Welcome to the Chai Weekly.
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​salām shāgerdāné aziz (hello dear students), ​
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This is Leyla from ​​Learn Persian with Chai and Conversation​​. Each week, I share ideas to ponder, inspire, and motivate you on your own journey to learning about the Persian language and Iranian culture.
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​(If you're new here from the summer bootcamp- welcome!)

Song of the Month is Back!

In the tumultuousness of the past couple weeks, there was exactly one song that I was playing on repeat, over and over again. It started when I saw this absolute gem of a clip from the Iranian movie 'Hit the Road' by director Panah Panahi-

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The clip has been making rounds for years, but in the context of the bombings and the uncertainty and the pain, it certainly hit differently. So after watching the clip on repeat a few times, I graduated to listening to the song 'Deyar' any chance I could.

And it made me realize that we haven't had a 'song of the month' here on our Chai Weekly emails in a while!

As I always say, music is one of the absolute best ways to learn a language because you can listen to the song over and over again, sing along with it, and memorize the lyrics, adding the words and phrases of the lyrics into your conversational vocabulary.

So, with that in mind, 'Deyar' by Shahram Shabpareh is going to be our song of the month! Each week, we'll go over one of the versus of the song, and you can spend the week singing along with that section until we move onto the next!

First, let's take a moment to watch this GEM of a music video for Deyar by Shahram Shabpareh in all its 80s glory:

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So first, this song was written by Shahram Shabpareh in 1979, the year of the Islamic Revolution. Shabpareh had been in a very popular boy band started by his brother in Iran from the 50s through the 70s and had moved to the United States in the early 70s. Because the revolution occurred, he never got a chance to go back to his homeland. The word 'deyār' means homeland.

For this first week, let's start by learning the chorus of the song:

وای که چه حالی‌ دارم، هوای دیارو دارم
​vāy ké ché hālee dāram, havāyé deeyārō dāram​
​Oh what a feeling I have, how I long for the homeland

تو این دیار غربت، فقط خدا رو دارم
​too een deeyāré ghorbat, faghat khodā rō dāram​
​In this homeland that's foreign, the only thing I have is God

ای وای که چه حالی‌ دارم، هوای دیارو دارم
​ay vāy ké ché hālee dāram, havāyé deeyārō dāram​
​Oh what a feeling I have, how I long for the homeland

تو این دیار غربت، فقط خدا رو دارم
​too een deeyāré ghorbat, faghat khodā rō dāram​
​In this homeland that's foreign, the only thing I have is God

Thankfully, the chorus is really simple, with only two repeating lines, so it should be really easy to pin down this week. He starts by saying 'vāy', which is a very useful Persian word that means something along the lines of 'Oh!' and then when he repeats it, he says 'ay vāy' which just emphasizes the 'Oh!', kind of like 'Oh my!'. And then there's the word 'ghorbat,' which we don't really have a translation for in English. But ghorbat is used often in Persian to mean 'abroad'- as in, anything that's not Iran.

Next week, we'll include another portion of this song for our Chai Weekly email- for now, you can listen to it and all our other songs of the month in our Chai and Conversation spotify list.

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Summertime!

Summer has officially started as of last week, as did our Learn Persian Summer Bootcamp- we ended up having the second to largest bootcamp sign-ups ever despite lackluster at best marketing- the group has gotten off to an incredibly enthusiastic start as well. It seems like collectively, we all feel a pull to learn the Persian language and deepen our understanding of it.

If you missed signing up, don't worry- the fall bootcamp will be here before you know it.

And you also have access to the brand new poem we learn on the lesson as well on Spotify- check it out and let me know what you think!

What a week

And finally... if you are feeling totally exhausted/drained/confused/devastated by the events of the last week- you're not alone. I think all of our feelings can be encapsulated by this brilliant video by Maz Jobrani and his Persian word of the day 'gogeejé gereftam.'

There's not a way to succinctly define this phrase- so just watch the video!

And that's it for this week! Enjoy the beginning of tābestoon (summer), and until next time,

khodāhāfez,

from Leyla