Persian Alphabet:: # Name Contextual Forms
Persian Alphabet:: # Name Contextual Forms
Persian Alphabet:: # Name Contextual Forms
Below are the 32 letters of the modern Persian alphabet. Since the script is cursive,
the appearance of a letter changes depending on its position: isolated, initial (joined
on the left), medial (joined on both sides), and final (joined on the right) of a word.
The names of the letter are mostly the ones used in Arabic, except for the Persian
pronunciation. The only ambiguous name is he, which is used for both and . For
clarification, these are often called e-ye jimi (literally "jim-like e" after jim, the
name for the letter that uses the same base form) and he-ye do-em (literally "twoeyed he", after the contextual middle letterform ), respectively
Name
DIN
IPA
Contextual forms
31635
Final
Medial
Initial
Isolated
Hamza [1]
[]
alef
[]
be
[b]
pe
[p]
te
[t]
se
[s]
jim
[d]
che
[t]
e(-ye
[h]
jimi)
10
khe
[x]
11
dl
[d]
12
[z]
13
re
[]
14
ze
[z]
15
[]
][s
sin
16
][
in
17
][s
18
][z
zd
19
][t
20
][z
21
][
eyn
22
][] / [
eyn
23
][f
fe
24
qf
25
)dialects
][k
kf
26
27
gf
[]
28
lm
[l]
29
mim
[m]
30
nun
[n]
31
vv
v / / ow
Dari)
32
he(-ye
ye
[h]
y//
do-em)
33
they are in the middle of the word, and also has its isolated form, though it occurs
at the end of the word.
Diacritics:
Persian script has adopted a subset of Arabic diacritics which consists of
zabar
//
(fatah
in
Arabic),
zir
/e/
(kasrah
in
Arabic),
and
pesh /ou/ or /o/ (ammah in Arabic, pronounced as zamme in Persian), sukn, tanwn
nasb /n/ and tashdid (gemination). Other Arabic diacritics may be seen in Arabic
loan-words.
Word Order:
While Persian has a subjectobjectverb (SOV) word order, it is not strongly leftbranching. However, because Persian is a pro drop language, the subject of a
sentence is often not apparent until the end of the verb, and thus the end of the
sentence.
.
Ketb-e bi-ro didam. I saw the blue book.
.
Ketb-e bi-ro didid. You saw the blue book.
The main clause precedes a subordinate clause, often using the familiar
IndoEuropean subordinator keh )(.
.
Be man gof-t keh emruz nemiyd. He told me that he isn't coming today.
The interrogative particle y (), which asks a yes/no question in written Persian,
appears at the beginning of a sentence. Modifiers, such as adjectives, normally
follow the nouns they modify, using the ezfe, although they can precede nouns in
limited uses. The language uses prepositions, uncommon to many SOV languages.
The one case marker, in the written language r (), (in the spoken language ro or o)
follows a definite direct object noun phrase.
.
Ketb-e bi r az ketbxneh geref-t. She got the blue book from the library.
disambiguate the case of a given noun phrase. This scrambling characteristic has
allowed Persian a high degree of flexibility for versification and rhyming.
One Eample:
. . . .
. 72
word
mean
teacher
name
am
school
teach
Year
old
have
Pronoun:
Subject Pronouns:
Persian is a null-subject, or pro-drop, language, so personal pronouns (e.g. I, he, she)
are optional. Pronouns generally are the same for all cases. The first-person singular
accusative form man r "me" can be shortened to mar, or in the Spoken
language, mano. Pronominal genitive enclitics are different from the normal
pronouns, however.
Literary forms
Person
Singular
Plural
1st
man
2nd
to
shom
3rd
* rarely used
Spoken forms
Person
Singular
Plural
1st
man
2nd
to
shom
3rd
unh/un ( normal),
person plural form can also be used in the 3rd person singular when talking about an
honored subject, such as an ayatollah or the king.
Bebakhshin, shom mrikyi hastin? 'Excuse me, are you an American?'
Ishun be man goftan, berim tu. 'He said to me, "Let's go in."
Possessive Pronouns:
Possession is often expressed by adding suffixes to nouns. These same suffixes are
also used as object pronouns.
Possessive Pronouns (Literary Forms)
Person
Singular
Plural
1st
-am
-emn
2nd
-at
-etn
3rd
-ash
-eshn
Singular
Plural
1st
-am
-emun
2nd
-et
-etun
3rd
-esh
-eshun
Examples:
Ketbetun ruye miz e. 'Your book is on the table.'
Ketbam ruye miz ast. 'My book is on the table.'
