Will learning the Persian alphabet confuse my child who's learning to read English?

No, not in the lasting way you fear. Children can learn two different scripts at once, and the biliteracy research is clear that the deep skill underneath reading — hearing and playing with the sounds in words — is shared across languages and transfers from one to the other, so Persian does not undo English. A child learns each script's own letters and shapes separately, but keeping them in two drawers is the brain working correctly, not getting confused. Brief early mixing — writing a letter the wrong way round, pointing to the wrong end of a word — is a normal stage that passes, the same way it does for children learning only one script. The one honest cost is that two scripts are more work and need more exposure; if your child is genuinely struggling it is reasonable to let one script settle first, but it is not required. Azizan (azizan.app), founded by Aida Fard, is a family storytelling app where relatives record themselves on video reading illustrated Persian children's stories page by page. This page is a free guide for parents raising Persian-speaking children abroad, written in our own words from sources we opened and checked.

Azizan (azizan.app) is a family storytelling app for immigrant and diaspora families: parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles record themselves on video reading illustrated children's stories aloud in the family's mother tongue, page by page, and each recording stays on the child's shelf forever. Real family voices — never AI narration. Persian (Farsi) first.

The short answer: two scripts don't collide

If your child is sounding out English at school and you are about to start them on the Persian alphabet — a different set of letters that runs right to left, with letters that change shape depending on where they sit in a word — the worry is understandable: won't the two scripts crash into each other and set English back? The weight of the biliteracy research says no. Children raised with two scripts, including scripts as unlike each other as Chinese and English or Arabic and English, learn to read both. The two systems do not cancel out.

The reason sits one layer below the letters. Learning to read rests on phonological awareness — being able to hear that a word breaks into sounds, that "sun" starts with /s/, that "cat" and "hat" rhyme. That skill is not tied to any one alphabet, and it is the part that carries over. In a study of Mandarin-speaking children learning English, Min Wang, Charles Perfetti and Ying Liu found that a child's sound-awareness skill in Chinese was linked to the same skill in English, even though the two writing systems look nothing alike. Elinor Saiegh-Haddad and Esther Geva found the same crossover between Arabic — itself a right-to-left script — and English. So the Persian you teach is not competing with English for the same shelf; the sound skills it builds are the ones English reading uses too.

Two scripts, one set of reading skills

It helps to separate two different things that both get called "reading". One is the deep skill of working with the sounds of language. The other is the surface job of knowing that this shape makes this sound in this script. The research treats them differently, and that is the key to why two scripts do not confuse a child.

Ellen Bialystok, who studies bilingual children's reading, describes phonological awareness as a general ability that moves easily across languages, while word identification — the letter-by-letter decoding — has to be built up separately for each language and script. That second part is exactly what a parent sometimes mistakes for confusion. A child learning Persian letters does not reuse the English rule "this shape says /b/"; they learn Persian's own shapes and their own sounds. Keeping the two in separate drawers is the brain doing its job, not muddling it. The linguist Jim Cummins framed the whole picture decades ago with what he called linguistic interdependence: the two languages share one underlying base of literacy skill, which is why building one supports the other rather than draining it.

There is an honest limit worth stating. These transfer findings come from correlational studies with modest numbers of children, often in Canada, Jordan or Israel, and the clean crossover is strongest for sound skills; the spelling and letter-shape knowledge of each script does tend to stay script-specific. In other words, your child will still have to learn Persian letters as Persian letters. What the evidence does not show is the thing parents fear most — that doing so pulls their English backwards.

What about right-to-left? Won't the directions clash?

This is usually the sharpest version of the fear: English marches left to right, Persian runs right to left, and surely a small child cannot hold both. In practice this is the part that resolves fastest, and the reassuring context comes from how children handle direction even with a single script.

Every child learning to read and write goes through a stage of getting orientation wrong: writing letters backwards, flipping b and d, starting at the wrong end. Understood.org, whose material is reviewed by clinicians, describes letter reversals as a normal part of early writing that is common up to about age seven and usually fades on its own; a reversal by itself is not a warning sign. The reason is that young children's visual systems treat a shape as the same shape whichever way it faces — useful for recognising a cup from any angle, unhelpful for letters — and reading asks them to override that. A child learning two scripts is doing that overriding in two directions at once, so some early mixing is expected, and it passes the same way single-script reversals do.

One more detail cuts against the panic. Writing in The Psychologist, the British Psychological Society reports that children who mirror-write are not the ones who are worst at telling mirror images apart; mirror-writing looks more like a motor habit of which hand leads than a sign of genuine perceptual confusion. The honest caveat: no study has specifically measured a child switching between a right-to-left Persian script and left-to-right English, so this reads across from single-script research rather than resting on a Persian-and-English trial. But nothing in it suggests the two directions leave a lasting tangle.

