few times and your ear will separate them.

Zero is Sefr. It comes from the Arabic word that also gave English cipher and, through Italian, zero. So the word you use for nothing in Persian shares a root with the one you use in English, and you can hang the memory on that.

In Persian writing, digits have their own shapes, and you will see both the Persian digits and the 0 to 9 you already know on signs, prices and phone screens. The spoken names are the same either way.

Count things by putting the number first and adding the small word ta between the number and the thing. Do ta chai is two teas, and Panj ta abmive is five juices. Ta is the counter that Persian uses almost everywhere, and it never changes. The question Chanta chai? asks how many teas.

For the time, Saat chand-e? asks what time it is, and the answer starts with the hour. Saat do o nim-e is half past two, because o is and and nim is half. Saat yek o rob-e is a quarter past one. The numbers you just learned are all you need for most clock times.

Age uses the word for year with an ending. A child can answer Chand salete? with Dah salame, I am ten. For anything above ten, you build on what you know, and Yazdah is eleven, Davazdah is twelve and Bist is twenty.

The fastest way to own the numbers is to use them every day. Count the stairs on your way up. Count your fingers, then count backward. Read a license plate. After a few days, say the whole run without looking at the page: Yek do se chahar panj shish haft hasht noh dah.

Then do it in reverse. A countdown from ten to six is Dah noh hasht haft shish, and counting down is harder than counting up, which makes it a better test. When you can do both, add the ta game: look at the objects on your table and say how many there are, like Se ta livan, three glasses.

Finglish by Iranopedia brings each number back on a spaced schedule once you have met it, so the ones you hesitate on come around sooner. All ten numbers are taught in the first few modules of the course, each with a recording.