The first WhatsApp message I got from my cousin in Tehran after years of not being in touch looked like this: “salam boro man daram miram khoone maman mikhay biai? slm bzn”
I stared at it for a full thirty seconds. I speak Persian. I know the script. I had no idea what I was reading.
Welcome to Fingilish: the romanised Persian that Iranian teenagers, diaspora, and frankly most Iranians under 40 use on screens every day. No textbook teaches it. No app covers it. But if you’re going to communicate with actual Iranians in writing. on Instagram, Telegram, WhatsApp, anywhere. you need to know what it is.
What Fingilish Actually Is
Fingilish (sometimes spelled Finglish, فینگلیش) is Persian written in Latin script. The name is a portmanteau of Farsi and English. though it has nothing to do with English. It’s just Persian transcribed with the letters non-Persian keyboards have.
It emerged out of necessity. Before Persian keyboards became standard on smartphones, Iranians were texting and chatting on devices that only had Latin characters. Rather than switch language entirely, they wrote Persian phonetically using whatever letters got the sounds across. The habit stuck. even after Persian keyboards became widely available.
Today, Fingilish is everywhere: Instagram captions, Telegram group chats, WhatsApp forwards, YouTube comments on Iranian content. It’s not going away. It’s what Iranian internet culture runs on.
The Problem: There’s No Standard
This is the part that breaks people. Fingilish has no official system. No academy endorsed a convention. No textbook settled the debates. What you get instead is a loose set of community agreements with significant individual variation.
The word خوب (khub, good) gets written as: khub, khoob, xub, khoub. All mean the same thing. All are “correct” depending on who you’re asking. The long u sound (و) variously appears as oo, u, or ou. The kh sound (خ). the throat-clearing sound. appears as kh or sometimes just x. The gh sound (غ) appears as gh or q.
Once you know the patterns, you start reading through the variation. Until then, it looks like chaos.
The Core Patterns to Learn
Here are the sound-to-letter mappings that cover 90% of what you’ll see:
- aa or a = آ / ا (long a, as in “father”). سلام → salam, مادر → madar
- ee or i = ی (long e, as in “see”). میرم → miram, خیلی → kheyli
- oo or u = و (long u, as in “moon”). خوب → khoob / khub
- kh or x = خ (the throat sound). خونه → khoone / xune
- gh = غ (the voiced version). غذا → ghaza
- sh = ش. شاید → shayad
- ch = چ. چطوری → chetori
- zh = ژ (rare). ژاپن → zhaapon
Short vowels. the ones Persian script leaves unwritten. get written however the sender wants to write them. This is where the personal variation is widest.
The Abbreviations Layer
On top of the phonetic system, there’s a layer of abbreviations that further compress the text. Iranians text fast and they cut corners like everyone else:
- slm = سلام (salam, hello). the vowels just vanish
- mrc = مرسی (mersī, thanks). from the French merci, now abbreviated in Fingilish
- mmn or mn = من (man, I/me)
- khoone = خونه (khune, house. colloquial form of خانه)
- bzn = بزن (literally “hit” but means “send” or “drop me a message”)
- ok = used exactly as in English, constantly
That first message from my cousin: “salam boro man daram miram khoone maman mikhay biai? slm bzn”. decodes to: “Hello hey, I’m going to mum’s place, do you want to come? Send me a message.” The bzn at the end is “bezen”. literally “hit” a message my way.
The Affective Extensions
One thing Fingilish does that formal text doesn’t: it lets you show warmth through extension. Iranians stretch words when they’re being affectionate or emphatic.
جون (jun, dear/honey) becomes juuuun or joooooon. The more letters, the more endearment. خیلی (kheyli, very/a lot) becomes kheeeeyli when you really mean it. This is the Fingilish equivalent of writing “sooo good” in English. but more systematic.
This emotional calibration is one reason Fingilish persists even when people have Persian keyboards available. Script doesn’t stretch the same way. It’s harder to communicate affect through the formal written system.
Fingilish and the Diaspora
For Iranian diaspora communities. in London, LA, Toronto, Milan. Fingilish does extra work. Second-generation Iranians often grew up speaking Persian at home but weren’t formally taught the script. Fingilish is how they can write in a language they feel but can’t script.
This creates a situation where a 25-year-old in LA writes to their Iranian relatives in Fingilish, those relatives in Tehran respond in either Persian script or their own Fingilish, and somehow communication works. It’s messy and it’s real.
If you’re learning Persian as an outsider and you have Iranian friends or contacts, you will encounter Fingilish before you encounter formal Persian script in any social context. Learning to read it is not optional. it’s how Iranians actually communicate with each other online.
Should You Write in Fingilish?
Learn to read it: yes, absolutely. Use it actively: with some caution.
Fingilish reads as informal and often young-coded. In casual conversation with friends and peers, it’s fine. In any context with older Iranians, in professional or formal communication, or when writing anything publicly in Persian, script is expected and Fingilish would look odd or careless.
The situation is roughly equivalent to writing English with heavy abbreviations and no capitalisation to someone you’ve just met professionally. You can do it. It sends a signal about register that you may or may not intend.
My recommendation: learn the Persian script properly first. Then you can read Fingilish as a decoding exercise. you’ll recognise what’s happening because you know the underlying sounds. Using it fluently comes after you’ve spent time in actual digital Persian spaces, not before.
The spoken vocabulary and the script are the foundations. Fingilish is what happens when those foundations meet a touchscreen keyboard at 11pm.
Ready to move beyond Fingilish and read actual Persian script? ZabanYar teaches the alphabet and builds from there. free and self-paced.
If you want to get through this faster. script, spoken Persian, and the real digital language. I work with students one-on-one here. We cover what Iranians actually write to each other, not just what the textbooks say they should.