News and Media Language

Reading News in Persian: An Overview

Persian news and media use a relatively standard, formal variety of the language, often called zabân-e rasmi or zabân-e khabari. At B2 level, your goal is not only to understand the content, but also to recognize the typical structures, vocabulary, and tone that appear in newspapers, news websites, and broadcasts.

This chapter will introduce the main features of news and media language in Persian, show you how headlines are built, and point out recurrent words and patterns. You will not yet focus on building your own long written texts in this style, which belongs to later chapters on formal writing.

Characteristics of Persian News Style

News Persian tends to be more formal than everyday speech. It avoids colloquial endings and slang, and it uses certain “media verbs” and nouns very frequently. Compared with spoken language, you will see:

Use of more literary or Arabic-origin vocabulary, especially abstract nouns like entešâr (publication), tahdîd (threat), taqviyat (strengthening).

Frequent use of third person singular and plural, even when the subject is a group or an institution, for example dovlat elâm kard “the government announced.”

Preference for longer noun phrases instead of several short clauses, for example tashdîd-e tavajoh be masâ’el-e mohîtezistî “the intensification of attention to environmental issues.”

Some verbs appear again and again in reports, such as elâm kardan (to announce), esrâr dâštan (to insist), rad kardan (to reject), ta’kîd kardan (to emphasize), ešâre kardan (to refer, to point to).

Typical News Genres and Their Language

Within Persian media, you will quickly notice that different sections have slightly different lexical habits. The core grammar is the same, but topic specific terms repeat.

Political news (khabarhâ-ye sîâsî) frequently includes words like dovlat (government), majles (parliament), ray’gîrî (vote), qânûn (law), tahdîd (threat), mozakere (negotiation).

Economic news (khabarhâ-ye eqtesâdî) uses items such as tavarrom (inflation), arz (foreign currency), sahm (share, stock), bâzâr (market), bohrân (crisis), râšd (growth).

Social and cultural news (khabarhâ-ye ejtemâ‘î o farhangî) often refer to jâme‘e (society), hozur (presence), barname (program), hozur (attendance), farhang (culture), honar (art).

Sports news (khabarhâ-ye varzešî) repeatedly mention mosâbeqe (match), tim (team), muraabbi (coach), pirûzî (victory), šekast (defeat), gol (goal).

By regularly reading one specific news genre, you can more quickly pick up the specialized vocabulary of that domain while still reinforcing general media structures.

Headlines: Form and Grammar

Persian headlines have their own style. They are shortened, compact, and often omit elements that would normally appear in a full sentence.

Verb tense is often present simple or present perfect, even when the event is in the past. For example:
Amrika tahrîm-hâ râ gostiš dâd “America expands sanctions” (verb in simple past, but read as present news).

Subjects can be omitted when obvious. A headline like tashdîd-e tahrîm-hâ bar ‘aleyh-e Irân may omit the verb, literally “tightening of sanctions against Iran,” understood as “Sanctions against Iran tightened.”

Many headlines are just a noun phrase, such as bohrân-e eqtesâdî dar Orupâ “economic crisis in Europe,” or entešâr-e gozâreš-e jadid-e Sâzmân-e Mellal “publication of the new report of the United Nations.”

Auxiliary verbs may be dropped. Instead of elâm karde ast or elâm kardeh ast you may see elâm kard or even only elâm if the agent is clear.

When you read headlines, mentally “expand” them into a full sentence with subject, object, and verb. This helps you connect headline style to standard grammar.

Common Media Verbs

A core group of verbs appears across all types of news. These verbs usually form compound verbs with abstract nouns. Recognizing them makes it easier to follow the logic of a report, even when some nouns are new.

Some of the most frequent media verbs include:

Elâm kardan means “to announce” and is used in political, economic, and social news: vazîr elâm kard ke... “the minister announced that...”.

Ta’kîd kardan means “to emphasize, to stress”: râ’is-jomhur ta’kîd kard ke lâzem ast... “the president emphasized that it is necessary to...”.

Ešâre kardan be means “to refer to, to point to”: u be afzâyeš-e ghimat-hâ ešâre kard “he/she referred to the increase of prices.”

Tasrîh kardan means “to state clearly, to declare explicitly”: sokhangû tasrîh kard ke... “the spokesperson stated that...”.

Rad kardan means “to reject”, often used with ettihâm “accusation”, pishnehâd “proposal”: dovlat ettehâm-hâ râ rad kard “the government rejected the accusations.”

Qabl kardan means “to accept, approve”: šurâ tarh râ qabl kard “the council approved the plan.”

E‘lâm kardan and elâm kardan are spelling variants, with elâm more common in simplified typing. You should be able to recognize both.

Once you recognize the light verb, focus on the noun part to guess the meaning. For instance, tahdîd kardan contains tahdîd “threat”. Even if you forgot the exact dictionary meaning, the negative tone is clear.

