Farsi voice overs: what you need to know

Farsi, commonly known as Persian, is a Western Iranian language. It’s spoken by more than 110 million people, mostly in Western and Southern Asia. It’s estimated that around 70 million people are native Farsi speakers.

Farsi is the official language in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. However, there are numerous expatriate Farsi-speaking communities in Russia, Azerbaijan, and Iraq.

Farsi History

Farsi, as one of the oldest languages in the world, has a rich history that spans many centuries. Its vast history is categorized into three periods: Old Persian, Middle Persian, and Modern Persian.

Farsi, as it’s spoken today, directly descended from Old Persian (in use until the 3rd century) – the language of the Persian Empire. First written texts in Farsi also date to the Old Persian period. Behistun Inscriptions are thought to be created around 522-486 BCE.

Modern Farsi appeared around the 8th century and, surprisingly, hasn’t changed very much since then. It is a rather conservative language that managed to retain many ancient features.

Close Relations

Since Farsi is an Indo-European language, it shares some similarities with other languages in this group. Overall, Farsi has similarities with the majority of European languages. Farsi is also related to other Iranian languages, more notably to Pashto and Kurdish.

The core of Farsi vocabulary is native and is inherited from Proto-Indo-European. However, during its long history, Farsi obtained many loanwords from different languages. Words of Arabic, Turkic, and French origins are common. In recent decades, some words from English entered Farsi, mostly related to technology.

It’s worth mentioning that English quite extensively borrows from Farsi too. Words such as China, bronze, Khaki, and lilac entered the English vocabulary from Farsi.

Accents and Voice Over Tips

There are three major dialect groups of Persian (Farsi): Iranian Persian, Dari, and Tajik. Iranian Persian is spoken in Iran, Dari is the official language variation in Afghanistan, and Tajik is a language variety spoken in Tajikistan.

Iranian Persian, Dari, and Tajik are standard forms of Farsi. While these major dialects differ in vocabulary, pronunciation, and writing, all three are highly mutually intelligible. Of course, each variety has its own regional dialects and vernaculars.

When recording a Farsi voice over, keep in mind that it’s a pitch-accent language. Meaning that a word stress can change the word’s meaning.  Additionally, Farsi has many sounds that might sound foreign to the English speaker as they don’t have any equivalents in English.
For example, ژ  (zh) or غ ق (gh).

However, the most important thing to keep in mind is which standard variety of Farsi should be used in the recording. Your target audience should indicate whether you should use Iranian Persian, Dari, or Tajik. While they are similar, they’re not the same!

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