Persian Phonology Information

The Persian language has six vowel phonemes and twenty-three consonant phonemes. It features contrastive stress and syllable-final consonant clusters.

Vowels

Diachronically, Persian possessed a distinction of length in its underlying vowel inventory, contrasting the long vowels /iː/, /uː/, /ɒː/ with the short vowels /e/, /o/, /æ/ respectively.

Word-final /o/ is rare except for /to/ "thou, you (singular)", and word-final /æ/ is very rare in Iranian Persian, except for /næ/ "no." The word-final /æ/ in Early New Persian mostly shifted to /e/ 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.^[1]

Diphthongs

Several diphthongs occur in Persian, including /ej/, /ow/, /aj/, /ɒj/, /oj/, and /uj/.

Chart

Historical shifts

Early New Persian had eight vowels: i, ī, ē, u, ū, ō, a, ā (in IPA: /i iː eː u uː oː æ ɒː/). The following chart describes their shifts into Tajik, Afghan Dari, and contemporary Iranian Persian. ^[2]

Consonants

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

Chart

Consonants can be geminated, often in words from Arabic. This is represented in the IPA either by doubling the consonant, [sejjed], or with the length symbol /ː/, [sejːed].^[3]

Allophonic variants

Alveolar stops /t/ and /d/ are either apico-alveolar or apico-dental. The voiceless obstruents /p, t, tʃ, k/ are aspirated much like their English counterparts: they become aspirated when they begin a syllable, though aspiration is not contrastive.^[4] The Persian language does not have syllable-initial consonant clusters (see below), so unlike in English, /p, t/ are aspirated even following /s/, as in /hæstæm/ "I exist".^[5] They are also aspirated at the end of syllables.

The velar stops (viz. k, g) are palatalized before the three front vowels or at the end of a syllable.

In Classical Persian, غ and ق denoted [ɣ] and [q], respectively. In modern Tehrani Persian (which is used in the Iranian mass media), there is no difference in the pronunciation of غ and ق; both represent [ɣ] or [ɢ], depending on their position in the word.When /ɣ/ occurs at the beginning of a word, it is realized as a voiced uvular plosive [ɢ]. ^{[1] [6]} However, the classic pronunciation difference for غ and ق is preserved in the eastern variants of Persian (i.e. Dari and Tajiki), as well as the southern dialects of the modern Iranian variety (e.g. Yazdi and Kermani dialects).

Alveolar flap /ɾ/ can have a trilled allophonic variant [r] at the beginning of a word, like in Spanish, Catalan, and other Romance languages in Spain.^[4]

Phonotactics

Syllable Structure

Syllables may be structured as (C) V (C) (C) .^[4][6]

Stress

One syllable in each word (or breath group) is stressed, and knowing the rules is conducive to proper pronunciation.^[7]

1. Stress falls on the last stem syllable of most words.
2. Stress falls on the first syllable of interjections, conjunctions and vocatives. E.g. /ˈbæle/ "yes", /ˈnækheir/ "no indeed", /ˈvæli/ "but", /ˈtʃerɒ/ "why", /ˈæɡær/ "if", /ˈmersi/ "thanks", /ˈxɒnom/ "Ma'am", /ˈɒqɒ/ "Sir"; cf. 4-3 below.
3. Never stressed are:
   1. personal suffixes on verbs (/-æm/ "I do..", /-i/ "you do..", .., /-ænd/ "they do..") (with one exception, cf. 4-1 below);
   2. a small set of very common noun enclitics: the /ezɒfe/ (/-e/, /-je) "of", /-rɒ/ "[direct object marker]", /-i/ "a, an", /-o/ "and";
   3. the possessive and pronoun-object suffixes, /-æm/, /-et/, /-esh/, &c.
4. Always stressed are:
   1. the personal suffixes on the positive future auxiliary verb (the single exception to 3-1 above);
   2. the negative verb prefix /næ-/, /ne-/, if present;
      • if /næ-/, /ne-/ is not present, then the first non-negative verb prefix (e.g. /mi-/ "-ing", /be-/ "do!", and the prefix noun in compound verbs (e.g. /kɒr/ in /kɒr mi-kærdæm/);
   3. the last syllable of all other words, including the infinitive ending /-æn/ and the participial ending /-te/, /-de/ in verbal derivatives, noun suffixes like /-i/ "-ish" and /-eɡi/, all plural suffixes (/-hɒ/, /-ɒn/), adjective comparative suffixes (/-tær/, /-tærin/), and ordinal-number suffixes (/-om/). Nouns not in the vocative are stressed on the final syllable: /xɒˈnom/ "lady", /ɒˈqɒ/ "gentleman"; cf. 2 above.
5. 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:

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:^[7][8]

• In the Tehrani accent and also most of the accents in Central and Southern Iran, the sequence /ɒn/ in the formal or written language is nearly always pronounced [un]. The only common exceptions are high prestige words, such as [ɢorʔɒn] "Qur'an", and [ʔirɒn] "Iran," which are pronounced as written. A few words written as /ɒm/ are pronounced [um], especially forms of the verb /ɒmædæn/ "to come".

• In the Tehrani accent, the unstressed direct object suffix marker /rɒ/ is pronounced /ro/, or /o/ after a consonant.

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

• The 2nd and 3rd person plural verb subject suffixes, written /-id/ and /-ænd/ respectively, are pronounced [-in] and [-æn].

• Many frequently-occurring verbs are shortened, such as /mixɒːhæm/ "I want" → [mixɒm], and /mirævæm/ "I go" → [miræm].

Example

See also

• Persian alphabet

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} International Phonetic Association (1999). Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 124–125. ISBN 978-0521637510.
2. ^ Windfuhr, Gernot (1987). "Persian". In Bernard Comrie. The World's Major Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 543. ISBN 978-0195065114.
3. ^ Vrzić, Zvjezdana (2007), Farsi: A Complete Course for Beginners, Living Language, Random House, p. xxiii, ISBN 978-1-4000-2347-9, http://books.google.com/books?id=A9k_u5vnX_8C&pg=PR23&lpg=PR23&dq=farsi+geminate&source=bl&ots=WKfhEGBX20&sig=8-Zn_bduPwe06d4XwRKHkrrWNYY&hl=en&ei=4FRbS6umIpXSMrSFjYUP&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBcQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=farsi%20geminate&f=false
4. ^ ^{a b c} Mahootian, Shahrzad (1997). Persian. London: Routledge. pp. 287, 292, 303, 305. ISBN 0-415-02311-4.
5. ^ Mace, John (1993-03). Modern Persian. Teach Yourself. ISBN 0844238155.
6. ^ ^{a b} Jahani, Carina (2005). "The Glottal Plosive: A Phoneme in Spoken Modern Persian or Not?". In Éva Ágnes Csató, Bo Isaksson, and Carina Jahani. Linguistic Convergence and Areal Diffusion: Case studies from Iranian, Semitic and Turkic. London: RoutledgeCurzon. pp. 79–96. ISBN 0-415-30804-6.
7. ^ ^{a b} Mace, John (2003). Persian Grammar: For reference and revision. London: RoutledgeCurzon. ISBN 0700716955.
8. ^ Thackston, W. M. (1993-05-01). "Colloquial Transformations". An Introduction to Persian (3rd Rev ed.). Ibex Publishers. pp. 205–214. ISBN 0936347295.

External links

• Virtual Persian Keyboard

Categories:

• Language phonologies
• Persian language

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See Also:

• Arabic Phonology
• Biblical Hebrew Phonology
• Persian Language