چی
“چی” (chi) — what in Persian. Pronoun, level A1. The short question word, at home mid-sentence: chi kar mikoni — what are you doing? The bookish twin is che. In a live sentence: “چی کار میکنی؟” — What are you doing? Written with the characters چ, ی. A word from the everyday Persian course, level A1.
In short
| Written in Persian | چی |
| Read in Latin letters | chi |
| Translation | what |
| Part of speech | pronoun |
| Level | A1 |
Why it looks that way
The short question word, at home mid-sentence: chi kar mikoni — what are you doing? The bookish twin is che
A word with a story stays in memory longer than one learned as a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.
In a live sentence
A single word almost never appears alone in conversation. A sentence shows where it fits and what stands next to it.
- چی کار میکنی؟chi kâr mi-kâni؟What are you doing?
How not to forget this word
Reading a word and remembering it are different jobs. A day later, little survives of a single reading — and that is not bad memory, that is how memory works.
- This has been tested on foreign words too. The difference shows up most when you test yourself a few days later rather than straight away.checked many timesKim & Webb, 2022, Language Learning 72(2) · 48 experiments, 3,411 participants, 98 comparisons.
- Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
- An answer you worked out yourself sticks better than one handed to you.checked many timesBertsch et al., 2007, Memory & Cognition 35(2) · 86 studies, 445 comparisons, d = 0.40.
Frequently asked
How do you say “what” in Persian?
«چی», read “chi”. In a live sentence: “چی کار میکنی؟” — What are you doing? Pronoun, level A1; written with the characters چ, ی.
How is “چی” written in Latin letters?
chi. This is a practical spelling — you need it to read aloud and be understood, not to meet an academic standard.
Why does this word look the way it does?
The short question word, at home mid-sentence: chi kar mikoni — what are you doing? The bookish twin is che. A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.