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Are you familiar with the Persian alphabet?  No?  Then you will be happy to know that ajabanzabAn.com has a handy alphabet guide packed with tips to give you a quick overview of the many features and quirks of the Persian alphabet.  Aside from that, this website has a few more indepth articles on the alphabet that you can read through.  Let’s start with the alphabet as it is usually shown.  A list of the letters in detatched form:

Here is an excellent meditation to help you get in touch with Persian vowel sounds and their appearance in writing.  Just say this mantra over and over in Persian:  Wind was. The willow was.  The Buddha on the Benz was.  (Yeah, Persian word order is a bit different).  How to say it in Persian?  Let’s explore:

Good news and bad news about Persian vowels, zir-o-zebar, and a Buddha with a benz.  All in one convenient post!

The Persepolis picture I use on the Standard Persian-English magnet kit has inspired me.

It’s a picture of my nephew taken just a couple years ago at Persepolis.  At first I thought it’s nice because it shows the glorious past, the two guards at Persepolis, and then Sepehr - a boy mimicking the guards, taking on their pose in front of them.  This shows a historical continuity, shows that we are carrying on tradition.

But that’s not it.  That’s not what specifically resonates with me about the picture.  Carrying on tradition is fun up to a point, but what really makes my heart beat, what’s more thrilling to me is….

Wake up Iran, there are new kids in town.

Persian is read from right to left, English from left to right. If an English speaker flips over a sentence made from Persian magnets and reads it from left to right they will be reading the sentence backwards. Not to panic! They will still get the idea of what the sentence is about.

In fact, reading the sentence correctly from right to left may be more confusing to them than reading it backwards. This is because Persian word order is different from English in two key ways.