Farsi · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "لحظه" in Farsi?

Q: How do you pronounce لحظه in Farsi?

لحظه is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ˈlæhze/. It means “moment.” Say "LAH-zeh," with the stress up front and a quick, light "zeh" to finish, similar to the rhythm of the English word "lager."

Say "LAH-zeh," with the stress up front and a quick, light "zeh" to finish, similar to the rhythm of the English word "lager."

لحظه /ˈlæhze/

lahze

Stress falls on the first syllable, لح- ("lah-"), with the trailing -ظه ("-ze") staying short and unstressed.

Listen: لحظه

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

Sound it out

لح "Lah," a clear "l" as in "lamp" plus a short "a" as in "cat" plus a plain "h" — even though ح looks different from ه, it's pronounced as the same simple "h" sound. This carries the stress.

ظه "Ze," a plain "z" as in "zoo" plus a short, unstressed "e" — ظ is another Arabic-derived letter that in modern Persian is pronounced identically to a regular ز.

Hear it in a sentence

یک لحظه صبر کنید.

Yek lahze sabr konid.

Wait a moment.

Listen: یک لحظه صبر کنید.

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

In یک لحظه صبر کنید, یک لحظه means "a moment," with یک ("one/a") functioning as the indefinite article before لحظه, and صبر کنید ("wait," the same formal imperative from the دقیقه example) repeating the same compound verb صبر کردن. This is a common, polite way to ask someone to wait briefly, roughly equivalent to English "Just a moment, please."

Where English speakers slip

Because both ح and ظ look unusual to English-trained eyes, learners sometimes overthink their pronunciation and try to give them special sounds — but in modern Iranian Persian both simply collapse into ordinary "h" and "z" sounds respectively, so the word is actually simpler to say than it looks on the page.