Report Structure: Leads, Details, Background

Although you will study text structuring more deeply in later chapters, it helps to know how basic news reports are organized, since language choices follow this structure.

The first sentence or two, called the lead (sadr-e khabar), summarize the core event: who did what, where, and often when. The tone is neutral and dense with information.

After the lead, details appear: numbers, quotes, reactions. This part often uses reported speech with verbs like goftan “to say”, elâm kardan, ta’kîd kardan, and time adverbs such as emrûz “today”, dîruz “yesterday”, hamčinîn “also”.

Background information follows, sometimes introduced with connectors like dar ‘eyn-e hâl “meanwhile”, az sût-e digar “on the other hand”, dar pâyeân “in conclusion”, or qabl’an “previously”.

In longer analyses and commentaries, you will encounter more evaluation vocabulary, such as montaqedân “critics”, hemâyat “support”, enteqâd “criticism”, but neutral news pieces try to keep that limited or attribute it to specific sources.

Quoting and Reported Speech in News

News is full of what someone said or claimed. This appears both as direct quotes and indirect, reported speech. The basic grammar of reported speech is treated elsewhere in the course. Here we focus on the media conventions.

Sources are often introduced before the verb: be gozaresh-e ... “according to the report of ...”, be naql az ... “quoting ...”, bar asâs-e in gozâreš “according to this report.”

Examples of common patterns include:

Be gozaresh-e X, vazîr goft ke ... “According to X, the minister said that...”

O dar edâme afzûd ke ... “He/she further added that...”

Tasrîh kard ke qasd dârad ... “He/she stated that he/she intends to...”

This structure allows the news text to remain formally neutral, while clearly attributing opinions or claims to a person or institution.

The word ke introduces the content of the statement, much like “that” in English. In faster news writing, the subject of the verb inside the quote can be omitted if it is the same as the previously mentioned source.

Evaluative and Neutral Vocabulary

One clear feature of news and media language is the careful separation between neutral description and evaluation. At B2 level you should begin to notice whether an item is written in a neutral information style or has an evaluative tone.

Neutral descriptive nouns include words like gozâreš “report”, hadese “incident”, rokdâd “event”, etefâq “event”, magâm-e rasmi “official”, mas’ûlân “officials”, nâhie “area, district”.

Evaluative terms often involve adjectives or abstract nouns such as možrem “criminal”, jenâyi “criminal (adj.)”, bohrânî “critical, in crisis”, moškel-sâz “problematic”, bahs-e angîz “controversial”.

Recognizing whether a word simply describes or already judges the situation helps you interpret the slant of the text. Some outlets aim for purely descriptive language, while others use more value-laden terms.

Media also frequently use softened or indirect expressions, such as goft-e mi-šavad “it is said”, be nazar mi-resad “it seems”, be etteqâd-e bâzi karšenâsân “according to the belief of some experts.” These forms create distance between the writer and the claim.

Broadcast vs Written News Language

While written news and online articles are mostly in a formal register, radio and television news include both scripted and spoken segments. This affects vocabulary and structure.

Anchors often read from a script with typical formulas like hâlâ miravim be sarnâmi-ye khabarhâ “now we go to the headlines”, dar edâme barname “later in the program”, or bâ mâ hamrâh bâšid “stay with us.”

In interviews and live segments, you will hear more colloquial grammar and speech patterns, such as dropping the plural verb ending in informal speech, or using colloquial pronouns like mâ and šomâ in a more direct way with the audience.

However, key topic words usually remain the same: entešâr-e gozâreš, jam‘iyat, tavarrom, tahdîd, and so on. The mixture of formal terms with conversational delivery is a typical feature of broadcast news in Persian.

If you practice with both written articles and TV or radio bulletins, you will strengthen your ability to recognize formal structures even when pronounced in a more natural, sometimes faster, spoken style.

Strategies for Approaching Persian News Texts

At B2 level, you are not expected to understand every single word in a news article. Instead, focus on building a workable pattern recognition.

First, identify the core information: look for the main verb in the lead sentence, usually a media verb like elâm kard, goft, ta’kîd kard. Then locate the subject: an institution, person, or country, usually before the verb.

Second, pay attention to time and place phrases, often near the beginning or end: emrûz, dîruz, dar Tehrân, dar jaryân-e yek marâsem, dar yek goftogu bâ .... These tell you when and where the event occurred.

Third, notice repetition. Names and key nouns often reappear in different forms, sometimes with pronouns or with synonyms. For example, dovlat, then in nezâm, then mas’ûlân-e keshvar. This pattern signals that all references point to the same entity.

Finally, do not stop at the headline. Because headlines use compressed grammar, they are often harder than the article itself. Once you read the first few lines, go back to the headline and see how it was constructed. This repeated comparison trains your “headline intuition” in Persian.

Vocabulary Table for This Section