What it means
فالو کردن (follow-kardan) is to follow someone on a social network, to subscribe to their posts and updates. The verb is the most widespread internet anglicism in Persian, used by ten-year-olds and seventy-year-olds alike. If a learner only knows one of these compound verbs, this is the one.
The Pure Persian Movement option is دنبال کردن (donbāl-kardan, to follow, to pursue, native Persian), which is a perfectly good and widely understood alternative. Older speakers and formal writing often use دنبال کردن. Spoken Tehrani still tilts toward فالو کردن because it sounds lighter and platform-specific. The two coexist and neither has displaced the other completely.
Compound verb structure
Follow-kardan is the textbook example of Persian’s internet-anglicism formula: invariant English noun فالو plus light verb کردن. The action is durative-stative (following is an ongoing relationship, not a one-time tap), so کردن fits over زدن.
- Present: من فالو میکنم (man follow mikonam)
- Past: من فالو کردم (man follow kardam)
- Subjunctive: که فالو کنم (ke follow konam)
- Imperative: فالو کن (follow kon)
- Negation: فالو نمیکنم (follow nemikonam, I don’t follow), فالو نکردم (follow nakardam, I didn’t follow)
The person being followed marks with را or رو: کسی که میشناختم رو فالو کردم (kasi ke mishnākhtam ro follow kardam, I followed someone I knew).
How to use it
page-e jadid-am rā follow kon!
Follow my new page!
پیج جدیدم را فالو کن!
man Reza rā follow nemikonam dige, kheyli zard mineveshteh.
I don’t follow Reza anymore, he was writing too much clickbait.
من رضا را فالو نمیکنم دیگه، خیلی زرد مینوشت.
chand sāl-e ke pejmān rā follow mikonam.
I have been following Pezhman for several years.
چند ساله که پژمان را فالو میکنم.
The follow versus donbāl distinction
Both verbs work and both are understood, but they live in slightly different registers. فالو کردن is platform-tied: you فالو someone on Instagram, on Twitter, on Telegram. دنبال کردن is broader: you can دنبال someone’s career, a story, a news event, a person walking down the street. When the social-media context is explicit, فالو wins. When the context is wider or the speaker is older or formal, دنبال returns.
Where it comes from
Follow is English, naturalized into Persian through Twitter and Instagram from roughly 2010 onward. کردن is native Persian. The verb’s high frequency among Iranian internet users means it has become an A1-level vocabulary item: it is now one of the first internet words a learner encounters, often before they even build up Persian for offline social actions.
References
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