President Obama Speaks Persian |
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VIDEO |
Nawruz greeting message by President Barack Obama |
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`ayd-e shomā mobārak |
عیدِ شما مبارک |
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holiday-of you happy = Happy New Year |
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`ayd :: festival; festival of Nawruz, Persian New Year's Day |
عید |
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`ayd-e :: festival of |
عیدِ |
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-e :: of, unstressed, written after a consonant just
like the short vowel 'e' but functioning as marker of the
ezāfe. English speakers have a tendency to pronounce
this suffix heavily stressed and as a separate word as you
see President Obama has done. (Compounding the problem is
the unhelpful transliteration of the ezāfe as -eh, an
unfortunate new trend.) See below for some easy,
medium and hard tests & lists (with audio) of pairs of
words with
stressed and unstressed -e(h) so you can train your ear and
not fall into this trap! |
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shomā :: you (plural, polite) |
شما |
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mobārak :: blessed, auspicious (Barack as in Barack Obama
appears to be related to the same root, Arabic b-r-k having
to do with "blessing" and is usually spelled
باراک on Persian websites and باراك
on Arabic websites, however only as a transliteration
from English as this form is not used in either Arabic or
Persian. In Persian, stress of mobārak is on the last
syllable, -ak. The president has pronounced it in the Arabic
style with stress on the -bā-. |
مبارک |
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Here are some Persian words ending in -e. On one hand, some
end in stressed -e where the -e is part of the word (came
down to New Persian from Middle Persian that way while
others maybe had an Arabic diminutive or feminine Tah
Marbuta added). On the other hand, others end in
unstressed -e where that -e is a suffix (meaning "is" or
"the" in spoken Persian or as the ezāfe usually translated
as "of" for convenience.
Easy
Test ::
Easy List
Medium Test
:: Medium
List
Hard Test
:: Hard
List
(Firefox on Windows and Safari on Mac may have trouble
getting the audio on the above lists.) |
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See the entire
video with Persian subtitles. Also See
text transcription. |
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