Welcome to the Indo-Iranian Languages Forum (IIR)!

The scope of this forum are all the contemporary members of the IIR family: Hindi, Urdu, Persian, Afghan Persian/Dari, Gujarati, Punjabi, Romani, Pali, Nepali, and many many more.

Please indicate clearly which language(s) you want to discuss.
Some examples of existing threads:

• Urdu: jaaiz
• Hindi: jana
• Hindi/Urdu: confusing, confused, confusion
• Persian: How was your trip?

Forum Rules
The IIR Forum
General WordReference Rules

Online resources
Multi-lingual
Avestan
Bengali (Bangla)
Gujarati
Hindi
Kurdish
Old Persian (+)
Ossetian
Pahlavi
Pashto/Pukhto
Persian
Punjabi
Sanskrit
Sogdian (+)
Urdu

(Languages marked with a + are extinct / dead languages.
They are only added to this list for the sake of completeness)

Further suggestions
Suggestions for online resources are very welcome!
Please use the report feature at the bottom of this post to send us links to websites you think should be included here. Upon approval, we will add the suggested links to resources pages.

Thanks to ...
... all the people who contributed to these resources pages!!

 

In order to achieve the WR missions, discussions in the fora are moderated in keeping with the forum rules. Here is a quick explanation of the most important ones.

1. Be helpful, not hurtful
If someone's language background isn't perfect, don't treat him/her badly.

2. Quoted material

• Song lyrics may be quoted and translated up to a maximum of 4 lines. Threads and posts with song lyric quotations and translations beyond 4 lines will be removed.
• No web pages or copyrighted content may be inserted into WordReference posts except as indicated below. Minor fair use excerpts from dictionaries such as a definition/translation or two are permitted. Quotes and translations of texts up to 4 sentences are permitted. Links to content elsewhere are acceptable and appropriate, provided such links meet the requirements stated elsewhere in these rules. Always acknowledge the source. All forms of inserted content that do not meet these conditions will be removed without exception.
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  All these posts need to say which moderator approved it.
  All audio and video files and links that do not have prior approval will be deleted. Permission will not be granted after the fact for deleted files or links. Please ask first.

3. Homework
If you want help with a school assignment, you are required to do your own work first. Then, and only then, may you post it with a request for help with specific doubts.

4. Look for the answer first
Check the online resources first. (see our resources collection for some links to online dictionaries).

5. Thread title

• Put the word or phrase in the title when asking a question (avoid "translation please", "how do I say this?", "does this word exist?", "I'm new", "Help!" and the like).
• If your question is about a dialect or other non-standard linguistic varieties, please indicate that in the title of your thread.

6. Context
Always provide an example sentence and give background and context.

7. Be polite
The use of "Hello", “Hi” and "Thank you" is welcome.

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9. Commercial sites
Do not post links to commercial sites. This is an advertising free forum and we want to keep it this way.

10. Suggestions for online resources
If you have further questions please post them in the Comments and Suggestions Forum or send a private message (PM) to your favorite moderator.

11. Report-a-post
Use the report-a-post feature in the top right corner of each post, if you read a post that contains questionable language/pictures or if you feel it does not belong to this specific forum. This will help to run the forum smoothly.

12. Changes
Please check the forum rules periodically since they will be updated whenever necessary. For a detailed list, please check the comprehensive WR Rules

13. WR is a language forum
Keep in mind that WR is a language forum. Please refrain from posting political, ideological and other non-linguistic contents.

 

Multi-Lingual


Dictionaries
- http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/index.html -- A collection of South Asian dictionaries (some of which a bit dated) including Assamese, Baluchi, Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Khowar, Lushai, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Pali, Pashto, Persian, Rajasthani, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Torwali and Urdu.

 

Avestan

Online courses:
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~iranian/Avesta/index.html - Young Avestan
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~iranian/...tan/index.html - Old Avestan
http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/l...aveol-0-X.html - lessons for Old and Young Avestan

 

Bengali (Bangla)

Writing:
http://www.iit.edu/~laksvij/language/bengali.html - transliterates from Bengali to English

Online courses:
http://dsal.uchicago.edu/digbooks/di...PK1663.D6_1976 - basic course of spoken Bengali

 

Gujarati

Writing:
http://www.iit.edu/~laksvij/language/gujarati.html - transliterates from Gujarati to English

Online Courses:
http://www.soas.ac.uk/safiles/tygujarati.pdf - the entire Teach Yourself Gujarati available online

Reading:
http://www.ukindia.com/zguj1.htm - learn to read Gujarati

 

