Farsi · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "خداحافظ" in Farsi?

Q: How do you pronounce خداحافظ in Farsi?

خداحافظ is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written [xo.dɒː.hɒː.ˈfez]. It means “bye.” kho-dah-hah-FEZ, four even beats gliding to a stressed final 'fez' — the kh is a throat-clearing rasp, not an English 'k'.

kho-dah-hah-FEZ, four even beats gliding to a stressed final 'fez' — the kh is a throat-clearing rasp, not an English 'k'.

خداحافظ [xo.dɒː.hɒː.ˈfez]

khodāhāfez

As a compound of khodā ('God') + hāfez ('protector'), the whole word takes stress on its final syllable, fez — don't front-load stress onto khodā.

Listen: خداحافظ

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

Sound it out

خ The Persian 'kh' — a raspy back-of-throat sound like the 'ch' in Scottish 'loch' or German 'Bach', never an English 'k'.

دا 'd' plus the long 'ā' vowel, as in 'father'.

حا ح is pronounced exactly like plain English 'h' in Iranian Persian (despite looking different from ه, the two letters are homophones) followed by the same long 'ā'.

فظ 'f' plus a final 'z' — ظ is pronounced simply as 'z' in Persian, not as an emphatic Arabic consonant — and this whole syllable carries the stress.

Hear it in a sentence

خداحافظ! فردا شما را می‌بینم.

Khodāhāfez! Fardā shomā rā mibinam.

Bye! I'll see you tomorrow.

Listen: خداحافظ! فردا شما را می‌بینم.

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

'فردا شما را می‌بینم' uses the formal pronoun شما plus the object marker را (rā), which flags شما as the specific direct object of می‌بینم ('I will see'). را typically follows a definite, known direct object, which is why it appears here after 'you' but wouldn't appear after a vague or indefinite noun.

Where English speakers slip

Learners often pronounce خ as an English 'k' and ظ as 'th' (carrying over Arabic emphatic sounds); both should be simplified to a throat rasp and a plain 'z' respectively. Also common: evenly stressing all four syllables instead of gliding to the final 'fez'.