What it means
بار (bâr) means “time” or “occurrence” when counting how often something happens, as in “three times” (سه بار). It is a native Persian word inherited from Middle Persian, unrelated to the Arabic borrowings that fill the same semantic slot in other languages. Note that بار is a homonym in Persian: the same word also means “load” or “burden” (as in بارِ زندگی, the burden of life) and appears in compound words meaning “fruit” (میوهدار). Context always makes the meaning clear. A close synonym for the “occurrence” sense is مرتبه (martabe), which is Arabic in origin and slightly more formal, and دفعه (daf’e), which is colloquial.
How to use it
- سه بار زنگ زدم. (se bâr zang zadam.) “I called three times.”
- بار اول که دیدمش، نشناختمش. (bâr-e aval ke didamesh, nashenâkhtamesh.) “The first time I saw him, I didn’t recognize him.”
- چند بار این فیلم رو دیدی؟ (chand bâr in film ro didi?) “How many times have you seen this film?”
- هر بار که میاد، یه چیزی میاره. (har bâr ke miyâd, ye chizi miyâre.) “Every time he comes, he brings something.”
Cultural note
بار is one of the earliest documented words in classical Persian poetry, appearing in the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi and the ghazals of Hafez. Its staying power across more than a thousand years of Persian, through waves of Arabic and later French and English borrowing, reflects how deeply embedded native Persian vocabulary remains in both literary and street registers. Today a university professor and a market vendor in Tehran use بار with equal comfort, which is unusual for a word in a language with such strong formal/informal divisions.