وقتی

What it means

وقتی (vaghti) is a subordinating conjunction meaning when or at the time that. It introduces a temporal clause that sets the time frame for the main clause: وقتی رسیدم، خوابیده بود (vaghti residam, khâbide bud, when I arrived, he was asleep). The word is built on وقت (vaght, time), which is itself a borrowing from Arabic وَقْت (waqt), with the suffix ی that turns it into a conjunction. Vaghti and زمانی که (zamâni ke, at the time when) cover similar ground, but vaghti is the standard spoken form while zamâni ke is more common in formal writing. A close partner word is هر وقت (har vaght, whenever, every time that), which adds the distributive har to signal repetition.

How to use it

• وقتی بچه بودم، اینجا یه باغ بود. (vaghti bachche budam, injâ ye bâgh bud.) “When I was a child, there was a garden here.”
• وقتی گشنم می‌شه، نمی‌تونم درس بخونم. (vaghti goshnam mishe, nemitunam dars bekhunam.) “When I get hungry, I can’t study.”
• زنگ بزن وقتی رسیدی. (zang bezan vaghti residi.) “Call when you arrive.”
• وقتی می‌خندی، دلم وا می‌شه. (vaghti mikhandi, delam vâ mishe.) “When you laugh, my heart opens up.”

Cultural note

وقتی in Persian storytelling often carries a nostalgic or conditional weight that English when does not always convey. In colloquial narrative, وقتی بچه بودیم (vaghti bachche budim, when we were kids) is a reliable opener for fond or rueful memories, and Iranians use it to frame comparisons between past and present, a common conversational move in a culture with a strong sense of history and change across generations. The word itself is neutral, but the contexts it appears in often carry emotional freight.

References

• Dehkhoda
• Vajehyab