Hi jacob دوست and رفیق have the same meaning but the word ' رفیق'' is informal, so whenever you want to say ''i have a friend'' in a formal way use' من یه دوست دارم'' otherwise '' من یه رفیق دارم''. About the second question I have to say that in Farsi, like English, we put an article before single countable nouns! in other words, We use ''یه'' before single countable nouns which has the same meaning as ''a'' in English . Therefore when you say ''من دوست دارم'' you actually saying ''I like'' but if you say '' من یه دوست دارم'' you mean you have a friend. I hope that helps

Hi. There's no really difference between them. Maybe I can say that "رفیق" denotes a closer friend sometimes, but that's not a rule and doesn't work for everyone. Moreover, the word "رفیق" is more common between males than females but it's not a rule again. Sometimes I myself call my girl friends "رفیق" as well! I'm just talking about a cultural matter. I hope I have got the point across. And for your second question, it's all about pronunciation. When you want to say "I have a friend", verbally you say "doost daram", whereas for saying "I like you", you say "dooset daram" The written form is the same, but you express it different verbally. And if you want to know the difference in a text, you'd better get which meaning works there base of the content.

Matthew, thank you for drawing a clear and very helpful distinction between the two words!

hi, one big difference is the level of formality. kind of like the two words friend and buddy which could be translated into Farsi as دوست and رفیق respectively. as for the second question, I should say if you want to say, "you have a friend" you could say, "من یه دوست دارم" in which there is no vowel sound between /s/ and /t/ in /dust/ but whenever we want to say we love/like someone, we'd put an /e/ vowel sound in there between /s/ and /t/, pronouncing it, /duset/ and omit the word, "یه" which is the short/ spoken form for, "یک" .