Farsi · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "ضعیف" in Farsi?

Q: How do you pronounce ضعیف in Farsi?

ضعیف is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /zæʔiːf/. It means “weak.” Say "zah-EEF" with a tiny catch in your throat where the apostrophe is — that's a real consonant (a glottal stop), not decoration.

Say "zah-EEF" with a tiny catch in your throat where the apostrophe is — that's a real consonant (a glottal stop), not decoration.

ضعیف /zæʔiːf/

za'if

Stress falls on the last syllable, -IF; the glottal stop before it is short but audible, closer to the pause in "uh-oh" than to any English letter.

Listen: ضعیف

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Sound it out

ض Pronounced simply as "z", exactly like the z in "zoo" — its fancier Arabic-derived spelling doesn't change the Persian sound.

عی This pairs a glottal stop (ع, the same catch-in-the-throat sound as the hyphen in "uh-oh") with a short "i" as in "machine", giving the transliterated apostrophe in za'if.

ف A plain "f" as in "leaf", closing out the word.

Hear it in a sentence

بعد از بیماری ضعیف بودم.

Ba'd az bimāri za'if budam.

I was weak after the illness.

Listen: بعد از بیماری ضعیف بودم.

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In "Ba'd az bimāri za'if budam" (I was weak after the illness), za'if sits right before budam ("I was"), which is how Persian builds a simple past-tense "to be" sentence — adjective first, verb last.

Where English speakers slip

English speakers routinely drop the glottal stop entirely and just say "zayeef" or "za-eef"; native listeners will still understand you, but holding that brief throat-catch is what makes the word sound authentically Persian rather than approximated.