Farsi · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "صبح بخیر" in Farsi?

Q: How do you pronounce صبح بخیر in Farsi?

صبح بخیر is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written [sobh be.ˈxejr]. It means “good morning.” sobh beh-KHEYR — sobh rhymes roughly with 'robe' plus a light final 'h' breath, and bekheir ends in a diphthong like 'ay' in 'day'.

sobh beh-KHEYR — sobh rhymes roughly with 'robe' plus a light final 'h' breath, and bekheir ends in a diphthong like 'ay' in 'day'.

صبح بخیر [sobh be.ˈxejr]

sobh bekheir

صبح is a single unstressed beat on its own; بخیر carries the phrase's main stress on its final syllable, kheir, since be- here is just the unstressed preposition 'to/with', not a verb prefix.

Listen: صبح بخیر

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Sound it out

صبح 's' (ص is a plain 's' in Persian, with no emphatic Arabic quality) plus 'obh' — in fast casual speech Iranians often drop the final ح and just say 'sob', though the fuller form is 'sobh'.

ب An unstressed 'be-', simply meaning 'to/with'.

خیر Raspy 'kh' (like Scottish 'loch') plus the diphthong 'ey' (like 'ay' in 'day') and a light tapped 'r' — this is the stressed syllable of the phrase.

Hear it in a sentence

صبح بخیر. خوب خوابیدید؟

Sobh bekheir. Khub khābidid?

Good morning. Did you sleep well?

Listen: صبح بخیر. خوب خوابیدید؟

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'صبح بخیر. خوب خوابیدید؟' follows the greeting with a polite formal-register question, خوابیدید being the 2nd-person plural/formal past tense of خوابیدن ('to sleep') — the -id ending again signals politeness, matching the register used throughout this chapter's greetings.

Where English speakers slip

The biggest slip is treating خیر as two syllables ('khe-ir') instead of one gliding diphthong ('kheyr'), and forgetting the breathy final ح in صبح, which many learners drop entirely even in careful speech (though Iranians do this too colloquially).