Phonology of Persian language

Syllable

The syllable patterns of Persian are as follows (C = Consonant, V = Vowel):

Pattern	Examples
CV	na, to, ke, mâ, khu, si, u نه، تو، که، ما، خو، سی، او
CVC	kar, pol, del, kâr, mur, sir, az, in, âb کر، پل، دل، کار، مور، سیر، از، این، آب
CVCC	kard, goft, zesht, kârd, khoshk, rikht, farsh, ârd, abr کرد، گفت، زشت، کارد، خشک، ریخت، فرش، آرد، ابر

Pattern

Examples

na, to, ke, mâ, khu, si, u

نه، تو، که، ما، خو، سی، او

CVC

kar, pol, del, kâr, mur, sir, az, in, âb

کر، پل، دل، کار، مور، سیر، از، این، آب

CVCC

kard, goft, zesht, kârd, khoshk, rikht, farsh, ârd, abr

کرد، گفت، زشت، کارد، خشک، ریخت، فرش، آرد، ابر

These patterns can be encapsulated in CV(C)(C). According to the patterns:

Syllables always begin with a consonant sound. Even syllables that begin with a vowel sound, have a preceding glottal stop merged with their sound. It is due to the fact that in Persian, all vowels occurring at the beginning of a syllable are articulated with a glottal stop. For example, u is actually pronounced øu, ârd is pronounced øârd and so on.
The second component of syllables is always a vowel (or a diphthong).
Syllables can have only one vowel sound. Therefore, each vowel sound indicates a syllable.

Syllabification

The basic rule for breaking a word into its syllables is: each vowel sound indicates a syllable. Therefore, two adjacent vowel sounds belong to separate syllables and are pronounced individually.

Word	Syllables
jodânevisi	jo-dâ-ne-vi-si
shamødân	shamø-dân
maføul	maf-øul
jâmee	jâ-me-e
soâl	so-âl
Nowruz	Now-ruz
nowâvari	now-â-va-ri
farhangsâzi	far-hang-sâ-zi

Double consonants

Gemination or consonant lengthening, is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a single instance of the same type of consonant. In English, gemination does not occur within words but for example in "calm man", you can see that the consonant m is geminated (it is pronounced twice).

In native Persian script, gemination is marked with a diacritic called tashdid ّـــ. Its place is above the consonant that is to be pronounced twice. You have to memorize words having gemination because tashdid is not normally written. When Persian is written in Latin script, gemination can be shown with double consonants (as in Italian). For example, in najjâr the two j's fall into separate syllables and therefore, the word is pronounced "naj-jâr":

Word		Syllables
ammâ	امّا	am-mâ
pelle	پلّه	pel-le
najjâr	نجّار	naj-jâr
jallâd	جلّاد	jal-lâd
khayyât	خیّاط	khay-yât

The only exception is when double consonants occur at word final: since they don't fall into separate syllables, they are pronounced as one sound:

Word		Syllables
khatt (line)	خطّ	khatt
khatti (linear)	خطّی	khat-ti

Stress position

In Persian, the stress falls on the last syllable. There are only a few exceptions: bále (yes), ágar (if), ámmâ (but), zírâ (because). The acute accent ( ´ ) can be used to mark the vowel of the syllable taking the stress.

Enclitics

Enclitics are unstressed words that phonologically attach to their preceding word. In English, definite and indefinite articles (the, a, an) are examples for an enclitic. For educational purposes, the following enclitics are separated from their preceding word with a hyphen. You can write them separately or join them to their host word:

genitive preposition: dust-e man, khâne-ye man
indefinite article: mard-i, sedâ-yi
bound personal pronouns: ketâb-ash, didam-ash