These following verbs may be used alone or as a part of a compound verb. The table features conjugated forms of the verbs in the first-person singular in present tense (e.g., I ask), past simple tense (e.g., I asked) and the subjunctive. The verb's final letter shown in red is the conjugational ending attached to the verb's root. The English transliteration shows the pronunciation of the root of the verb in corresponding tense and mood. Present tense root is used to conjugate the verb in present tense, subjunctive and imperative forms. Past tense root is used to conjugate the verb in past tense.

High Frequency Verbs with Single- Letter Roots

When pronounced in the present tense and subjunctive, these verbs have only one letter, that is, one- sound root. Grey color marks the letters that are spelled but not pronounced. Pronunciation is also shown in parentheses.

How to Find the Verb's Roots

In dictionaries, when you look up a verb, what you will see is the verb's past tense root with ن /an/attached to the end of the verb. That is the gerund (-ing) form of the verb. Usually Persian dictionaries give verbs in the gerund form. So, when you learn a new verb, you are already learning its past tense root, which you will use for conjugation in past tense.

The present tense root is different from the past tense root. A good dictionary will show the present tense root in parentheses right after the gerund form of the verb, for example,

Listen, read along and try to imitate the native speaker's pronunciation. Repeat each word aloud several times until you can easily pronounce it.

Quantifieris used to reply to questions about the number of items without naming that item, for example,

Note that in Persian, when we count things and persons the counted items are used in singular, that is, two brother, three cousin,

On Numbers

To form numbers such as twenty-one, twenty-two in Persian, say twenty and one, twenty and two, for example,

For the ease and fluency of pronunciation, the و here is pronounced o as if it were the ending of the first word in the compound, that is, /beesto yek/, /beesto do/.

If you are writing Persian digits, arrange them as you do in English, that is, from left to right.

Look at Mitra's family tree. Read in Persian the sentences that describe these individuals’ relationships to each other, and then complete the English translation based on what you read in the sentences and see in the image.

Listen and read along. Roya is talking about her family. Complete the English translation based on what you hear and read. Answer the questions about Roya's family in Persian.

Complete the following sentences with the words that describe your relation to your family members.

On the family tree below, next to each person, write in Persian the word that reflects their relation to Kamran (in Table 1) and to Mitra (in Table 2). For example, the gentleman in the bottom third row is the grandfather

Prepare to ask and to also answer these questions in Persian. Before coming to class, say the sentences a few times aloud until you can easily pronounce them. In class, you will work with a classmate and ask him/her these questions in Persian.

Prepare to answer and ask the following questions in class.

Do research online and complete the sentences with data pertaining to your university and the city in which your university is located. Prepare to read the completed sentences aloud. Useful words: /he-zãr/thousand; /dah he-zãr/ten thousand; شَهر /shah-r/city, town; /dãnesh-kadeh/college (unit within a university).

Chapter 2. My Family

What Do Subject and Object Mean?

In a sentence with subject, object and verb, the subject is the person or thing that is doing something or being something. In other words, the subject is the actor of the action. The object, on the other hand, is the person or thing at which the above action is directed and to which the action is done. In other words, the object is the recipient or the target of the action. In the sentence Kamran cleaned the room, Kamran is the subject (actor), as he is doing the action (cleaning), the room is the object (target of the action) because the action (cleaning) is done to the room, and cleaned is the verb.

What Is an Indirect Object?

A sentence may have one or more objects. The objects, in turn, may be indirect or direct. An indirect object means the object (target of the action) that requires a special connector word (preposition) such as to, at, from, toward and so on in order to be used with the verb. This preposition stands in front of the object and thus points to the person or thing at whom the action is directed. In the sentence The student looked at the board, the word student is the subject (actor), while the word board is the object. The word at is the preposition that points to the object (the board). Therefore, the word board here is the indirect object as it does not follow the verb directly but, rather, it follows a connector word (preposition at) which is required in order for the object to be used with the verb correctly. It would be incorrect to say The student looked the board.

What Is a Direct Object?