Note that when the stem to which these are added ends in a vowel, a "y" is inserted
for ease of pronunciation. However, with the plural marker , it is also common to
drop the -a/-e stem from the possessive marker. For example, 'my cars' could be
translated as either ( mshin hyam) with the y-stem or ( mshin
hm). Or it can be even more simplified to the colloquial spoken form by dropping
"h," for ease of pronunciation to ( mshinm). Sometimes is attached to the
word, like .
Object Pronouns:
The object pronouns are the same as the possessive pronouns, but are attached to
verbs instead of nouns. For example: "Yesterday I saw him."
diruz didamesh
Adjective:
Adjectives typically follow the nouns they modify, using the ezfe construct.
However, adjectives can precede nouns in compounded derivational forms, such
as
khosh-bakht
(lit.good-luck)
'lucky',
and
bad-kr
(lit.
bad-deed)
'wicked'. Comparative forms ("more ...") make use of the suffix tar (), while
the superlative form ("the most ...") uses the suffix tarin().
Comparatives used attributively follow the nouns they modify, while superlatives
precede their nouns.
With respect to comparison, "than" is expressed by the preposition "( "az), for
example:
(Sag-e man az gorbe-ye to kuchektar ast; My dog is smaller than your cat.)
Verb:
Imperfective prefix: mi
Subjunctive/Imperative prefix: be
Optative identifier: an "" is added before the last character of the present tense
of singular third person. There are suggestions that this inflection has been
abandoned, but significant remnants of its usage can still be observed in
contemporary stylish Persian compositions and colloquial proverbs, as in harche
bd bd (" ) come what may" and dast marizd ( ) lit. "May
that hand not spill [what it is holding]", meaning "well done".
Person Suffixes (Literary Forms)
Person
Singular
Plural
1st
-am
-im
2nd
-i
-id
3rd
-ad*
-and
* In the past tense, the past stem alone is used without any ending (e.g. raft , not
*raftad)
Person
Singular
Plural
1st
-am
-im
2nd
-i
-id/-in
3rd
-e*
-an
* In the past tense, the past stem alone is used without any ending (e.g. raft , not
*rafte )
Accusative Enclitics (Literary Forms)
Person
Singular
Plural
1st
-am
-emn
2nd
-at
-etn
3rd
-ash
-eshn
Person
Singular
Plural
1st
-am
-emun
2nd
-et
-etun
3rd
-esh
-eshun
Tenses:
These are the most common tenses:
Infinitive: The infinitive ending is formed with -( an), e.g. (khordan) 'to eat.'
The basic stem of the verb is formed by deleting this ending.
Past: The past tense is formed by deleting the infinitive ending and adding the
conjugations to the stem. There are virtually no irregular verbs in the past tense,
unlike English. In the third person singular, there is no conjugation, so ' 'would
become '('khord),he/she/it ate.
Perfect: The perfect tense is formed by taking the stem of the verb, adding (eh) to
the end, and then adding the conjugations. The endings are pronounced with an 'a,'
separately from the ''. So ' 'in the perfect first person singular would be '
( 'khorde am), I have eaten. As with the past tense, the third person singular ending
is also irregular, i.e. it's -. Thus, ' 'would become '( ' khorde ast).
However, in the spoken form, ast is omitted. '( 'khorde) s/he has eaten.
Pluperfect: The pluperfect is formed by taking the stem of the perfect, e.g. ','
adding '('bud),and finally adding the conjugations to the end, thus '
('khorde budam), I had eaten. In the third person singular, either simply no
conjugation or - is accepted. ' 'means 'was,'.
Future: The future tense is formed by first, taking the present tense form of ''
(khstan), to want, and conjugating it to the correct person; this verb in third person
singular is '( 'mi khhad). Next, it is put in front of the unconjugated stem of
the verb, e.g. , thus ' ,' he/she/it will eat. For compound verbs, such as
'( ' tamiz kardan), 'to clean, refresh,' goes in between both words, and
' 'is reduced to its stem, thus ( tamiz khhad kard), he/she/it will
clean. In the negative, ' 'receives -.
