Farsi · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "کاغذ" in Farsi?

Q: How do you pronounce کاغذ in Farsi?

کاغذ is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written [kɒː.ˈɣæz]. It means “paper.” Say "kah-GHAZ", with a soft, gargled 'gh' sound (like a French 'r') in the middle and stress on the last syllable.

Say "kah-GHAZ", with a soft, gargled 'gh' sound (like a French 'r') in the middle and stress on the last syllable.

کاغذ [kɒː.ˈɣæz]

kāghaz

Stress falls on the final syllable -ghaz; the ا at the start stays a clean, sustained 'ā', not a diphthong.

Listen: کاغذ

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Sound it out

کا ک is a hard 'k'; ا is long 'ā' like 'father'.

غ غ is a soft, voiced gargled sound made in the back of the throat — similar to a French/German uvular 'r', with a short 'a' vowel like 'cup' after it.

ذ ذ is pronounced simply as 'z' in modern Iranian Persian, as in 'zoo', despite looking like it should be a 'th' sound historically.

Hear it in a sentence

یک برگ کاغذ به من بدهید.

Yek barg kāghaz be man bedahid.

Give me a sheet of paper.

Listen: یک برگ کاغذ به من بدهید.

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"Yek barg kāghaz be man bedahid" uses یک برگ ('one sheet/leaf') as a counter word before کاغذ, since Persian often pairs a number with a classifier noun for flat or countable items, and بدهید is again the formal imperative of دادن.

Where English speakers slip

Learners frequently mispronounce ذ as 'th' (as its Arabic-derived spelling might suggest) instead of the simple 'z' sound used in Iranian Persian, and often flatten غ into a hard 'g' rather than the softer, more gargled sound made further back in the throat.