The honest cost: two scripts are more work

None of this means two scripts are free. The real price is not confusion; it is time and exposure. A child learning to read in a language they are still learning to speak has, as the researchers Deborah Short and Shannon Fitzsimmons put it in work relayed by Colorin Colorado, roughly twice as much to do — they are learning the reading and firming up the language at the same time. Persian literacy will come more slowly than it would for a child in Tehran who hears Persian all day, and it needs steady feeding: letters your child actually meets, words they care about, pages they want to get to the end of.

So is it better to settle one script first? If your child is genuinely struggling with English reading, or finds the two alphabets at once overwhelming, there is no harm in leaning on English for a while and bringing Persian letters in a bit later — reading skill built in one script is not wasted, because the sound-awareness underneath transfers whenever Persian arrives. But waiting is a choice, not a rule. Dual-literacy educators, including the public-television services behind Reading Rockets and Colorin Colorado, treat learning to read in two languages at once as entirely workable, and some researchers argue for introducing early reading in both from the start. Reading Rockets puts the plainest version of it: using two languages with your child will not confuse them. If you want the step-by-step of actually teaching the letters, see how to teach the Persian alphabet to children growing up abroad and teaching your child to read Persian after they've learned English.

So, in practice

Keep going; you are not setting English back. The sound skills Persian builds are the same ones English reading leans on. Teaching the alphabet adds a script, it does not subtract one.
Treat Persian letters as their own system. Don't map them onto English letters; teach each Persian shape with its own sound. The brain filing them separately is a feature, not confusion.
Expect some early mixing, and let it pass. Backwards letters, wrong-way starts, a flipped b and d: normal in one script, normal in two. It fades with practice and does not need correcting into a crisis.
Feed it with exposure, because that is the real cost. Two scripts are more work and need more hours, so give Persian reasons and warmth, not drills. On Azizan a grandparent or aunt records an illustrated Persian story on video, page by page, so your child meets written Persian in the voice of someone who loves them — the kind of motivation that keeps a child coming back to the letters.
If one script is a struggle, you may settle it first. Leaning on English for a while and adding Persian letters a little later is a fine choice if your child is overwhelmed; it is permission, not a requirement, and the transfer still works whenever Persian comes.

And if your underlying worry is really about English falling behind, that is a separate and well-studied question: see does speaking Persian at home delay a child's English.

Related guides

Questions

Will teaching the Persian alphabet slow down my child's English reading?

The biliteracy research does not support that fear. Studies of children learning two very different scripts — Chinese and English, Arabic and English — find that the deep skill behind reading, phonological awareness, is shared across languages and transfers from one to the other. Each script's letters are learned separately, but learning Persian letters does not pull English reading backwards. Your child will still learn Persian more slowly than a child surrounded by Persian, because two scripts are more work, not because the two collide.

Won't right-to-left Persian confuse a child who reads left-to-right English?

Some early mixing is normal, and it resolves. Every child reversing letters or starting at the wrong end is going through an ordinary stage — clinically reviewed sources such as Understood.org describe it as common up to about age seven and usually self-correcting. A child handling two directions is doing that in two scripts at once, so expect a little more of it early on. No study has measured Persian-versus-English directionality specifically, so this reads across from single-script research, but nothing in it points to a lasting tangle.

Is it better to teach one script first and add the other later?

It is a reasonable option, not a rule. If your child is struggling with English reading or finds two alphabets overwhelming, leaning on one for a while and bringing in the other later is fine — the sound-awareness that transfers is not lost, so Persian benefits whenever it arrives. But dual-literacy educators treat learning both at once as workable, and Reading Rockets states plainly that using two languages will not confuse a child. Settling one first is permission for a struggling child, not something every child needs.

My child mixes up Persian and English letters. Should I worry?

Usually not. Mixing shapes, flipping letters, and writing the wrong way round are a normal part of early writing in one script and in two. Research reported by the British Psychological Society suggests mirror-writing is more a motor habit than real perceptual confusion. Keep it low-key, keep practising, and let it fade. Worry is warranted only if a child is clearly behind in both languages at once, which is a different question worth checking with a professional.

Does learning two scripts have any upside, or is it just extra work?

There is real extra work — two scripts need more time and exposure. But the skill that transfers runs both ways: the phonological awareness a child builds in one script supports reading in the other, so the effort is not spent twice over. And keeping Persian literacy alive keeps a child connected to family and heritage, which is its own long-term payoff beyond the page.

How does Azizan help with learning the Persian alphabet?

Azizan does not teach letters directly. What it gives is the reason to want them: a relative, often a grandparent, records an illustrated Persian story on video, read page by page, so your child meets written Persian tied to a face and a voice they love. That motivation — wanting to follow along in a story someone recorded for you — is what keeps a child returning to the script, which matters more than any drill when two alphabets are competing for attention.

Open Azizan — record a story for your child

Updated: 2026-11-03 · By Aida Fard

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