THE PERSON BEHIND THE LESSONS
About El
Tehran-born. Milan-based. Teaching the Persian that textbooks forgot.
Tehran doesn’t come with subtitles.
I grew up in Tehran. I moved to Italy to study Political Science and International Relations. Somewhere in between, I realized something: every Persian course I’d ever seen was teaching a language that doesn’t exist anymore.
The Farsi in textbooks is the Farsi of formal government letters and 1970s diplomacy. It’s not the Farsi spoken in the cafes of Tehran, in protest chants, in family arguments, in the jokes that make Iranians laugh until they cry.
So I started teaching the real thing. Not just language, but the culture, politics, history, and unwritten social rules that give every word its actual meaning. My PolSci background means I don’t just teach you what Iranians say. I teach you why they say it.
Whether you’re a journalist decoding political rhetoric, a heritage speaker reconnecting with your roots, or someone who fell in love with an Iranian and needs to survive the family dinner. I teach the Persian that actually matters.
Why I Teach Differently
Most Persian courses separate language from context. They teach you grammar rules and vocabulary lists in isolation, as if language exists in a vacuum.
I do the opposite. Every lesson is built around real-world content: a news article about Iran’s economy, a clip from a banned Iranian film, a social media post that went viral in Tehran. You learn the language by engaging with the world it comes from.
My Political Science background means I can explain why Iranian political rhetoric uses specific phrases, why tarof isn’t just politeness but a complex social negotiation, and why the same word means completely different things depending on whether you’re in a boardroom or a bazaar.
This is context-first language teaching. And it’s the only way to achieve real fluency.
Ready to Start?
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