While Farsi native speakers are relatively fluent in spoken English, they do face a couple of adjustmentsin pronunciation. These are listed in a masters degree dissertation from Australia.
In terms of syllables, Farsi speakers sometimes add the syllable /E/ before words starting with the letter s, such as spell and skate. Or, for consonant clusters (groups) beginning with letters other than s (as in clap, club), they may split up the grouping of sounds:
Although Farsi speakers generally do well with consonants, they're actually missing a few English sounds in their native language (shown in the squares below):
So, similar to some Mandarin native speakers, they should be careful about pronouncing thin as sin, and these as zees. Helpful resources include paired sounds like th/s, Th/z, v/w from this site.
The "ng" sound at the end of words like "sing" seems to be a problem, too. It should not end with a hard /g/ sound (such as in finger), especially in the middle of words like singing. It's a soft nasal sound at the back of the mouth rather than like a hard /g/, as in "sin-Ger." Apparently, the researcher herself, a native Farsi speaker, does not seem able to distance herself from saying the hard /g/, as seen in her description of "singing":
The problem with vowels is that of (not) contrasting long and short (or, tense and lax) English vowels:
So they may need to make an extra effort to distinguish this and these, ship and sheep. Useful vowel exercises include: i/I from this page.
Of course, there's also the problem of intonation (the musicality of the language), which afflicts all ESL learners, but let's save that for another day. For now, our Iranian friends can have fun trying out these different sounds in the English language!
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