Hello In Farsi: 11 Warm Greetings To Learn

The way to say hello in Farsi is salām (سلام). It works at a family dinner, in a shop in Tehran and in a voice note to your aunt.

If you grew up hearing Farsi at home, the word itself is rarely the problem; the short exchange that follows it is. The Ling app teaches those greetings as whole phrases, and this guide covers the eleven you will actually use.

What Is The Most Common Hello In Farsi?

The most common hello in Farsi is salām (سلام), and it covers nearly every situation.

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• Use it with family, strangers, shopkeepers and colleagues.
• Say it when you walk into a room, and again when you are introduced to someone new.
• Keep the same word in a text message, a voice note or a phone call.

Farsi does not put formality in the greeting itself. It sits in the question that comes next, which is why one hello serves your grandmother and a taxi driver.

Farsi Greetings For Morning, Night And Leaving

Farsi marks the time of day with two set phrases, and adds a third for leaving.

• Good morning is sob bekheīr (صبح بخیر).
• Good night is shab bekheīr (شب بخیر).
• Goodbye is khodā hāfez (خداحافظ), which people use on the phone as readily as at the door.

Treat each one as a single unit, because the stress falls where an English speaker would not expect it. The Ling app plays native speaker audio at normal and slow speed, so you can hear where it lands.

How Do You Ask How Are You In Farsi?

The everyday way to ask is hāle shomā chetore? (حال شما چطوره؟), and the fuller formal version is hāle shomā chetor ast? (حال شما چطور است؟).

Which Form Goes With Whom?

• Use hāle shomā chetor ast? in writing and with anyone much older or more senior than you.
• Use hāle shomā chetore? for almost everyone else, from neighbors to colleagues.
• Save to chetorī? (تو چطوری؟) for close friends, siblings and cousins your own age.

How To Answer And Ask Back

Persian greetings come in rounds, so one answer is rarely the end of it.

• Answer manam khūbam (منم خوبم), I am fine too, in everyday speech.
• Answer man ham khūb hastam (من هم خوب هستم) when the setting is formal.
• Then ask back with shomā chetorīn? (شما چطورین؟), or shomā chetor hastīd? (شما چطور هستید؟) if you are being formal.

Dialog in the Ling app runs the exchange in both directions, so you practice answering and asking back instead of only the opening line.

How Do You Say Hello In Farsi?

You say hello in Farsi with salām (سلام), pronounced sa-LAAM with the weight on the long second vowel. The four letters are written right to left, and they do not change whether you greet one person or a whole room.

That single word carries a long way: Persian is the official language of Iran and one of the two official languages of both Afghanistan and Tajikistan, with an estimated 110 million speakers worldwide, according to the University of Chicago’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

In Afghanistan you will hear it alongside Pashto, and we set out how Farsi and Pashto differ in detail.

11 Farsi Greetings And Replies At A Glance

Here is the whole set in one place, with the script and the romanization used throughout.

What Else Do You Say After A Farsi Greeting?

A greeting rarely travels alone, so these five come with it.

Two of them are ways to say thank you, one is how you say excuse me, and the last two are the Farsi equivalents of Mrs. or Miss and Mr.

Common Mistakes To Avoid With Farsi Greetings

• Using to chetorī? (تو چطوری؟) with an elder or someone you have just met. It is the familiar form, so keep it for people you know well.
• Reading shab bekheīr (شب بخیر) as good evening. It means good night.
• Answering manam khūbam (منم خوبم) and stopping there, while the other person waits for you to ask back.
• Collecting spellings from four different romanization systems, so khodā hāfez (خداحافظ) turns up in your notes as khoda hafez, khodahafez and xodâ hâfez. Pick one system and stay with it.

Slips like these are worth revisiting rather than rereading, and the Ling app keeps track of the words you miss so you can practice them again.

Our guide to how to make new vocabulary stick covers the review habits behind that.

Tips For Greeting In Farsi With Confidence

Greetings are the first thing you will use, so drill them deliberately.

• Say salām (سلام) aloud ten times, so the long vowel does not come out clipped.
• Learn every greeting together with its reply, never one without the other.
• Pick one how-are-you form for this week and add the second one next week.
• Copy the four letters of salām (سلام) by hand until you recognize them on a shop sign.

Most mainstream apps skip Farsi altogether, which is why we wrote up why there is no Farsi on Duolingo and what to use instead.

Greetings are only the start. The Foreign Service Institute’s language training page puts Farsi in its Category III group, at roughly 44 weeks of full-time study for working proficiency.

Frequently Asked Questions About Hello In Farsi

Your First Farsi Conversation Starts Here

The two things worth getting right are the register, formal or familiar, and the habit of asking back.

Salām (سلام) opens an exchange, hāle shomā chetore? (حال شما چطوره؟) carries it, manam khūbam (منم خوبم) answers it and khodā hāfez (خداحافظ) closes it.

If you want a longer shortlist of tools, our roundup of Persian learning apps compares seven of them.

Greet Your Farsi Family With Confidence

If the goal is a phone call with relatives rather than a certificate, the Ling app’s Persian course is built for exactly that.

• Flashcards and mini-games that drill greetings until they come out without thinking.
• Dialog, an interactive conversation practice where you take one side of the exchange.
• Native speaker audio at normal and slow speed, with word-by-word playback.
• A romanization toggle that shows the Latin spelling beside the Perso-Arabic script.

Lessons run about ten to fifteen minutes on iOS and Android, they work offline for Premium users, and learning Persian starts with the word you have just read.