Learn Persian to conversational in nine months
Persian grammar is kind to English speakers — no grammatical gender, regular verbs, familiar Indo-European roots. Two things make it slower than it looks: a new script written right to left with most vowels omitted, and a deep split between written Persian and the colloquial Tehrani Persian people actually speak. Nine months at about an hour a day handles both.
9 months · ~270 hours · read simple texts and hold a 20-minute conversation in colloquial Persian
1.Chai and Conversation
A long-running podcast course by Leyla Shams teaching the spoken Persian of Iran, not the formal written register most textbooks start with. Lessons are short, warm and built around real phrases — greetings, taarof, ordering food, small talk. Listen to each lesson twice and repeat everything aloud. It gets you speaking the version of Persian Iranians will actually recognize as natural.
Free podcast lessons; paid premium membership adds transcripts and extras
Chai and Conversation →2.Persian of Iran Today
Anousha Shahsavari and Blake Atwood's two-volume textbook from the University of Texas at Austin, available free online with thousands of audio and video files. It teaches the alphabet properly, then builds grammar inductively and keeps written and spoken forms side by side — the single biggest problem in learning Persian. Work through Volume 1 completely, including the Café Denj video series filmed with young Iranians in Tehran. Start Volume 2 only when Volume 1 feels easy.
Free online; print volumes ~$40–60 each if you want paper
Persian of Iran Today →3.Online conversation tutor
From month four, book 30–45 minute conversation lessons with a native Iranian tutor. Ask them to speak colloquial Tehrani Persian with you and to correct your written homework in the formal register — you need both. Many Iranian tutors are excellent and inexpensive. Preply has a deep pool of Persian tutors; italki works too.
~$10–25/hour, pay per lesson
Preply Farsi tutors →If this doesn't fit you
If you need Dari for Afghanistan or Tajik for Tajikistan, this path gets you the shared grammar and much of the vocabulary, but swap Chai and Conversation for a tutor from the country you care about early on. Pronunciation and everyday vocabulary diverge, and Tajik is written in Cyrillic.
Why this path
Most Persian courses teach the formal written language first, and learners discover months in that nobody talks like that. Starting with spoken Persian fixes the target; Persian of Iran Today is the rare textbook — and free — that handles the script and both registers honestly; tutors force you to produce it. Learn the alphabet in your first two weeks, not later. Delaying it is the most common mistake.