Hindi
Vocabulary:
http://bollywhat.com/film_index.html - movie vocabulary
Yahoo's Aabaco Small Business: Websites, Ecommerce, Email & Local Listings - Indian names and their meanings

Dictionaries:
Shabdkosh | शब्दकोश : English Hindi Dictionary and Translation - English-Hindi
Shabdkosh | शब्दकोश : English Hindi Dictionary and Translation - English-Hindi (downloadable)
The Oxford Hindi-English dictionary - Oxford Hindi-English dictionary

Phrase Books:
http://www.languageshome.com/English-Hindi.htm - a collection of phrases

Writing:
http://www.iit.edu/~laksvij/language/hindi.html - transliterates to Hindi characters
http://www.devanaagarii.net/hi/girgit/ - converts script from Devanagri to Indic
giitaayan - Hindi Songs Lyrics - a resource for viewing Hindi songs in Devanagri
Urdu page - explanation of Devanagri letters and Nastaliq (ie Arabic) letters
Hindi Script Tutor - An interactive tutor of the Devanagari script and pronunciations.
http://uh.learnpunjabi.org/default.aspx Romanization tool, and transliteration between Urdu and Hindi.

Online Lessons:
http://www.learning-hindi.com free lessons of Hindi, with audio. New!
http://home.unilang.org/courses/hindi/ - a basic course in Hindi
http://faculty.maxwell.syr.edu/jishnu/101/default.asp - course provided by Syracuse University
http://www.hindilearner.com/index.html - provides Hindi tutorials
http://www.uni.edu/becker/hindi.html - another Hindi beginners site
http://taj.chass.ncsu.edu/ - Online lessons with accompanying videos.

Grammar:
http://home.unilang.org/courses/hindi/ - overview of Hindi grammar

Reading:
http://www.ukindia.com/zhin001.htm - learn how to read Hindi

Miscellaneous:
http://lang.ojnk.net/hindi/ - resources for intermediate Hindi, how to display Hindi in unicode
http://www.ispeakhindi.com/ - A blog featuring daily podcasts which teach basic Hindi vocabulary and pronunciation.

 

Kurdish

Grammar:
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~iranian/Sorani/index.html - Sorani Kurdish: A Reference Grammar with Selected Readings by W. M. Thackston
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~iranian/Kurmanji/index.html - Kurmanji Kurdish: A Reference Grammar with Selected Readings by W. M. Thackston

 

Old Persian

http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~iranian/OldPersian/index.html - Introduction to Old Persian by P. Oktor Skjærvø
http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/eieol/aveol-0-X.html - has some lessons for Old Persian

 

Ossetian

Dictionaries:
http://webapps.uni-koeln.de/tamil/ - a concise Pahlavi-English dictionary (also Sanskrit, Tamil)

Course
http://www.sfu.ca/~rastinm/index.htm - course, texts currently not working

Font
http://www.iranchamber.com/scripts/pahlavi_script.php - free font currently not working

 

Pashto

Dictionaries:
http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/raverty/ Comprehensive Pashto-English English-Pashto dictionary from 1867.

 

Persian

Dictionaries:
http://www.loghatnaameh.com/ -Dehxodaa's loghatnaameh
http://www.rismoon.com/moeenletterindex-fa.html -Moin's Farhang-e Farsi
http://www.farsidic.com/ -Farsidic (English-Persian-English)
http://www.ariadic.com/ - English-Persian (both directions)
http://dic.amdz.com/ - English-Persian (left); Persian-English (right)
http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/steingass/ - Comprehensive Perisan-English dictionary including the Arabic words and phrases to be met with in Persian literature
http://www.wdgco.com/dic/- English- Persian (both directions)
http://www.loghatnameh.de/ - German-Persian (both directions)
http://farsi.free-dict.de/ - German-Persian (both directions)
http://www.trilinguis.ru/linguistic/...ictionary.aspx - Rusian-Persian (both directions)
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~safari/masood/cgi-bin/ - English-Persian Dictionary
http://www.farsi123.com/ English-Persian/Persian-English dictionary
http://anzaliport.pmo.ir/fa/filepoo...59addb23099e0d60eee51ae2e2c6db1f6b35e833c3aa2 English-Persin dictionary for commercial terms
http://www.hooshyar.com/ Persian, French, Italian Spanish (both directions)

