Teacher, School, Exam: 16 Classroom Words in Farsi

Short answer: Teacher in Farsi is mo'allem and school is madrese. A school student is dânesh-âmuz, while shâgerd is a pupil who learns from someone. University is dâneshgâh, book is ketâb, pen is khodkâr, pencil is medâd, notebook is daftar, exam is emtehân and homework is taklif. The tables have all sixteen with Persian script.

Teacher is the word most people come here for, and it is the first row. The rest of the list follows a school day: who is in the room, where you are, and what is on the desk.

I split it into two tables. People and places first, then things and lessons. Sixteen words, and a few of them do double duty, so read the English column properly before you use them.

People and Places at School

Two words for student is not a typo. Dânesh-âmuz is a school-age student. Shâgerd is anyone learning from another person, like the painting student in the example, and it can also mean a tradesman's assistant.

Things and Lessons

Daftar is the one to watch: it means notebook, but also office or bureau, so context does the work. Taklif is the same, homework at school and duty everywhere else. Once school comes up in a conversation, these words pair well with the questions in Farsi small talk.

Mo'allem: more than a job title

Teaching carries a lot of respect in Iran, even though teachers are not well paid. There is a national Teachers' Day on May 2nd, and students bring flowers and small gifts. People also call someone who shaped them their first teacher, as a way of honouring them.

Madrese, dars and kelâs

Madrese comes from Arabic, from a root meaning to study, and dars, lesson, comes from the same root. Persian took it in after the 7th century along with much of its learning vocabulary. In English, madrasa usually means a religious school. In Iran, madrese is just the normal word for school, and the religious sense uses other words.

Dars is everywhere in family life. The first thing many mothers ask at the door is: did you study your lesson? Kelâs goes further than school: middle-class families spend a lot on extra classes for language, music or university entrance prep. And asking a child which kelâs they are in is how you find out their grade, and so their age.

Dâneshgâh and the exam before it

Dâneshgâh is built from knowledge plus place, and that pattern is still used to coin new technical words. The best known is the one in the table's example, founded in 1934. Getting into a top university means passing the national entrance exam, which more than a million high school students sit every year. For how Persian is taught to children outside Iran, see weekend Farsi school vs. home teaching.

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.