Online Persian lessons
Persian is easier than its reputation suggests — no grammatical gender, no cases, regular verb endings. The script is the only real barrier, and it comes down in about a month.
سلام — Salâm
Choose a variety
Every variety below is taught by someone who speaks it. If you are not sure which applies to you, say where you are going and we will tell you.
Why learn here
If you grew up hearing Persian at home, you already have an ear, a vocabulary and an accent that a beginner course wastes. The heritage track skips what you know and works on reading, writing and the formal register you never picked up at the dinner table.
Persian has no grammatical gender, no noun cases, and one regular pattern for verb endings. Most of the difficulty English speakers expect is not there. Your tutor spends the time on vocabulary and the script instead, which is where the actual work is.
Dari and Iranian Farsi are mutually intelligible but differ in pronunciation, everyday vocabulary and formality. If you are working in Afghanistan or with an Afghan community, you are taught Dari by someone who speaks it, not Tehrani Farsi with a footnote.
Hafez, Rumi and Saadi are living reference points in Persian conversation, not a museum exhibit. There is a separate course for reading them in the original, which suits people who already have intermediate Persian and want the literature rather than the small talk.
Levels we teach
Persian is spoken by about 130 million people. These are the CEFR levels we teach it at, and what each one actually lets you do.
The alphabet and first phrases
The 32 letters and their connected forms, basic greetings, numbers, and enough grammar to introduce yourself. Reading starts in week one.
Everyday Persian
Family, food, travel, shopping and the past tense. You start to notice the gap between written Persian and how people actually speak.
Conversation and colloquial forms
Spoken Tehrani contractions, opinions, storytelling, and following a conversation between two native speakers without asking them to slow down.
Formal register and reading
News, correspondence and literary prose. The difference between what you write and what you say becomes deliberate rather than accidental.
Literature and professional use
Classical poetry, academic sources and professional work conducted entirely in Persian.
Specialist courses
Adults who grew up hearing Persian at home, understand a great deal, and cannot read, write or operate in the formal register.
Learners with roughly intermediate Persian who want the literature, and heritage speakers who can read the words of a ghazal without following the argument.
What students say
No Persian reviews are published here yet. We would rather show you nothing than write our own. Once students leave verifiable reviews on Trustpilot or Google, they appear on this page with a link back to the original.
They are three standard varieties of the same language. Farsi is the Iranian standard, Dari the Afghan one, and Tajik the Central Asian one, which is written in Cyrillic rather than the Perso-Arabic script. Speakers of Farsi and Dari understand each other readily, with differences in pronunciation, some everyday vocabulary and formal usage. Tell us which community you are learning for and we match the tutor to it.
Less hard than most people assume. There is no grammatical gender, no noun case system, and verb conjugation is regular. The two genuine obstacles are the script, which takes three to four weeks, and vocabulary, which shares very little with English. The US Foreign Service Institute places Persian in its category of moderately difficult languages, well below Arabic, Japanese or Chinese.
For anything beyond tourist phrases, yes, and it is a smaller obstacle than it looks. The alphabet has 32 letters, most of them connect, and short vowels are usually not written — which sounds alarming and stops mattering once you have vocabulary. Adults typically read simple words within a month of starting.
In the heritage course, not in a beginner class. Heritage speakers usually have strong listening comprehension and a natural accent, and gaps in reading, writing and formal register. Starting from A1 wastes what you already have and is discouraging. The trial lesson is partly an assessment so your tutor can see where the actual gaps are.
Yes, as a distinct course for learners who already read Persian at roughly intermediate level. It covers Hafez, Rumi, Saadi and Ferdowsi in the original, including the classical grammar and vocabulary that differ from modern usage. It is not a substitute for a general course and we will say so if you are not ready for it yet.
Who teaches you
No tutor profile is published for Persian yet. We will not put up a card with a stock photograph and a first name — if you are going to hand someone your Tuesday evenings, you should be able to see their name, their face and the body that issued their qualification.
Lessons are running. Message us on WhatsApp and we will tell you who is currently teaching Persian, what they are qualified in, and when they are free. You will find a Persian tutor listed here as soon as their paperwork is verified.
You meet the tutor, they work out where you actually are, and you both decide whether to carry on. If we are not the right fit, we will say so.
