What Is Finglish? Persian in English Letters

Finglish is a way of writing Persian, not a different language. Take a spoken Persian sentence, write it with the 26 letters you already know, and you have Finglish. Salam is hello, Merci is thank you, and Khoobam is I'm good. The Persian is real. Only the letters are English.

People use Finglish whenever they can say or understand Persian but cannot read the script. Heritage learners who grew up hearing it at home, partners learning the language of a family, and travelers who want to say a few lines at the table all end up writing Persian this way. Persian speakers themselves also type it in chats when a phone has no Persian keyboard.

Because Finglish records sound, it is the quickest way to start speaking. You can read a line aloud on the first try, which is not possible with a script you have not learned yet.

The name is a blend of Farsi and English. Some people write Finglish, some write Fingilish, and many say Pinglish. Fenglish turns up now and then too. None of them is more correct than the others, and all of them point to Persian written in English letters.

Searching for any of them lands you in the same place. If you wanted a tool that turns English into Finglish, or Finglish into Persian script, you were looking for the same thing under a slightly different spelling of the name.

Persian has no official English spelling that everyone follows. Libraries and mapmakers use formal systems for names and places, but people texting a friend do not. That is why you will see Khoobam, Khubam and Khoubam for the same word.

A second reason is the script itself. Persian is usually written without its short vowels, so a reader fills them in from knowing the word. Finglish has to spell the vowels out, and every writer chooses a slightly different way to do it.

Finglish by Iranopedia settles this with one house style. Every word keeps the same spelling in every lesson, so Ghahve is always Ghahve, and answers that use a common variant are still accepted. A learner never has to wonder which spelling is the right one.

A few letter pairs do most of the work. Kh is a rough h, like the ch in the German word Bach. Gh is a throaty sound made at the back of the mouth, a little like a French r. Sh and ch are the sounds you expect, and zh is the s in the English word measure.

Vowels are simple. Oo sounds like the vowel in moon, ee like the vowel in see, and a single a, e or o stays short. A doubled letter tells you to hold the sound a little longer, as in Khoobam. Many Persian words put the stress on the last syllable, so Salam is sa-LAM and Merci is mer-CI.

Do not worry about getting it perfect. Persian speakers hear a foreign accent all the time and are glad you are trying. The best way to fix a sound is to hear the real clip, then say it back.

Finglish does not replace the Persian alphabet. It is the doorway. The script has 32 letters, runs from right to left and joins letters inside a word, which takes time to learn. Most learners speak first and read later, and Finglish lets you start on day one.

When you are ready, nothing is lost. You already know how each word sounds and what it means, so the letters attach to words you own. Our guide to the Persian alphabet explains when the script is worth learning and what to expect.

Three free translators on this site handle the three jobs people ask for. English to Finglish gives you a line you can read aloud. Finglish to Persian script turns what you typed into script you can paste into a text or a search. Persian script to Finglish reads a message or a menu back to you in English letters.

If you would rather learn the words than look them up, Module 1 of the course is free with no signup. It teaches the lines in this guide with the real sound, spoken the way people talk in Tehran, and asks you to say each one out loud.