The Persian Alphabet: All 32 Letters with Pronunciation

The Persian alphabet has 32 letters and is written from right to left. It is the Arabic script plus four letters for Persian sounds: پ (p), چ (ch), ژ (zh) and گ (g). Most letters change shape when they join, seven never join the next letter, and short vowels are usually not written.

That sounds like a lot, but the script is more logical than it first looks. There are no capital letters, many letters share one basic shape and differ only in their dots, and spelling is much more regular than in English. With steady daily practice, reading simple words within a few days is a realistic goal. This guide gives you every letter with its name, sound and joining forms, then the patterns that make the script easier: the four Persian letters, the non-joining letters, the letters that sound the same, and how vowels work.

How the Persian script works

• Right to left. You start writing on the right side of the line. Numbers, interestingly, are written left to right, just as in English.
• Cursive by design. Letters inside a word connect, so most letters have up to four forms: alone (isolated), at the start of a word (initial), in the middle (medial) and at the end (final). The forms are related; usually the joined forms just lose their “tail.”
• No capitals. Names and sentence starts look the same as any other word.
• Dots matter. ب پ ت ث share one shape and are told apart only by the number and position of dots.
• Short vowels are mostly invisible. The long vowels â, i and u are written; the short vowels a, e and o usually are not.

One spelling note: Persian uses ک and ی, which look slightly different from the Arabic forms of kâf and ye. Final and isolated Persian ی has no dots.

All 32 Persian letters: names, sounds and joining forms

In the “forms” column, the letters are listed as isolated, initial, medial and final (read each cell from right to left like the script itself). The small connecting line shows which side joins.

Try the example words with your browser’s voice: کتاب Listen چای Listen خوب Listen

You will also meet آ (alef with a wavy “madd” on top), which spells â at the start of a word, as in آب. It is a form of alef, not a separate letter. The small hamza ء (a glottal stop, mostly in Arabic loanwords) is also usually treated as a sign rather than one of the 32 letters.

The 4 Persian-specific letters: پ چ ژ گ

Arabic has no p, ch, zh or g sounds, so Persian writers added dots and a stroke to existing letters to make four new ones. Each is easy to remember because it looks like its Arabic “parent”:

A handy pattern: in each pair, the three dots or the extra stroke turn a sound into its Persian cousin. Did you already know any of these four? Tell us in the comments which one you find hardest to write.

Letters that do not join to the left

Seven letters connect to the letter before them but never to the letter after them:

ا د ذ ر ز ژ و

Whatever comes after one of these starts fresh, as if at the beginning of a word. That is why a single word can look like several pieces. For example, دوست (dust, friend) has a break after د and after و, and ایران (Irân) breaks after ا and after ر. Learning these seven early saves a lot of confusion, because a gap inside a word does not always mean a new word starts.

A related point for typing: Persian also uses an invisible “zero-width non-joiner” to keep parts of a word apart without a full space, as in می‌روم (miravam, I go) and کتاب‌ها (ketâb-hâ, books). Persian keyboards have a key for it.

Persian letters with the same sound

Because Persian borrowed the full Arabic alphabet, some sounds have more than one letter. In Persian they are pronounced the same; the spelling just tells you (often) that a word came from Arabic.

For reading this is good news: you only need to learn one sound for each group. For spelling, you learn which letter a word uses as you learn the word itself, the same way English speakers learn “night” versus “knight.” Native Persian words mostly use the first letter in each row (ت, س, ز, ه), while the others appear mainly in words borrowed from Arabic.

Short and long vowels in Persian

Persian has six vowels: three long and three short. The long ones are written with letters; the short ones are marked with small signs that are almost always left out in normal text.

So how do Persians read words without short vowels? By knowing the words, exactly as you read “bldg” or “Mr” in English without thinking. The written form گل could in theory be gol (flower) or gel (mud), and context decides. Beginner books and children’s books add the vowel signs, for example گُل (gol) and گِل (gel), and then remove them as readers progress. That is why learning vocabulary with its pronunciation matters from the first day.

Two more signs show up often: ّ (tashdid) doubles a consonant, as in ذرّت (zorrat), and ً (tanvin) on an alef gives the ending -an in Arabic loanwords such as لطفاً (lotfan, please) Listen.

How to learn the Persian alphabet in a week

The fastest way is to learn letters in shape families rather than in alphabetical order, and to read real words from the first day. Here is a seven-day plan that takes about 30 to 45 minutes a day:

Tips that make the week work:

• Write by hand. Copying each letter in all its forms fixes the shapes in memory far better than looking at them.
• Focus on dots. When two letters look alike, say the dot count out loud: “one below is b, three below is p.”
• Read words, not just letters. Words like بابا and نان use only a few letters and give quick wins.
• Use vowel signs at first, then drop them. Start with vowelled words, then cover the signs and read again.
• Review every day. Five minutes of flashcards each morning, like the ones above, keeps earlier letters fresh.

If you want this plan as a structured workbook with writing practice, Read and Write Persian in 7 Days is built for exactly this goal. Our free beginner lessons are a good next step once you can sound out words.

Where should you go after the alphabet?

Common questions about the Persian alphabet

Is the Persian alphabet the same as the Arabic alphabet?

It uses the same script and includes all 28 Arabic letters, but adds four letters (پ چ ژ گ), uses the Persian shapes of ک and ی, and pronounces several letters differently. For example, ث is s in Persian, and ذ, ض and ظ are all z.

Is Persian written right to left?

Yes, words and sentences run right to left. Numbers are the exception and run left to right.

How long does it take to learn the Persian alphabet?

With daily practice, recognizing all 32 letters and sounding out simple words in one to two weeks is a realistic goal. Reading fluently takes longer, because you need to know words well enough to fill in the unwritten short vowels.

Which letter gave you the most trouble? Let us know in the comments.

Sources: Persian alphabet (Wikipedia), 1.1 Persian Alphabet Overview, Persian open textbook (Michigan State University)

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