What it means
ده (dah) is the cardinal number 10 in Persian. It comes from the Indo-European root that gave English “ten,” Latin “decem,” Greek “deka,” and Sanskrit “dasha.” Pronounced with a short open a and a soft final h. The same written letters ده also mean “village” in another context (deh), distinguished by pronunciation and grammar.
How to use it
- ده تا انار (dah tâ anâr) “ten pomegranates”
- ده نفر (dah nafar) “ten people”
- ساعت ده شب (sâ’at-e dah-e shab) “ten in the evening”
- ده دقیقه دیگه (dah daqiqe dige) “in ten more minutes”
- ده دلار (dah dolâr) “ten dollars”
How counters work
Dah follows the standard counter rules. The default classifier is تا: dah tâ ketâb (“ten books”). For people you use نفر: dah nafar (“ten people”). The noun stays singular even with ten: dah tâ ruz (“ten days”), not dah tâ ruzhâ. From eleven onward Persian compounds with dah: یازده (yâzdah, eleven, literally “one-ten”), دوازده (davâzdah, twelve), سیزده (sizdah, thirteen). These compounds preserve the dah ending and trace the same logic as English “thirteen” (three + ten).
Cultural note
The most weighted use of dah in modern Iranian life is دهه فجر (dahe-ye fajr), “the Decade of Dawn,” the official ten-day commemoration from the 12th to the 22nd of Bahman (roughly February 1 to February 11) marking Ayatollah Khomeini’s return to Iran in 1979 and the victory of the Islamic Revolution. Schools, government offices, and state television run programming, parades, and exhibitions for the full ten days. Whatever an Iranian’s politics, the rhythm of those ten days structures the calendar. The number ten also appears in religious mourning as the first ten days of Muharram, دهه اول محرم (dahe-ye avval-e moharram), the lead-up to Ashura. In poetry, ده sometimes carries its other meaning, “village,” giving the metaphor of returning to one’s origin: از ده آمدم (az deh âmadam), “I came from the village.” The expression ده تا یکی (dah tâ yeki), “ten for one,” describes a steep bargain or a generous trade. ده فرمان (dah farmân), “the Ten Commandments,” is the Persian name for the Mosaic decalogue, used in Iranian Christian and Jewish texts. And در عرض ده دقیقه (dar arz-e dah daqiqe), “within ten minutes,” is the phrase Iranian taxi drivers use to promise an arrival time that almost always turns out to mean twenty.
References
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