What it means
علوم طبیعی (olum-e tabii) means “natural sciences” as an academic field or school subject. Both words are from Arabic: علوم (olum) is the Arabic broken plural of عِلم (elm, “knowledge” or “science”), and طبیعی (tabii) comes from Arabic طَبِيعِيّ (“natural,” from طَبِيعَة, “nature”). The phrase entered Persian as part of the wide adoption of Arabic academic vocabulary during and after the Islamic Golden Age. In school contexts, علوم (olum) alone is used colloquially for the science class. In higher education, you encounter sub-fields like فیزیک (fizik, physics) and شیمی (shimi, chemistry), which are themselves Greek-rooted borrowings that entered Persian via Arabic.
How to use it
- علوم طبیعی درس سختیه برام. (olum-e tabii dars-e sakhtie baram.) “Natural sciences is a hard subject for me.”
- امتحان علوم داریم هفته دیگه. (emtehân-e olum dârim hafte-ye dige.) “We have a science test next week.”
- کتاب علوم طبیعی رو خوندی؟ (ketâb-e olum-e tabii ro khundi?) “Have you read the natural sciences textbook?”
- معلم علوم آزمایش جالبی نشون داد. (mo’allem-e olum âzmâyesh-e jâlebi neshun dâd.) “The science teacher showed an interesting experiment.”
Cultural note
In the Iranian national curriculum, علوم (olum) is a unified science subject at the primary and lower secondary levels, covering biology, earth science, and basic physics and chemistry together before they are split into separate disciplines in upper secondary school (دبیرستان, dabirestân). The Ministry of Education publishes centrally designed textbooks for each grade, so the content of کلاس علوم is largely uniform across public schools in Iran. Strong performance in science subjects is culturally valued and seen as a pathway to prestigious university majors such as medicine (پزشکی, pezeshki) and engineering (مهندسی, mohandesi).