Speak Lesson 9 | How to Use Question Words, More Family Vocabulary, and a Few Filler Words and Phrases

In Iranian culture, family is extremely important. Instead of having just one Persian word for 'aunt' for instance, we have two- there is a different word for the sister of your father (amé) versus the sister of your mother (khālé). So when referring to one or the other, people know exactly whether you are speaking of your maternal or paternal aunt. Similarly, while there is only one word for 'cousin', in Persian there are eight different words for cousin depending on whether they are female or male, or whether they are on your mother or father's side of the family. This might seem complicated, but once you get the hang of it, it makes figuring out who a given person is referring to quite easy! In this Persian (Farsi) lesson, we go over all the different words for extended family. These will be very useful when talking to Iranians, because, as we've said, family is extremely important in Iranian culture. In addition, we learn the most important question words to help you form useful questions when having conversations. Questions are a useful tool for getting to know someone, and these question words will allow you to form many different sentences using the vocabulary we've learned so far. The questions words we go over in this lesson are:

• Who
• When
• Where
• What
• How
• Which

We also learn some key questions you can form using these words including:

• Where are you?
• What do (would) you like?
• How's it going?
• Who is this?
• Why not?
• How many?
• How?
• Where is it?
• How much?

At this point of Chai and Conversation, you'll be amazed by how much you can understand of casual Persian conversations.