فیلم مستند
“فیلم مستند” (filme mâstanad) — documentary (film) in Persian. Noun, level B1. The documentary — "leaning on proof": a film with facts. Documentary cinema here is a venerable genre with its own school. I saw one about the capital, says the example. In a live sentence: “فیلم مستند درباره تهران دیدم.” — I saw a documentary about Tehran. Written with the characters ف, ی, ل, م, م, س, ت, ن, د. A word from the everyday Persian course, level B1.
In short
| Written in Persian | فیلم مستند |
| Read in Latin letters | filme mâstanad |
| Translation | documentary (film) |
| Part of speech | noun |
| Level | B1 |
Why it looks that way
The documentary — "leaning on proof": a film with facts. Documentary cinema here is a venerable genre with its own school. I saw one about the capital, says the example
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.
- فیلم مستند درباره تهران دیدم.filme mâstanad darbâre Tehrân didam.I saw a documentary about Tehran.
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 “documentary (film)” in Persian?
«فیلم مستند», read “filme mâstanad”. In a live sentence: “فیلم مستند درباره تهران دیدم.” — I saw a documentary about Tehran. Noun, level B1; written with the characters ف, ی, ل, م, م, س, ت, ن, د.
How is “فیلم مستند” written in Latin letters?
filme mâstanad. 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 documentary — "leaning on proof": a film with facts. Documentary cinema here is a venerable genre with its own school. I saw one about the capital, says the example. A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.