Memrise Farsi Review: The Vocabulary Graveyard

When I first moved to Milan, I knew about 500 Italian words. I’d picked them up from menus, street signs, overheard conversations, and a semester of college classes. Five hundred words. That sounds like a lot.

My first week, I walked into a pharmacy and tried to explain that I had a headache. I knew the word for head (testa). I knew the word for pain (dolore). I did not know how to combine them into a sentence that didn’t make the pharmacist think I was having a stroke. I stood there, pointing at my temple, cycling through disconnected nouns like a broken jukebox: “Testa… dolore… medicine…“

She gave me the Advil and also, I think, genuine concern for my mental health.

I tell this story because it’s exactly what happens to my Farsi students who come to me after months on Memrise. They’ve memorized hundreds of Persian words. They can tap nān (نان, bread), āb (آب, water), and ketāb (کتاب, book) in their sleep. Their streak is 90 days. Their vocabulary garden is blooming.

And they cannot form a single natural sentence.

Is Memrise good for learning Farsi? It’s good for collecting words. Whether collecting words equals learning a language is the question nobody at Memrise wants you to ask.

What Memrise Became in 2025-2026

Before we go further, a significant update: Memrise has changed dramatically. In 2024, they removed all community-created courses from the main app and website, migrating them to a separate site (community-courses.memrise.com) that was available through the end of 2025 and has since been largely sunsetted.

This matters for Farsi learners because the community decks were often the best Persian content on the platform. built by actual speakers who understood the language’s quirks. What remains is Memrise’s official Persian course with their “Learn, Immerse, Communicate” framework, featuring video clips of native speakers, AI-assisted practice, and their signature spaced repetition algorithm.

Pricing is free for basics, with Memrise Pro at roughly $9/month (or less on annual plans) for full access to all features.

What Memrise Does Well

Spaced Repetition Actually Works

The science behind Memrise’s core mechanic is real. Spaced repetition. showing you a word right before you’d forget it. is the most efficient method for raw memorization. If you need to cement 200 Persian nouns into long-term memory, Memrise’s algorithm will do it faster than flashcards or re-reading lists. This is genuinely useful for vocabulary building as part of a larger study plan.

Native Speaker Videos

The “Learn with Locals” clips show real Iranians saying phrases in real settings. Compared to the text-to-speech robots on other platforms, this is a major upgrade. You hear actual Tehrani intonation, see facial expressions, and get a tiny window into how the language sounds in the wild. For a learner who has never heard natural Persian, these clips are valuable orientation.

The Alphabet Isn’t Scary Here

Persian script intimidates beginners. Memrise breaks the 32 characters into small, manageable chunks with visual recognition games. As an entry point to the alphabet. before you commit to a more rigorous study method. it works.

The Graveyard Problem: Words Without Grammar

Here’s where it falls apart. Memrise teaches you words. It does not teach you language.

Persian isn’t like stacking Lego bricks. you can’t just line up nouns and verbs and expect meaning. The language relies on connective tissue that Memrise largely ignores:

• The ezāfe construction. the invisible “-e” that links nouns to adjectives and possessives. Ketāb-e bozorg (the big book) vs. just ketāb… bozorg with an awkward pause. Memrise teaches you “book” and “big” separately but rarely the glue between them.
• Verb conjugation logic. Persian verbs are highly regular once you understand the pattern. Memrise shows you one conjugation (mikhoram, I eat) without explaining the system that generates all the others. You memorize one form instead of learning to produce all six.
• Word order. Persian is SOV (Subject-Object-Verb), not SVO like English. “I water drink” not “I drink water.” Memrise teaches you the vocabulary to fill each slot but not the architecture of the sentence.

The result is what I call the Vocabulary Graveyard: a collection of perfectly memorized words, neatly buried, doing nothing. My students arrive knowing mikhāham (I want) and ghahve (coffee) but have no idea how to stick them together without sounding like Tarzan.

The Formality Problem (Again)

Memrise, like nearly every Farsi app, teaches the written register. The phrases you learn are the ones you’d read in a newspaper, not the ones you’d hear at a family dinner. By now, if you’ve read my reviews of Pimsleur or Rosetta Stone, you know the pattern.

But Memrise adds an extra wrinkle: because it teaches words in isolation rather than in sentences, the formality problem is harder to detect. You learn nemidānam (I don’t know. formal) and nemidoonam (I don’t know. spoken) might as well be different words. Without context showing you that one is the lived version of the other, you store them as separate entries in your mental dictionary rather than understanding the systematic sound shift that connects them.

This is the spoken vs. written Farsi gap at its most insidious. hidden inside individual vocabulary cards rather than exposed in full sentences.

Memrise vs. Drops: The Pretty App Showdown

Since both Memrise and Drops occupy the “vocabulary with nice design” space, here’s a quick comparison for Farsi learners:

Memrise wins on depth and flexibility. Drops wins on design and convenience. Neither will teach you to speak.

Rating: 5 / 10

Who Should Use Memrise for Farsi

The vocabulary stacker. If you’re already studying Farsi with a tutor or textbook and want a supplementary tool for drilling vocabulary on the bus, Memrise does that job well. Use it alongside Anki, not instead of it.

The alphabet beginner. If the Persian script terrifies you, Memrise provides a low-stakes entry point. Spend a week here, learn the characters, then move to something more substantial.

The casual explorer. If you’re dating an Iranian and want to learn “I love you” and “your mother’s cooking is amazing” without committing to formal study, Memrise will arm you with enough vocabulary to be charming at one dinner. Maybe two.

Who Should Look Elsewhere

Anyone who wants to have a conversation. Memorizing 500 words does not equal speaking a language. If your goal is to talk. really talk, not just recite. you need grammar, sentence structure, and the spoken register. Memrise provides none of these.

Heritage speakers. You already know most of the vocabulary Memrise teaches. What you need is the confidence and structure to produce it. That’s a completely different problem.

Anyone who’s been on the app for more than two months. If you’ve hit your 60-day streak and still can’t form a sentence, the app has given you everything it can. Time to graduate.

The Pharmacy Lesson

I eventually learned to communicate in Italian pharmacies. Not by memorizing more nouns, but by learning the patterns that connect them. “Ho mal di testa”. “I have head-ache.” Four words, one structure, years of use.

Farsi works the same way. “Sar dard dāram” (سر درد دارم). “Head pain I-have.” Three words, one pattern, applicable to every ailment in existence. Memrise might teach you sar and dard separately. It won’t teach you dāram as the glue, or that in spoken Farsi you’d actually say “Saram dard mikone” (سرم درد میکنه). with a completely different structure.

That gap. between knowing words and knowing a language. is what separates vocabulary apps from actual learning. See where Memrise stacks up in my complete Farsi app comparison.

Memrise teaches you words in isolation. ZabanYar teaches the alphabet those words are written in, then reinforces everything with spaced repetition that actually connects letters to sounds to meaning.

Know a hundred words and can’t use them?
Let’s turn your vocabulary graveyard into a living language. book a lesson on Preply.

Frequently Asked Questions

For the full comparison of every Farsi learning tool, see our complete resource guide.