Signs and Notices in Farsi

Have you ever noticed how much do we use icons and signs in our daily life to convey meanings? Have you thought about the origin of these signs which you can find on the roadsides, in computers and smartphones, airports, and even in advertisements?  Probably, the first thing that comes to your mind by hearing icons and signs is emojis which are becoming part of our global language of online communication, but if you look around, you will find many icons and signs which you can get their meanings immediately. Take a look at your t-shirt’s tag and you will find at least five icons telling you how to wash, dry, and iron your t-shirt. By the way, can you guess how to say these signs in Farsi?

Using signs is not something recent. The first writing systems in the world were pictograms from which the modern alphabetic system originated. Even before that, our ancestors used to draw or carve the story of battels, their religious etiquettes and traditions, and even their thoughts on the walls of the caves or big rocks in the mountains. In modern life, using symbols and icons is helping us convey meanings in a faster way on a global scale. It does not matter from which country you are or which language you speak, you can easily get the meaning of many signs, such as driving signs, as a universal code. Most of the time your brain will react to these signs immediately and unconsciously.

When will you find this useful?

Driving signs are almost the same all over the world. As a result, you will not face problems understanding many signs while driving or trying to find your way in Iran. However, in some places, you may see written signs instead of icons and unfortunately, most of them are written in Farsi, especially the names of streets and building numbers. In many cases, you can easily check your GPS or other applications which are in your language. The only thing you need to know is that sometimes the name of a street can be different from what you have on your map because some streets have old and new names.

Now, you may ask why you should learn the vocabulary of this part if the majority of them are universal signs. The answer is very simple, to add to your Persian vocabulary. In case you need another reason, you can take this into consideration that sometimes you do not see the signs and the people who try to inform you about something important will talk to you in Farsi. It would be better to understand what they say to avoid possible problems.

The final note is if you see the signs which tell you taking photos and videos is forbidden somewhere in Iran, take it seriously and stop using your camera there.