A direct object, on the other hand, means that the object does not require connector words (prepositions) in order to be used with the verb correctly. In the sentence Kamran cleaned the room, Kamran is the subject (actor) and the word room is the object (recipient of the action). The word room here is the direct object, as it does not require any prepositions (such as to, at, from, toward, etc.) in order to be used with the verb correctly

All verb categories (e.g., tenses and moods) in Persian are divided into those based on the present tense root and those based on the past tense root of the verb. The conjugational endings that reflect the person who is doing the action described by the verb are the same for the present and the past. The prefix /mee/می is shared by several present and past forms. So, the part of the verb that distinguishes the verb's present form from its past form is the root. All Persian verbs have only two roots: one for the present and the other for the past.

How to Find Verb Roots

When you look up a verb in the dictionary, what you will see is the verb's past tense root with ن /an/attached to the end of the verb. That /an/at the end is the gerund (-ing form of the verb) marker. Usually Persian dictionaries give verbs in gerund form. So, when you learn a new verb, you are already learning its past tense root.

For example, To go

Here, is the past tense root and the ن /an/at the end is the gerund marker.

The present tense root is, obviously, different from the past tense root. A good dictionary will show the present tense root in parentheses right after the gerund form of the verb. For example, To go

The first two tables below show the verb categories that are based on the present tense root and the past tense root, respectively. The third table is a comparison of the verb forms that exist in both present and past (e.g., habitual, progressive).

Answer Key (on the companion website)

Listen, read along and try to imitate the native speaker's pronunciation. Repeat each word a few times aloud until you can easily pronounce it.

Complete the sentences with the relevant information.

Prepare to answer the following questions about your hometown. Practice before class and prepare to say your sentences fluently. In class, everyone will take turns to answer each question so as to give everybody an equal opportunity to speak in the target language.

Using the given words, say sentences in Persian about your hometown.

You will be working in groups of three. Talk to your group mates and ask them the following questions in Persian. Be ready to answer the same questions. Before your start the drill, you will go over the questions together with your instructor to make sure that the translations of the sentences are correct.

• (1) What is the name of your home state?

• (2) What is the capital of your state?

• (3) Is your state a big state?

• (4) What is the population of your state?

• (5) Is there a big university or college in your state?

• (6) Where in the United States is your state located?

PLURAL MARKER ها HÃ/Ã

To make the plural form of any Persian word, simply say ã at the end of it. Say hã if the word ends in a vowel. This plural ending ã/hã can be added to all and any words in Persian that need to be plural. The plural marker is stressed and is pronounced together with the word as if it were a part of that word. For example,

You can use the plural ending with nouns, adjectives and adverbs:

In composite words, the plural ending is pronounced at the end of the last word, for example,

Spelling of the plural marker ã/hã This plural marker is always spelled.

Listen and repeat. Say each word and phrase several times aloud until you can easily pronounce them.

Read the sentences and look at the images. Based on the information from the sentences, write under the name of each person their age in Persian digits and their profession in English.

Listen and read along as Tara is talking about her family members and their occupations. Complete the transcript with words you hear. Now, based on what you have heard and read, complete the English translation.

Write the name of a job that you associate with each one of the following individuals. Use the Internet if needed. Prepare to say aloud what you have written.

Michael Jackson, Isaac Newton, Joanne Rowling, Avicenna, Serena Williams, Audrey Hepburn, Giorgio Armani, Warren Buffett, Hoda Kotb.

Listen to Reza, who is talking about his family and their occupations. Complete the transcript based on what you hear. Complete the English translation. Now, prepare to compare his family and their occupations to your family members and their professions. Prepare to say your sentences fluently in class. Examples:

Do research online and find answers for the following questions. Prepare to say your answers fluently in class.

Prepare to ask and answer the following questions in Persian.

Interesting s/he works a lot

• • Do your parents work?

• • What does your father do? Is his work interesting? Does he like his job Does he work on Saturdays?

• • Is your mother a professor, doctor, TV host, actress, designer, artist or engineer? Does she work a lot?

• • Is your brother a student, PhD student, lawyer or dentist?