Present: The present tense is the most difficult tense in Persian because it is
completely irregular. It is formed by finding the root of the word, adding the prefix
'('mi), and then conjugating it. The third person singular conjugation is -, and this
is probably why the past tense has no conjugation, since many stems already end in
a 'd.' The root of the verb ',' for example, is '('khor), so the present first
person singular would be '(' mi khoram), I eat, am eating, do eat. The negative
- is pronounced 'ne' before 'm,' but in all other tenses is pronounced 'na.'The
present tense in Persian should not be confused with the tenses in Semitic languages,
since many roots are etymologically unrelated to their infinitives, and there is no
solid rule that all verbs follow; however, one will notice after acquiring some
knowledge of Persian verbs that there are a few general patterns that a few similar
verbs follow; for example, with a verb containing -, such as '( 'skhtan),'to
make, build' the - is replaced with , thus the root is '( 'sz). Sometimes the
present tense is used together with an adverb (for example: - tomorrow) instead
of the future tense explained by .
Compound verbs:
Light verbs such as ( kardan) "to do, to make" are often used with nouns to form
what is called a compound verb, light verb construction, or complex predicate. For
example, the word ( goftegu) means "conversation", while ( goftegu
kardan) means "to speak". One may add a light verb after a noun, adjective,
preposition, or prepositional phrase to form a compound verb. Only the light verb
(e.g. kardan) is conjugated; the word preceding it is not affected. For example:
dram goftegu mikonam ("( ) I am speaking")
goftegu karde am ("( ) I have spoken")
goftegu khham kard ("( ) I will speak")
As can be seen from the examples, the head word (in this case, goftegu)
remains unchanged throughout the conjugation, and only the light
verb kardan is conjugated. They may be compared to English verb particle
constructions, such as hand down (leave as an inheritance) and set
up (arrange), or German compound verbs, such as radfahren (to ride by
bicycle) and zurckgehen (to go back).
Some other examples of compound verbs with kardan are:
Auxiliary verbs:
raftan, 'to go' (Literary present form -rav-) Spoken present form -r-.
Eg. Mi-r-am. 'I go.' Mi-r-i. 'You go.' Be-r-im. 'Let's go.'
ddan, 'to give' (Literary present form -deh-) Spoken present form -d. Eg. Mi-d-am. 'I give.' Mi-d-im. 'We give.'
goftan, 'to say' (Literary present form -gu-) Spoken present form -g-.
Eg. Mi-g-am. 'I say.' Mi-g-id. 'You say.'
Spoken Verbs in :
There is another class of spoken verbs whose present tense form ends in
. These verbs take a reduced form of the verb ending as outlined in the
following table.
1st
mi--m
mi--ym
2nd
mi--y
mi--yd/mi--yn
3rd
mi--d
mi--n
Person Singular
Plural
1st
mi-kh-m mi-kh-ym
2nd
mi-kh-y
mi-kh-yd/mi-kh-yn
mi-kh-d
3rd
mi-kh-n
Prepositions:
Prepositions in Persian generally behave similarly to those in English they
precede their object. They include the following:
Prepositions
Persian
English
andar ()
in (literary)
az ()
from
b ()
with
bar ()
on, upon
barye ()
for
be ()
to
bi ()
without
chon ()
like (formal)
dar ()
at, in
mnande ()
like
t (*)
till, until
ham-chon ()
I have
You have
She/he has
It has
We have
you
They
Gender:
Persian nouns have no grammatical gender. Imported words with the Arabic
feminine ending<-> reduce to a genderless Persian <-> which is pronounced -e.
Many imported Arabic feminine words retain their Arabic feminine plural
form <t>, but Persian descriptive adjectives modifying them remain genderless.
Arabic adjectives also lose their gender in Persian usage.
Pluralization:
All nouns can be made plural using a separate word, h, which follows a noun and
does not change its form. Plural forms are used much less often than in English, and
are not used after numbers or zid 'many'. The plural word <h> is only used when
the noun has no numbers in front of it and is definite (i.e. 'the _______s').
se t ketb three books
zid ketb many books
ketb h the books
Man ketab-o dust dram. I like books.
Un dneshju hastan. They are students.
Un dneshju h hastan. They are the students (i.e., the ones I was talking about
before)
note: in the spoken language, in cases where nouns end with a consonant, h is
reduced to .
Written: nh they
Spoken: un they
While in the literary language animate nouns generally pluralize using the suffix n (or variants -gn and -yn), -h is more common in the spoken
language.[1] Special rules exist for some nouns borrowed from Arabic.
Literary: perandegn birds
Spoken: perande h the birds
Noun Cases[edit]
There are two cases in Persian, nominative case and accusative case, the nominative
is the non-marked form of a noun, when the noun is followed by a r or suffix -o
it is accusative, the other oblique cases are marked by prepositions.
nominative: Ketb njst/ ketbh njyand (the book is there/ the books are
there).
It should be noted that inanimate subjects do not require pluralized verb forms,
especially in the spoken language. Ketbh unjst. (The books is there.)