Persian Technology & Digital Vocabulary: The Fingilish Layer

My mom called me from Tehran last week. She needed help with her لپ‌تاپ. laptop. Specifically, her فیلترشکن. filtershekan. had stopped working, so she couldn't open Instagram. I walked her through it over the phone. "Open your setingz," I said. "Go to vi-pi-en." She asked me what button to press. I said "the one that says konekt." We went back and forth for ten minutes, speaking Farsi, and roughly 40% of the words coming out of our mouths were English.

That phone call is Persian technology vocabulary in a nutshell. Half the words are borrowed from English or French, sometimes barely disguised. The other half are official replacements invented by the Academy of Persian Language. words that sound poetic, make perfect etymological sense, and that almost nobody uses. The gap between what the Academy says and what your taxi driver in Tehran says is one of the most entertaining things about modern Farsi. And if you're at an intermediate level, tech vocab is where you'll feel that gap the hardest.

Devices: What Iranians Call Their Gadgets

Walk into any electronics shop on Tehran's Jomhuri Avenue and listen. The salesman is speaking Farsi, but the nouns are almost all loanwords. The Academy has Persian alternatives for most of these. The street has other plans.

گوشی. gushi. phone / mobile (literally "earpiece". this is the one native word that won)
موبایل. mobâyl. mobile phone (from English. used interchangeably with gushi)
لپ‌تاپ. laptop. laptop
تبلت. teblet. tablet
کامپیوتر. kâmpyuter. computer (from English, via French pronunciation)
رایانه. râyâne. computer (the Academy's official word. from râyâne, meaning "that which computes")
چاپگر. châpgar. printer (from châp = print. one of the Academy's success stories)
اسکنر. eskaner. scanner
هارد. hârd. hard drive
فلش. flash. USB flash drive (everyone just says flash)

Notice گوشی (gushi). It comes from گوش (gush). ear. Iranians named the phone after the body part you hold it against. This is the rare case where the native Persian word beat the loanword. nobody says telefon-e hamrâh (the formal term) in conversation. They say gushi or mobâyl. Period.

The Internet: How Iranians Get Online (When They Can)

Internet vocabulary in Iran is almost entirely borrowed English, pronounced with a Farsi accent and sometimes shortened in ways that would confuse an English speaker. The word اینترنت (internet) itself has no Persian replacement. even the Academy gave up on that one.

اینترنت. internet. internet (sometimes shortened to net in conversation)
سایت. sâyt. website
پیج. peij. page (used for both web pages and social media profiles)
دانلود. dânlod. download
آپلود. âplod. upload
جستجو کردن. jostoju kardan. to search (this is the native Farsi term. and people actually use it)
سرچ کردن. serch kardan. to search (the borrowed version. equally common)
لینک. link. link
ایمیل. imeil. email
رمز عبور. ramz-e obur. password (literally "code of passage". this elegant native compound actually stuck)
پسورد. pasword. password (the English loanword. also very common)

Here's what's interesting: رمز عبور (ramz-e obur) survived. It's a native compound. ramz (code/secret) + ezafe + obur (passing/crossing). and it sounds natural enough that both grandmothers and teenagers use it. Some Academy coinages work. The ones that win are the ones that feel Farsi in the mouth, not the ones that feel like a bureaucrat's revenge on English.

The verb pattern here is worth noting. Iranians take English nouns and attach کردن (kardan. to do) to make them into verbs. Dânlod kardan = to download. Âplod kardan = to upload. Serch kardan = to search. This is the same compound verb pattern that runs through all of Farsi. it just absorbs foreign words like a sponge.

Social Media: Instagram Farsi

Instagram is Iran's main social network. It was filtered in 2022 but most people access it through VPNs anyway. The vocabulary around it is pure borrowed English, Persianized just enough to fit Farsi grammar. If you follow Iranian accounts or have Iranian friends on social media, you'll see these words constantly. in Fingilish captions, in voice notes, in DM conversations.

لایک. lâyk. like
لایک کردن. lâyk kardan. to like (a post)
فالو. fâlo. follow
فالو کردن. fâlo kardan. to follow
آنفالو کردن. ânfâlo kardan. to unfollow
استوری. estori. story (Instagram story)
پست. post. post
کامنت. kâment. comment
شر کردن. sher kardan. to share
بلاک کردن. belâk kardan. to block
ری‌پورت کردن. ri-port kardan. to report
دایرکت. dâyrekt. DM / direct message
ریلز. rilz. reels

A typical sentence from a 22-year-old in Tehran: "Postesho lâyk kardam, estorisham share kardam, vali hanuz fâlom nakardeh.". "I liked her post, shared her story too, but she still hasn't followed me back." That sentence is grammatically Farsi. The verb endings, the object markers, the tense. all Persian. But five of the content words are English. This is how modern spoken Farsi works in digital contexts, and if your textbook doesn't cover it, your textbook is twenty years behind.