Online Courses:
http://www.easypersian.com - Very good method for learning Persian, basic to intermediate
http://persa.sencilla.googlepages.com/ - Spanish translation of the above (but only a third of the lessons are translated)
(other links available through these sites)
http://members.tripod.com/~shahriar/persian/titlepage.html - Basic course
http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/bashiri/Lessons/PfBindex.html - Persian course of Iraj Bashiri
http://moscowicro.googlepages.com/V_Ivanov-Persian_Reading.pdf - Persian for Russian speakers (part one). Its homepage links to more things.
http://www.aa.tufs.ac.jp/elib/ltext/pes/pdf/a.pdf - Persian for Japanese speakers
http://www.nyu.edu/pages/gsasweb/dept/mideast/virtualpersian/index.html - Persian course in five levels of elementary to advanced
http://ajabanzaban.com/learn/l_index.html - Learn Persian today!
http://www.princeton.edu/~plhulick/persian/ - Modern Persian Spoken and Written
http://www.persianschool.net/FB/FB.htm - a textbook with audio for students of all ages
http://www.iub.edu/~celcar/intermediate/tajikinter.html - Intermediate Tajiki Persian textbook from the University of Indiana (need register to access)
http://www.madressa.net/CMSnew/content/view/42/86/ - Stanmore classes. The course duration is 40 weeks. Class Notes and supporting material may be found there.
http://www.persiandee.com/view/showLesson/currentLesson/0 Lessons covering several levels.


Grammar:
http://sites.la.utexas.edu/persian_online_resources/ grammar and phonology. Uses transliteration for examples.http://anamnese.online.fr/iran/gramm_iranien.pdf - basic grammar in French. Warning: Seems to deal with both colloquial and formal language forms
http://www.fazel.de/dastur/EN/index.html - "Academic grammar" (Persian, English, German)
http://de.wikibooks.org/wiki/Persisch:_Übersicht - Wiki-book (in German)
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Persian/Contents - Wiki-book (English)
http://www.auditorium.ru/books/2360/gl4.pdf - introduction (Russian, PDF)
http://www.archive.org/details/higherpersiangra032060mbp - The largest and most complete English grammar of Persian, "A Higher Persian Grammar", by D. C. Phillott
http://books.google.fr/books?id=Ru1ncSqiRXkC&printsec=titlepage#PPA7,M1 - An old grammar of the Persian Language, by Meerza Mohammad Ibraheem


About Persian:
http://www.jahanshiri.ir/- A guide to reading Persian


Software:
http://www.jahanshiri.ir/pvc/pvc.php - Persian verb conjugator
http://www.jahanshiri.ir/apps/persconv.html - Persian convertor. Converts the Persian written in a defined transliteration scheme into Persian script
http://www.jahanshiri.ir/apps/perskb.html - Online Persian keyboard

Texts
Free Persian Library
http://rira.ir/rira/php/?page=view&m...d=classicpoems

Writing:
www.unipers.com - Romanization of Persian
http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2525415 Thread with suggested online and printed resources to learn Nastaliq script and writing.

Others:
http://www.auditorium.ru/books/2360/ - Various articles about the Iranian languages (in Russian, links to PDF files)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/ - BBC news in Persian

 

Punjabi/Panjabi

Dictionaries:
http://www.ijunoon.net/punjabi_dic/ - English-Punjabi-English
Punjabi(Gurmukhi,Shahmukhi) to English Dictionary:: ACTDPL Punjabi University, Patiala Punjabi-English Dictionary online version - Punjabi University, Patiala, India (Romanized, Shahmukhi and Gurmukhi supported, with audio pronunciation samples).

Online courses:
Online Punjabi Teaching (Punjabi University, Patiala, India, Advanced Centre for Technical Development of Punjabi Language, Literature and Culture).
http://www.advancedcentrepunjabi.org/intro1.asp - vocabulary, ortography and more

Writing:
Learn Gurmukhi_____(APNA) Academy of The Punjab in North America - teaches the Gurmukhi script for those who know Shahmukhi
http://www.crulp.org/Downloads/Phonetic KeyBoard.pdf - phonetic keyboard for typing in Punjabi (Shahmukhi script)
http://www.iit.edu/~laksvij/language/punjabi.html - transliterates to Punjabi characters

Reading:
http://www.advancedcentrepunjabi.org/intro1.asp - learn how to read Punjabi
ukindia punjabi lesson 1 - learn how to read Punjabi

Miscellaneous:
http://www.learnpunjabi.org/onlineresources.aspx List of online resources to learn Punjabi, including tools for typing, proofreading, translation and transliteration

 

