10 Persian Tongue Twisters to Perfect Your Pronunciation (with audio)

Updated: 8 July 2019

Tongue twisters can be a fun addition to your language learning. They’re often non-sense but can nonetheless aid in pronunciation, especially with some of the peskier sounds. If nothing else, they can warm your mouth up before you dive into the lesson. When I use them as warm-ups in my classes, my students usually get so carried away that I have to rein them back on track or else they’d spend the whole class trying to master them. And when I give homework, I’m met with, “Don’t worry, teacher, I’ll memorize the tongue twister for the next session.” Um, that’s all well and good, but ya kinda need to do the writing assignment too! 

Although there are plenty of tongue twisters in Persian, every last person I’ve asked doesn’t know how to actually say “tongue twister” in Persian. It stumps everyone. “That’s been my challenge for years!” one friend told me. The only person who claimed he knew was a student of mine who was excited to learn an English tongue twister since he uses this sort of technique a lot in his theater classes. But when I asked him what it was, he couldn’t remember. (And he’s currently traveling out of the country and has most likely completely forgotten, so no telling when if I’ll get the answer to that one.) Bummer. 

But regardless of what they’re called, they’re fun. So here are 10 wonderful Persian tongue twisters to perfect your Persian pronunciation. And a big thanks to my colleague Mahmoud Mohammadi at MTAM for lending his voice and awesome tongue twister-saying skills for the audio.

10 Persian tongue twisters

Note: The Persian spelling isn’t entirely correct. It’s been written as the spoken form. 

شش سیخ جیگر سیخی شش هزار

shish sikh jigar sikhi shish hezâr

Meaning: Six skewers of liver, 6,000 a skewer

دوغ گازدار گاز دوغ دار 

doogh-e gâz dâr, gâz-e doogh dâr

Meaning: Carbonated doogh, doogh-y carbonation

Surprise, friends- that’s me! (As I was putting this together, I realized we forgot this one- whoops!- so here I am.) And I’ll admit I cheated here. This one, like a few others on the list, you’re actually supposed to repeat as fast as you can at least 3-5 times. Of course what makes this particular tongue twister funny is that you’ll probably end up saying gooz (fart) somewhere in there. *Cue “Beavis and Butthead” laugh* 

Also, I’m guessing you know what doogh is but juuust in case- it’s the diluted (sometimes carbonated) yogurt drink that Iranians wash their chelow kebab down with before slipping into a lunch coma.

دوست من دوست داره با دوست تو دوست بشه ، دوست داری با دوست من که دوست داره با دوست تو دوست بشه دوست بشی؟

dust-e man dust dâreh bâ dust-e to dust beshe, dust dâri bâ dust-e man ke dust dâreh bâ dust-e to dust beshe dust beshi?

Meaning: My friend would like to be friends with your friend, do you want to be friends with my friend who wants to be friends with your friend?

This one can actually hone your Persian grammar skills. 

قوری گل قرمزی

ghuri-ye gol ghermezi

Meaning: Red flower teapot

For everyone’s favorite sound /gh/.

دایی چاقه چایی داغه

dâei châgh-e, châi dâgh-e

Meaning: The [maternal] uncle is fat, the tea is hot

یار دستنبو به دستم داد و دستم بوی دستنبوی دست او گرفت

yâr dastanbu be dastam dâd o dastam bu-ye dastanbu-ye dast-e oo gereft

Meaning: My sweetheart handed me a melon and my hand smelled like the melon in her hand

Dastanbu is just one of the varieties of melon in Iran. It’s tiny and striped.

کشتم شپش شپش کش شش پا را

koshtam shepesh-e shepeshkosh-e shesh pâ râ

Meaning: I killed the 6-footed lice-killing lice.

سربازی سر بازی سرسره بازی زد سر سربازی را شکست

sarbâzi sar-e bâzi-ye sorsore bâzi zad sar-e sarbâzi râ shekast

Meaning: A soldier during a sliding game hit and broke another soldier’s head

زیره ریزه میزه از زیر میز میریزه 

zire-ye riz-e mize az zir-e miz mirize

Meaning: The teeny tiny caraway falls from under the table.

امشب شب سه شنبه س ، فردا شبم سه شنبه س این سه سه شب اون سه سه شب هر سه سه شب سه شنبه س 

emshab shab-e seh shanbas fardâ shabam seh shanbas in seh seh shab un seh seh shab har seh seh shab seh shanbas

Meaning: Tonight is the night before Tuesday, tomorrow is Tuesday night. These three nights and those three nights, all these three nights are Tuesday.

This one is absolute nonsense, but it brings up an important language point. In Persian, if you put the word shab (night) before the day of the week, you’re actually talking about the day before you mentioned. Putting shab after the day means the day you mentioned. 

Come again? 

It’s most common with Jomeh (Friday), so let’s use that as our example: 

Shab-e Jomeh actually means “Thursday night”.  

Jomeh shab means “Friday night”.

These are the common Persian tongue twisters we used to say growing up, but there are so many more. What others would you add to the list?

Share it on Pinterest