What it means
سالگی (sâlegi) is the construction Persian uses to mark age in years, especially “at age X”. Compound of سال (sâl) “year” plus the abstract suffix ـگی. The form attaches to a number to make a noun phrase meaning “the state of being X years old”.
How to use it
- در پنج سالگی (dar panj sâlegi) “at age five””
- در بیست سالگی ازدواج کرد (dar bist sâlegi ezdevâj kard) “she got married at twenty”
- تا چهل سالگی (tâ chehel sâlegi) “until age forty”
When this stage falls
Sâlegi is the construction that lets you locate any other life stage on a timeline. Iranian mileposts you’ll hear it pinned to: hafte sâlegi (age 7, school start), hejde sâlegi (18, konkur), bist o se sâlegi (23, military service end), si sâlegi (30, marriage pressure peaks). It’s the connective tissue of life-stage talk.
Cultural note
The construction is unavoidable. You can’t tell a story about your life in Persian without it. Notice the suffix ـگی does double duty: it forms abstract nouns from adjectives ending in silent ـه (zende → zendegi “life”) and from nouns of measure (sâl → sâlegi). Once you internalize it, dozens of vocabulary words click into place.
References
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