• • What is your sister's job? Where does she work? Does she like her job?

• • Is anyone in your family a celebrity, lawyer, businessperson, professor or doctor?

• • What do you do? What is your field? Is your field/major interesting?

7. Do research and find out the following information about the Iranian individuals listed below.

Anoushe Ansari, Benyamin Bahadori, Shirin Ebadi, Majid Majidi, Marjane Satrapi, Niki Karimi, Mohsen Namjoo, Yara Shahidi, Firouz Naderi, Pierre Omidyar.

Verb Conjugation in Simple Past Tense

When to use the past tense. Persian past tense is, for the most part, similar to English simple past tense.

It describes an event that was completed once in the past, for example,

(b) With the verb to be it also conveys an event, a state of being that continued to be true for some time in past, but has or may have now changed, for example,

How to Conjugate a Verb in Past Tense

To conjugate a verb in Persian means to show the subject, that is, the person or thing that did the action described by the verb.

All Persian verbs form their past tense in the same manner. To conjugate a verb in the past tense, first say the verb's past tense root, and then say the conjugational ending that corresponds to the subject, that is, the person or thing that did the action. The conjugational endings are the same ones that you have learned for the present tense, except that we do not need any ending for او , the she/he/it form in the past tense.

Let's conjugate in past tense the verb to go, whose past tense root is رَفت (raft):

As the conjugational endings reflect the subject (i.e., the person or thing that did the action of the verb), you don't need to mention the subject if that subject is a pronoun, for example,

In base (i.e., one- word) verbs the primary stress falls on the root of the verb, while in negated verbs the stress falls on the negation prefix.

Negation. To negate the verb in past tense, simply say /na/at the beginning of the verb, for example,

The negation prefix /na/is stressed and is written together with the verb as shown above. If the verb starts with a vowel آ /ã/, the negation prefix becomes /na-ee/

In order to negate a past tense verb that starts with a vowel carried by a diacritic and introduced by the symbol ا (e.g., اُفتادن، اَنداختن), drop that symbol in writing and attach the negation prefix /naee/directly to the first consonant letter of the verb.

Listen and read along. Listen and repeat. Try to imitate the native speaker's pronunciation and intonation. Say each word a few times aloud until you can easily pronounce it.

Complete the following sentences with the given words. Use all the words.

Listen to the descriptions of weather conditions and read along. For every sentence, mark a matching image with the number of the sentence.

Listen to the individuals who describe the climate in their hometowns and complete the sentences.

Using the previous assignment as example, briefly describe the climate in your hometown. Describe the weather in your hometown during at least two seasons.

You are hosting a student from Iran who will be attending classes at your university. Describe to him/her the climate in your university town and tell him/her what type of clothes to bring. Describe the weather in the spring and fall semesters. Use the subjunctive when you give advice, for example,

Pick a city (e.g., Tehran, Tabriz, Esfahan, Shiraz, Mashhad, Rasht or Bushehr) or a region in Iran and research online what the weather is like there. In class, briefly describe in Persian the climate in that place.

Look for the weather forecast in your hometown for tomorrow. Prepare to describe the weather conditions for that day in your hometown.

Describe for your classmates your favorite type of weather. Now describe the outfits you like to wear in that weather.

Think of where you would like to spend your next spring break, summer vacation or winter break. Tell your class what the weather is like in that place, and why you would like to spend time there.

Look at these images of the weather forecast. Pick a day from the forecast, analyze the weather conditions and tell the class what type of clothes and accessories you would wear, if you were to travel to that city on that day. For example,

You will be working in pairs. Describe for your class a weather-specific outfit, but do not say for what type of weather the outfit is intended. You can include accessories to make it more specific. Your classmates will listen and guess the weather conditions for which you are suggesting the particular outfit.

Vocabulary: Hello, how are you? What is your name? Pronouns.

Letters:

The following are the most common forms of greeting in Persian. There are several different registers of greetings in Persian on formal and casual levels. They may include references to third persons and employ various aspects of the Persian social etiquette, the taãrof. Greetings are often accompanied by smile and gestures, such as placing one's hand on the chest as a sign of gratitude. It is important to use the appropriate form (formal or casual) of greeting so as to not appear impolite and disrespectful.

