3 Persian Particles That’ll Spice Up Your Speaking

A confession: This file has been in my drafts folder for upwards of a year. It seems that every time I come to write or edit it, I go down such a deep rabbit hole of examples, exceptions, context, tone, stress, etc. that I throw my hands up in the air, too flustered and frustrated to continue. When my hands land again, they somehow (through no control of my own) hit “command Q.” And I go on with my day.

After posting the second part of 10 Persian Words With Unsatisfactory English Translations last week, I got a message from a lovely reader who asked, “How would you translate digeh?” And that, my friends, was the exact sign/motivation/inspiration I needed to sit down and finish this post once and for all. So thank you. 

In undergrad, my German textbook had a section in each chapter called “Sprachnotiz” where there were explanations for certain words. Modal particles like “mal,” “doch,” “ja,” and “gar” that don’t have a meaning, per se, but you just kind of use them peppered in your speaking to emphasize or express some kind of emotion. In Chile, it was always “po.” Persian has these particles, too.

So here we go with three of these Persian particles that Iranians use ALL. THE. TIME. when speaking. And by using them, you can make your Persian sound more natural and fluent, too!

*While I’ve done my best both to make these as clear as possible and cover most contexts, I’m sure there are some holes somewhere, so forgive me. And if there’s anything I’ve missed, I always welcome comments.*

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Digeh

Let’s go ahead and start with our particle digeh, or more properly digar, which has become digeh (or dige) in spoken Persian. This one has many meanings and uses, a few of which you may already be familiar with. Digeh can mean:

Another (in the sense of an alternative) 

More/Further

No longer/anymore (with a negative verb)

Already

This use is for emphasis similar to the English “already.” So there’s a sense of urgency and annoyance attached to it (well, depending on your tone anyway). As in:

Emphasis

But the digeh I get asked about most frequently is the following. A far more ambiguous one used for, yet again, emphasis. Remove it, and nothing happens to the phrase. It’s still grammatically correct. But it loses the speaker’s emphasis, tone, and emotion. 

Texts between my sister and I that are entirely in English are brimming with this one lonely Persian word, digeh. And it probably ranks among the top 3 most commonly asked questions from my Iranian students: How do you say digeh in English? My answer? It has no translation. 

In my opinion, the best way to understand how to use it in Persian is by input flooding, which is just fancy ELT (English Language Teaching) terminology to mean “giving tons of examples of the target structure.” So that’s what I’ll try to do here.  

My little niece and nephew speak just a bit of Persian, but during their first trip to Iran they stepped up their game. One day, my nephew asked what we were having for breakfast, and my niece turned around and said, “Noon digeh!” (Bread, [obviously/what else!?]) I have to say that I was incredibly impressed by that remark which was 100% picked up on location. Must have been the input flooding.

Ke

The Persian particle ke is used as a relative pronoun (“that”, “which”, “who”, etc.) to start clauses, and in reduplication, but of course, the use I’m talking about is something else.

Emphasis

Firstly, ke can be used for emphasis, and what it emphasizes depends on where it’s placed. Take these examples:

Man ke dust dâram beram. (I [for one] would like to go.)

Ketâb-o ke barâsh âvordam. (I brought him/her the book.) [as opposed to another object]

Ketâb-o barâsh âvordam ke. (I DID bring him/her the book.)

Tag questions

Using ke in a question with a negative verb makes it function like a tag question, as in:

Here’s my major issue with this form:  

You might have read this post where I mention that Iranians ask questions in the negative, and this poses problems for me because then I feel like they expect a certain answer. Like the time my mom innocently asked me, “You don’t want your tadig?”, and I was torn because I was saving the best part of the meal for last, but at the same time, how could I say no to my mom?

But then adding ke to the negative verb makes it worse because it transforms it into a leading question (which, in turn, ends up sounding like insincere taarof). One time, a taxi driver had the A/C on and asked me, “Sardetun ke nist?” (You aren’t cold, are you?) At TEDx Tehran, a lady asked me “Jâye kasi ke nist?” (This isn’t anyone’s seat, is it?) Another time at a hotel, my cousin got up to get something from the breakfast buffet and turned to us and asked, “Chizi ke nemikhâin?” (You guys don’t want anything, do you?) I laughed and said, “If we did, would you bring it for us?” And that little comment of mine sparked a 30-minute discussion about phrasing questions in Persian vs English, how it comes off, and how sincere it is, all thanks to that itty bitty particle ke (and the negative verb). 

Think about it. In English, you’d most likely ask, “Do you guys want anything?” or “Is anyone sitting here?”, giving the other person the opportunity to reply either “yes” or “no”. And even though I know that the Persian phrasing of the question is actually polite (and not leading), interpreting it through my English/American filter results in a major language/culture error.

The conversation with my cousins eventually ended at the breakfast table, but the topic lingered in the back of our minds throughout the rest of the trip. Any time one of us asked a question in the negative and used ke, we had to laugh. To this day, my cousin still swears that his offer was genuine.

Hâ

Again, I’m not talking about the plural marker, but something else entirely. Hâ has no meaning on its own and is more of a sound we attach at the end of a sentence for- you guessed it- some sort of emphasis/emotional expression. In some situations, especially where imperatives are used, it has more of a consequence, similar to the English “you’d better [not].” Again, input flooding does wonders as there’s a world of meaning contained in this two-letter, one syllable sound. And more often than not, you don’t even hear the initial “h”, so it sounds like “âh”. Once you’re aware of it, though, you’ll start hearing it absolutely everywhere. 

Here are some examples:

This post was already in the back of my mind when I was rewatching the movie Abad o Yek Ruz (Life and A Day). I noticed this hâ was featured prominently in their dialogue. One of the characters says, “Tu otâghesh pip dâreh hâ!” (He has a pipe in his room [I’m telling you!/You’d better listen.]) Elsewhere in the film, another character says, “Khodetam nemizâram tanhâ zendegi koni hâ” (I won’t let you live alone either [better keep that in mind/I’m warning you]). You’ll notice the sense of consequence involved in both of these examples. 

Subtle differences between ke and digeh and hâ

Let’s take a simple example to demonstrate the subtle differences in the meaning of these three particles. Our example will be: Goftam (I said it.)

Goftam digeh! (I said it [and I’m not going to say it again.])

Again, I cannot emphasize enough how much tone, stress, and context make a difference that may slightly alter the meaning/emotion behind these particles. And while I don’t claim that this post is exhaustive, I do hope that it has given you a bit more insight, maybe cleared some things up, or at the very least, simply increased your awareness of these little particles which are oh-so commonly used. As I stated above, hearing them enough will definitely help you feel more confident to use them properly. That’s how it is for me anyway when learning a language. And then one day, completely out of the blue, it’ll just slip out. You’ll say, “Sí, po!” when speaking with your Chilean host family over “once” (Chilean “tea time”). Or “Ich habe gar keine Taschen,” (I don’t have any pockets.) when the security guy at Berlin Tegel (RIP) tells you to empty your pockets before going through the metal detector. It’s been acquired! And you can feel damn proud of yourself. 

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