Farsi · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "هیچ‌چیز" in Farsi?

Q: How do you pronounce هیچچیز in Farsi?

هیچچیز is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /hitʃ tʃiːz/. It means “nothing.” Two short, punchy words: "heech" (rhymes with "speech") plus "cheez" (like the snack-food brand name, but with a longer, clearer vowel).

Two short, punchy words: "heech" (rhymes with "speech") plus "cheez" (like the snack-food brand name, but with a longer, clearer vowel).

هیچ‌چیز /hitʃ tʃiːz/

hich chiz

Both halves are one syllable each and both carry roughly equal stress, since this is a compound of two content words rather than a single smoothly-stressed word.

Listen: هیچ‌چیز

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

Sound it out

هیچ "Heech" — starts with a plain "h," a long "ee" as in "see," and ends in the "ch" of "church." This is the same هیچ meaning "any/none" used on its own.

چیز "Cheez" — starts with the same "ch" sound, a long "ee," and ends in a "z" as in "zoo." This is the word چیز, "thing," on its own.

Hear it in a sentence

هیچ‌چیز نمی‌خواهم.

Hich chiz nemikhāham.

I want nothing.

Listen: هیچ‌چیز نمی‌خواهم.

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

In هیچ‌چیز نمی‌خواهم, هیچ‌چیز literally combines "any" and "thing" into "nothing," but crucially the verb نمی‌خواهم is also negative ("I don't want") — Persian requires this double marking, called negative concord, where the negative shows up on both the pronoun-like word and the verb, unlike English "I want nothing" (single negative) or "I don't want anything" (negative only on the verb).

Where English speakers slip

The single biggest trap is translating word-for-word and dropping the negative from the verb, producing an ungrammatical sentence like *هیچ‌چیز می‌خواهم — in Persian the verb must also be negative whenever هیچ‌چیز is used, so it always pairs with a نمی‌ or نـ verb form.