A formal greeting is a must when addressing individuals who are older or have a higher— actual or perceived— social, professional or other status, unless your familiarity with and relation to the person allows you to deviate from this rule. A formal greeting is also usual when addressing strangers, but the casual form is sometimes used by strangers who belong to the same age group.

In Iran, upon greeting, women usually shake hands and kiss once on each cheek. Iranian men greeting each other would act the same way. However, if a man and a woman greet each other they don't kiss and might only shake hands, unless they are relatives or close acquaintances. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, Islamic customs prevent strangers of opposite sex (men and women) from shaking hands upon greeting. In such situations, a verbal greeting, polite smile and gentle bow are common.

hãleh shomã!/ or simply /hãleh shomã!/ . These are sometimes combined with a gentle nod or respectful smile.

In Unit 1 we will learn how to say hello, how to say your name, how to ask somebody's name, how to say nice to meet you and say good- bye. You will need those words to meet students of your Persian class and introduce yourself.

LISTEN AND REPEAT. At this point, you do not need to try and learn the Persian spelling of the words as you are not familiar with all the letters of the alphabet. Learn the pronunciation and meaning of the words. Listen to the audio and repeat each word several times aloud until you can easily pronounce it.

Persian belongs to the Indo- European language family and is related to Germanic and Slavic languages, which means that Persian has major similarities with the European languages in grammar, syntax and word formation. There are only two consonantal sounds in Persian that differ from consonantal sounds that English speakers can easily pronounce: sound kh as in German Bach, and a soft glottal sound q similar to the first sound in French “rouge” but with a harder glottal quality. Persian language has no cases, no noun inflection, no gender categories, no irregular conjugation of verbs and no capital letters. Persian is, perhaps, the easiest language of the Middle East for speakers of Western languages to learn. Modern Persian of Iran is a language of Indo- European origin with a multitude of English, French, Turkish and Arabic cognates combined with the core Persian vocabulary and built upon a basic and uncomplicated grammar. Persian is spoken by over one hundred million people around the world, including one million people in the United States. Farsi of Iran, Tajiki of Tajikistan and Dari of Afghanistan are all variants that share roots in the same Persian language. Until 1964, the variant of Persian spoken in Afghanistan was called Farsi, and its native speakers in Afghanistan still widely refer to it as Farsi, even though officially it is now called Dari. The Tajiki variant of Persian is also spoken in various parts of Uzbekistan, most notably Bukhara, Samarkand and Surxondaryo areas. In the English language, Persian is a reference to the modern live language, while Farsi is indeed the name used by native speakers in Iran to refer to this language in their native tongue. Old Persian, Middle Persian and modern Persian refer to different stages in the development of the same language, the present-day Persian.

THE ALPHABET

The Persian alphabet contains thirty- two letters and a few special signs that can be used when needed as pronunciation and grammatical markers in order to avoid occasional ambiguity. The Persian sound system contains twenty- one consonant sounds, six vowels and two diphthongs.

Peculiarities of the Persian script:

• (1) Persian is written from right to left. Due to this fact, Persian books start on the right side of the cover, that is, diametrically opposite to the format of books printed in the Western scripts.

• (2) There are no capital letters in the Persian script.

Listen and repeat the words aloud. Repeat each word a few times until you can easily pronounce it.

Complete the sentences with the given words.

Listen to Sam talk about his family and house. Based on his words, complete the sentences with the words for colors.

For each item below, say what color you imagine when you hear that word. Write and prepare to say the item and your color aloud, for example

Prepare to ask and answer the following questions in Persian in class. Before coming to class say your sentences a few times aloud until you can easily pronounce them.

• (1) What is the color of your house?

• (2) What is the official color of your state?

• (3) What is the color of your dorm?

• (4) What is the color of your bicycle?

• (5) What is the color of the textbook for Persian class?

• (6) What is the color of your favorite shoes?