Official vs Real: What the Academy Says vs What Iranians Say

The Academy of Persian Language and Literature (فرهنگستان زبان و ادب فارسی. Farhangestan-e Zabân va Adab-e Fârsi) has been fighting the loanword battle since 1935. Their job: create Persian equivalents for foreign words entering the language. Sometimes they win. Mostly they don't.

Here's the scoreboard for tech vocabulary:

If you see râyâne or târnâmâ in a text, you're reading something official. a government document, a university paper, or state TV subtitles. In any other context, Iranians say kâmpyuter and sâyt. Know both registers. Use the street version in conversation.

VPN Culture: The Vocabulary of Filtered Iran

You can't talk about technology in Iran without talking about censorship. Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Telegram's public channels, most of Google's services. all فیلتر (filter). To access them, you need a فیلترشکن (filtershekan). literally "filter-breaker." I've written an entire post on Iran's internet censorship vocabulary, but here are the essential tech words that every intermediate learner should know.

فیلتر. filter. filtered / blocked (as in "Instagram filter-e". Instagram is blocked)
فیلتر شدن. filter shodan. to get filtered / blocked
فیلترشکن. filtershekan. VPN / filter-breaker / circumvention tool
وی‌پی‌ان. vi-pi-en. VPN (used interchangeably with filtershekan)
فانوس. fânoos. Lantern (a specific anti-censorship app popular in Iran. the name means "lantern" in Farsi)
دور زدن. dor zadan. to bypass / to go around (literally "to strike around". used for getting around the filters)
کانفیگ. kânfig. config (a VPN configuration string. traded like currency among Iranians)
نت. net. internet (the shortened form everyone uses)
نت قطع شد. net ghat' shod. the internet got cut (said with the same resignation as "it's raining")
وصل شدن. vasl shodan. to connect
قطع شدن. ghat' shodan. to disconnect / get cut off

The word دور زدن (dor zadan) deserves special attention. Outside of tech contexts, it means "to take a stroll" or "to go for a spin." Berim ye dori bezanim. Let's go for a walk. But in digital Iran, dor zadan means to circumvent, to bypass, to outsmart the system. The same verb for a leisurely stroll became the verb for digital resistance. That tells you something about how Iranians process censorship. with dark humor and a refusal to treat it as anything more than an inconvenience to route around.

Quick Reference Table

All 38 Farsi tech words in one place. Screenshot it, or better yet, import it into your flashcard app.

The pattern is clear: device words are split between Academy and street. Internet words are almost all borrowed. Social media words are 100% English with Farsi verb endings bolted on. And censorship vocabulary is a mix of borrowed English (filter, VPN) and native Farsi (filtershekan, dor zadan). because Iranians had to invent their own words for a problem no other country has at this scale.

For more on how Fingilish works as a writing system. and why it matters for tech contexts specifically. that post covers the full Latin-script layer of digital Persian. And if you want the broader vocabulary foundation, the vocabulary by topic hub connects every themed word list on the site.

FAQ

Thirty-eight words and you can talk about phones, apps, social media, and VPNs in Farsi. That's a Wednesday in Tehran. The tug-of-war between the Academy and the street isn't going away. if anything, it's accelerating as new tech terms arrive faster than any language committee can process them. The next generation of Persian tech vocab is being coined right now, in group chats and Telegram channels, by teenagers who've never opened a dictionary.

If you want a structured way to drill these words until they stick, ZabanYar lets you build custom vocabulary decks. Load this list in, and the app handles the spaced repetition. you just show up and practice.

And if you want to practice using these words in context. describing your phone setup, complaining about your VPN, or arguing about whether râyâne will ever replace kâmpyuter (it won't). book a session with me on Preply. I'll make you explain how to set up a filtershekan in Farsi. If you can do that, you can talk about anything.

Get it wrong and the worst that happens is a warm laugh and a story they’ll tell for years. Get it right — refuse the tea twice, accept on the third — and you’ll watch a face open up. You didn’t just speak Persian. You played the game.