Now we are going to talk about the characters in Farsi that are written
differently. But they are pronounced the same. There reason behind this feature in
Farsi language is that Farsi has borrowed all the characters from Arabic,
but it doesn't have the same sounds that in Arabic, those
characters have. So it has led to a very strange feature in the language, that we
have characters that are written separately, but they are pronounced the
same. However, the reason behind this is that in Farsi they wanted to write the
the words specifically, the words borrowed from Arabic, the same way that
in Arabic they are written. So let's look at these characters we have in Farsi.
We have "الف". It sounds just "ah," and we have "ع", that it has the same
sound. However, in Arabic, they are pronounced
differently. In Farsi, we use "الف" in all the words that have the
sound "ah," but we use "ع" just in Arabic borrowed words. For example, the word "عراق".
The country, Iraq.
In Arabic it is pronounced differently. But in Farsi we say "عراق" and in fact if
we want to write the phonetic for this word, we can just put "اراق". So
there is no difference in pronunciation between "عراق" and "اراق". But because in
Arabic, they are written like this, the word is written like this. We write it
like this. This makes Persian dictation hard.
When you hear the word "عراق", really, you don't know if it is with "ع" or it is with
the "الف". You should just know. You should have memorized
it. Another one is "ه" and "ح". The same.
For example, if we have a word like "حوله",
it's the same as this one. If we write it like this, we say "حوله". This is
the way in Farsi it's written. Or this one. But the pronunciation between this
and this, no difference. It's just because this is a word borrowed from Arabic. The
same with "ق" and "غ". For example, we have a word like "باغ". The pronunciation is
the same as "باق". So the question is that how should I know if I should write it
like this or like this, when I hear this word. You should just know it. You should
have seen it. So if you haven't seen, you may write it like this or like this. And
sometimes make a mistake. Then we have "س" and "ث" and "ص". This is very
strange, yeah, but it is the way it is. So
when you hear a "s" in Farsi, it could be any of these.
How should you know? You should just have heard that word. And the last
one is there there "z" sound.
In Arabic, they have four different pronunciations.
However, in Farsi, they are all pronounced the same. So when you hear a "z" in
Farsi, it can be any of these four. But there is one point that probably it's
going to make it easier. Because these ones are just used in Arabic borrowed
words. So when you hear a word that has, let's say, one of the "z"
in it. So try just to stick to "ز" because there is the Farsi one. And these are
just used in Arabic words. So many times it will be correct if you just use
this one. The same with the "s" sound. Just use "س" or just
use "ق", specifically here. Use "ه" and use "الف". So these ones are the
Farsi ones. So when you hear a word with "ه" or "الف" or "س" or "ز",
try to use these ones, except the time that you know, oh no, it's with
this "ه" or it is with "غ", or this "ص" or this.
If you don't know, just write one of these and highly probable, you are
correct in your writing. So that was the lesson about the characters that are
written differently, but pronounced the same.