Sanskrit

Dictionary:
http://acharya.iitm.ac.in/sanskrit/tutor.php - Sanskrit-English (click on "Sanskrit dictionary" to start Java)
http://sanskrit.inria.fr/DICO/ - Sanskrit-French
http://asignoret.free.fr/index_ang.html - French-Sanskrit (downloadable), with interactive grammar
http://webapps.uni-koeln.de/tamil/ - two Sanskrit-English dictionaries
http://www3.aa.tufs.ac.jp/~tjun/sktdic/index.html - Sanskrit-English
http://spokensanskrit.de/ - Sanskrit-English (both directions), focus on daily communication
http://webapps.uni-koeln.de/tamil/ -English-Sanskrit, Tamil

Vocabulary:
http://acharya.iitm.ac.in/sanskrit/gloss.php - glossaries of most common words

Writing:
http://www.iit.edu/~laksvij/language/sanskrit.html - transliterates to Sanskrit characters
http://dsal.uchicago.edu/digbooks/di...K419.V468_1983 - a primer in Grantha characters

Courses:
http://acharya.iitm.ac.in/sanskrit/tutor.html - lessons for self-study
http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/l...vedol-0-R.html - ancient Sanskrit lessons

Miscellaneous:
http://sanskritlibrary.org/ - a digital library with primary texts in Sanskrit (free registration needed)

 

Sogdian

Online courses:
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~iranian/Sogdian/index.html - a primer

 

Urdu


Online course:
http://dsal.uchicago.edu/digbooks/di...983.N2_1999_V1 - Introductory Urdu, volume 1
http://dsal.uchicago.edu/digbooks/di...983.N2_1999_V2 - Introductory Urdu, volume 2

Dictionaries:
UrduWord.com English-Urdu Dictionary and Lessons - a browseable and searchable English dictionary (both directions), also Word of the Day
Urdu - English Dictionary - alphabetical dictionary, Urdu-English only
http://www.apniurdu.com/Dict/A.html?...f8937bc27b1bab - alphabetical dictionary, English-Urdu only
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~navin/india/urdu.dictionary - alphabetical dictionary, Urdu-English only
Comprehensive English Urdu Dictionary with Advance Search | Urduseek.com English Urdu Dictionary انگریزی اردو لغت - Urdu-English; English-Urdu
Urdu dictionary, Urdu poetry, shayaris, ghazals, urdu prose, english urdu dictionary, learning urdu, urdu language, urdu verses, urdu words, Shayari, Urdu Shayari, Hindi Shayari, Urdu Ghazal, Ghazal - Urdu-English
A dictionary of Urdu, classical Hindi, and English. - comprehensive (but dated) etymological Hindi/Urdu dictionary ever.
The App Gamer Blog - Urdu-English; English-Urdu
http://www.crulp.org/oud/default.aspx - Urdu Dictionary (monolingual)
Feroz - ul - Lughat (Jame) By Maulvi Ferozuddin (r.a) : islamicbookslibrary : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive - Feroz-ul-Lughat Urdu dictionary (monolingual)
Urdu Encyclopedia اردو دائرۃ معارف العلوم - نو مولود - Urdu Encyclopedia (monolingual)
Internet Archive Search: creator:"Amad Dihlav, Sayyid, 1846-1918" - Farhang-e-Asafiyyah Urdu dictionary (monolingual)
القاموس الجدید - Urdu-Arabic
مصباح اللغات - Arabic-Urdu
القاموس الوحید - Arabic-Urdu
المنجد - Arabic-Urdu
کنزاللغات - Arabic-Urdu-English
فیروز اللغات - Persian-Urdu
فرہنگ امثال - Arabic and Persian sayings, poetry, expressions, etc. commonly used in Urdu
Qaumi English Urdu Dictionary


Vocabulary:
Learn Urdu online - useful phrases
Urdu Phrases (Moved Now) - useful phrases (also in the Urdu script)
http://www.gorin.com/phrase/urdu.html - for tourists

Reading:
Ukindia Learn Urdu Page - learn how to read Urdu
http://dsal.uchicago.edu/digbooks/di...KID=PK1975.N18 - readings (prose, poetry)
Urdu Poetry, Urdu Shayari of Famous Poets - Rekhta Urdu poetry and literature, available in Urdu and Devanagrai scripts and in romanization

Writing:
Persian, Urdu: Learning Nastaliq Thread with suggested online and printed resources to learn Nastaliq script and writing.
Google ان پٹ ٹولز آن لائن آزمائیں – Google ان پٹ ٹولز Transliteration tool Roman/Urdu
Urdu-Hindi Transliteration/Translation System :: Default Page Another romanization tool, and transliteration between Urdu and Hindi.

Thesaurus:
http://ijunoon.com/urdudic/thesaurus.asp