Ch. 2 - L 1 Letters be, pe, te, se, nun, ye

• The Farsi alphabet has 32 letters,
• It is written from the right to the left,
• When a single letter is being referred to, the ‘own’ form is often written,
• There are no capital letters in the same way there is in English,
• Each letter has these four forms determined by its position within a word as follows:
• On its own (Own),
• The first letter in a word (First),
• In the middle of a word (Middle),
• The last letter in a word (Last)
• Take note of the groups of similar letters. While you need to know 32 characters, if you break it into groups, you really only need to know a few basic character ‘patterns’ and then learn to distinguish letters by their differences.

Sometimes you will see the middle form of ‘ye’ written using the ‘own’ form.There is no difference in meaning.

Examples
Following Persian words show letters be, pe, te, se, nun, ye in their different appearences as First, Middle or Last letters in different words.

English	Persian	Pronounciation
Jehovah
Jesus
Levite	لاوی
Deutronomy
Jonah		ََ
Hebrews
Lamentations		ََ
Inheritance	ارث
Seth
Job	ایوب
Obadiah
Timothy
Ruth	روت
Peter

1.1 Exercise
Letters in the middle of a word are not much different from each other
Learn to recognise the number of dots & where these dots are placed.
Write down the MIDDLE form of each letter (use a flashcard).

1.2 Exercise
In the ‘Bible Teach Book’ (‘آشنایی‌ با تعالیم کتاب مقدّس’) , in the pages and paragraphs provided,  mark each of the following letters & then pronounce them aloud:

To make sure that you have recognised all the letters, count each of the above letters and compare the number you found with your partner's number.

1.3 Exercise
With your partner use flashcards to practise the 6 letters above until you
can recognise each letter.

1.4 Exercise
Lay down your flashcards in a pattern. Eg: letters with dots under
ب = b
ي = i
پ = p
or - nun: ن / te: ت / se: ث

1.5 Exercise
Repeat writing each letter until you feel you have mastered writing it. Like this:

                                 Writing Directions