What it means
پست کردن (post-kardan) is the working Persian verb for posting something on social media. You پست میکنی a photo on Instagram, a clip on Telegram, a status on WhatsApp. The English root post arrived with the platforms and never left. By the late 2010s every Iranian under forty was using the verb without thinking about it.
The Pure Persian Movement (Farhangestan-e Zaban-e Farsi) offers ارسال کردن (ersal-kardan, to send) or منتشر کردن (montasher-kardan, to publish) as alternatives. Both sound like a state-TV news ticker. In actual speech, نوبت پست کردن میرسد (the moment to post arrives) and people type پست کن (post kon, post it). The clinical option exists on paper.
Compound verb structure
Post-kardan is built on the most productive verb-formation pattern in modern Persian: an invariant element, here the English noun پست, plus the native light verb کردن (kardan, to do, to make). The conjugation lives entirely on کردن. The English root stays frozen.
- Present: من پست میکنم (man post mikonam), تو پست میکنی (to post mikoni), او پست میکند (u post mikonad)
- Past: من پست کردم (man post kardam), تو پست کردی (to post kardi)
- Subjunctive: که پست کنم (ke post konam)
- Negation: پست نکردم (post nakardam, I did not post)
The object attaches with را (rā) in formal speech or رو (ro) in colloquial Tehran speech: عکس رو پست کردم (aks ro post kardam, I posted the photo).
How to use it
aks-e dishab ro post kardi?
Did you post last night’s photo?
عکس دیشب رو پست کردی؟
man hafte-i ye bār post mikonam, bishtar nemikhām.
I post once a week, I don’t want to do more.
من هفتهای یه بار پست میکنم، بیشتر نمیخوام.
in akse rā post nakon, kifiyat-esh kheyli pā’in-e.
Don’t post this photo, the quality is too low.
این عکسه را پست نکن، کیفیتش خیلی پایینه.
Where it comes from
The verb is an anglicism of the social-media age. English post entered Iranian internet speech through Instagram and Telegram, the two platforms that swallowed Iranian social life from roughly 2014 onward. کردن is the native Persian light verb, going back to Middle Persian kardan and ultimately Proto-Indo-Iranian *kar-. The pairing is the standard Persian way of absorbing a foreign noun without disturbing native syntax. Persian has done this with Arabic vocabulary for a thousand years; it does it with English in real time today.
In our voice
Iranians do not say ارسال کردم وقتی استوری گذاشتم. They say پست کردم. Learn the verb learners actually hear. The official register exists, the spoken register is what you need on the street and in DMs.
References
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