• (7) What is the color of the bus that goes to the university?

• (8) Do you like black or green tea?

• (9) What is your favorite color?

• (10) What color is indigo?

Print out an image of the flag of your home state and bring it to class. Tell the class briefly about your state and describe its state colors.

Start by saying the name of your state, its location in the country, its capital city and in which city in the state you live. Then show and describe the colors on the flag of your state. If the flag has symbols and images, tell the class the colors of those symbols.

Useful words:

Listen to the announcement of items on sale at a clothing store. Next to each item, write the color in which it is available on sale.

Listen to Neema and then to Nick as they describe what they are wearing. Based on what you hear, decide for what season of the year each person is dressed. Explain in Persian your decision.

Write down in Persian a list of clothing items that you most frequently wear. Next to each item write the colors you have them in. Prepare to say in Persian in class what you have written.

Listen to the pronunciation of the words and repeat each word aloud several times until you can easily pronounce them. Try to imitate the native speaker's pronunciation and intonation.

To construct numbers such as one hundred twenty- one, two thousand thirty- five in Persian, say: (one) hundred and twenty and five, two thousand and thirty and five,

For the ease of pronunciation and fluency, the word و (and) is pronounced as oh in such numbers, for example:

Tina is getting ready for her Persian exam. Read and then mark the images of the items that Tina says she is taking to the exam. Be prepared to say in Persian what these items are. Example:

Listen to the series of words and read along. Each series is missing one word in the written text. Listen for that missing word and write it down. Once you have completed all the series, circle the word that does not belong with the other words in the given series.

Listen to the list that Kamran has prepared. From the list that Kamran will read for you, write in the YES column the items that you think he will need for his exam in Persian, and place the items he will not need in the NO column. Write your words in Persian.

Prepare to say in Persian which items you think Kamran will need for the exam. Use the verb he needs/w ill need … and the word for … /barãyeh …/

Start your sentence by saying:

Note that Kamran uses the quantifier word ) when he enumerates single items. This word serves the same function as quantifier, except that the latter is not used to refer to a single item.

A student is preparing to go to class and is putting various items in the bag. Listen and complete the transcript by filling in the missing words. Prepare to read the completed sentences aloud.

Listen to Mitra and Kamran and mark which classes each one of them takes. Then, tell the class what classes both of them are taking this semester. Say your sentences in Persian:

This is a textbook of the modern Persian language (Farsi) spoken in Iran. It is intended for university- level learners and features material for two consecutive courses or semesters of the Elementary level. The textbook is designed to facilitate the implementation of the two most recent trends in second language instruction: communicative approach and flipped learning. This textbook is an integrated and self-contained way of acquiring functional proficiency in spoken and written Persian. The textbook's theoretical framework and underlying linguistic philosophy and its practical approach to language instruction and learning objectives are based on the latest trends in foreign language instruction as defined by the Modern Language Association (MLA) and the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). The material of the textbook also reflects the 5 Cs of National Standards in Foreign Language Education. The textbook is inspired by the author's 17 years of experience of designing and teaching university-level courses in less commonly taught languages and is informed by the experiences, research and data gathered across various modern languages. The textbook features all the attributes necessary for the implementation of modern practices in foreign language instruction such as content-based activities for real-world objectives in a student-centered classroom, an integrated approach toward teaching all language skills (speaking, listening, reading and writing) from the outset, differentiating between proficiency (being able to use a skill) and competence (knowing a skill), teaching of language through culture and teaching culture through language, thematic presentation of the material, and use of authentic material produced by native speakers for native speakers. The textbook's learning objectives and curriculum are designed with the ACTFL proficiency guidelines in mind, and students who complete the textbook should be able to score on Elementary High to Intermediate Low levels, depending on individual progress in class and language skill.

KEY FEATURES OF THE TEXTBOOK

The textbook is designed to facilitate the implementation of the communicative approach and flipped learning in a student-centered classroom with the integration of all skills (speaking, listening, reading, writing and cultural competence) from the outset. Besides speaking exercises and listening sections, each chapter contains separate sections for reading and writing practice.