Persian grammar

The grammar of the Persian language is similar to that of many other Indo-European languages. Persian became a more analytic language around the time of Middle Persian, with fewer cases and discarding grammatical gender. The innovations remain in Modern Persian, which is one of the few Indo-European languages to lack grammatical gender, even in pronouns.

Word order

While Persian has a standard subject-object-verb (SOV) word order, it is not strongly left-branching. It uses prepositions, not postpositions, and is mainly a head-initial language. Persian is a pro-drop language since its verbs have unambiguous personal suffixes and so the use of pronouns is optional. Thus, the subject mark often appears as a suffix at the very end of the sentence.

• ketâb-e âbî râ dîdam "I saw the blue book"
• ketâb-e âbî râ dîdîd "you (plural) saw the blue book"

The main clause precedes a subordinate clause, often using the familiar Indo-European subordinator ke ("which").

• be man goft ke emrûz nemî âmad "he told me that he wasn't coming today"

The interrogative particle âyâ (), which asks a yes–no question, appears in written Persian at the beginning of a sentence. Grammatical modifiers, such as adjectives, normally follow the nouns that they modify with the suffix ezâfe (اضافه), but occasionally precede nouns. Persian is one of the few SOV languages to use prepositions. The only case marker in the written language, râ () (replaced in the spoken language by ro or o), follows a definite direct object noun phrase.

• ketâb-e âbî râ az ketâbxâne gereft "she got the blue book from the library"

Normal sentences are subject-prepositional phrase-object-verb. If the object is specific, the order is (S) (O + râ) (PP) V. However, Persian has a relatively free word order, which is often called scrambling, since its parts of speech are generally unambiguous, and prepositions and the accusative marker help to disambiguate the case of a given noun phrase. That characteristic allows Persian to have a high degree of flexibility for versification and rhyming.

Articles

In the literary language, no definite article ("the") is used; rather, it is implied by the absence of the indefinite article ("a, an"). However, in the spoken language, the stressed suffix -e or -a is often used as a definite article; -e is used mostly in urban areas and in newer dialects, and -a is used mostly in rural areas and in older dialects. Persian consonants and vowels have changed throughout history.

• Literary: ketâb rû-ye mîz ast "the book is on the table".
• Spoken: ketâbe rû-ye mîzé "the book is on the table".

For plural nouns, the definite plural marker -hâ functions as both the plural marker and the definite article.

The indefinite article in both spoken and literary Persian is the same as the word for 1, yek, which is often shortened to ye.

• rû-ye mîz yek ketâb ast 'on the table there is a book'.

Nouns

Gender

Persian nouns and pronouns have no grammatical gender.

Plural

All nouns can be made plural by the suffix -hâ, which follows a noun and does not change its form. Plural forms are used less often than in English and are not used after numbers or ziyâd "many" or besyâr(i). -hâ is definite and is used only if the noun has no numbers before it.

• se tâ ketâb "three books"
• besyâr-i ketâb "X'many books"
• ketâbhâ-ye besyâr "many books"
• ketâbhâ "the books"
• man ketâb râ dûst dâram "I like the book"
• ânhâ dâneşcû hastand "They are students"
• ânhâ dâneşcûhâ hastand "They are the students"

In the spoken language, when nouns or pronouns end with a consonant, -hâ is reduced to -â .

• Literary: ânhâ 'they'
• Informal spoken: unâ 'they'

In the literary language, animate nouns generally use the suffix -ân (or variants -gân and -yân) for plurals, but -hâ is more common in the spoken language.

• Literary: parandegân 'birds'
• Spoken: parandehâ 'birds'

Nouns adopted from Arabic usually have special plurals, formed with the ending -ât or by changing the vowels: ketâb / kotob for "book/books". Arabic nouns can generally take Persian plural endings, but the original form is sometimes more common. The most common plural form depends on the individual word. That is similar to "indexes" vs. "indices" in English for the plural forms of a word adopted from Latin.

Cases

There are three cases in Persian: the nominative (or subject) case, the vocative case and the accusative (or object) case. The nominative is the unmarked form of a noun, but the vocative and the accusative cases use the suffixes "â" and " "râ" (and "ro" or "o" in Tehrani accent, sometimes -a in Dari accent), respectively. The other oblique cases are marked by prepositions.

• Nominative: ketâb âncâst / ketâbhâ âncâyand ('the book is there / the books are there');

Inanimate subjects do not require plural verb forms, especially in the spoken language: ketâbhâ unjâst ('the books "is" there').

• Vocative: Sa'diyâ marde nekû-nam namîrad hargez.
• Accusative: ketâb râ (ketâbo) bede(h) be man 'give me the book'.
• Possession using ezâfe: ketâb-e Âraş 'Âraş's book'.

Pronouns

Subject pronouns

Persian is a null-subject and pro-drop language. The personal pronouns (e.g. 'I', 'he', 'she') are optional. Pronouns add râ when they are used as the object but otherwise stay the same. The first-person singular accusative form man râ 'me' can be shortened to marâ or, in the spoken language, mano. Pronominal genitive enclitics (see above) are different from normal pronouns, however.

{| class="wikitable"

|+Literary forms

|-

|-

! Person !! Singular !! Plural

|-

! 1st

| man || mâ

|-

! 2nd

| to || şomâ

|-

! 3rd

| ū (human)<br/>ân (non-human), <br/>vey * (human only, literary) || ânhâ (non-human/human), <br/>işân (human only and formal)

|}

&ast; rarely used

{| class="wikitable"

|+Spoken forms

|-

|-

! Person !! Singular !! Plural

|-

! 1st

| man || mâ

|-

! 2nd

| to || şomâ

|-

! 3rd

| u <br/>işân * (honorary) || ânhâ/ânân (normal), <br/>işân (honorary)

|}

&ast; uses 3rd person plural verb form

Persian resembles Romance languages like French in that the second person plural pronoun şomâ is used as a polite form of address. Persian to is used among intimate friends (the so-called T–V distinction).

• Bebaxşîd, şomâ Âmrikāyî hastîd? 'excuse me, are you an American?'
• İşân be man goftand, berîm tû 'he said to me, "Let's go in." '

Possessive determiners

Possession is often expressed by adding suffixes to nouns; the same suffixes can also be used as object pronouns. For the third person these are gender-neutral (unlike in English); for example, ketâbaš could mean 'his book' or 'her book'.

{| class="wikitable"?!

|+Possessive determiners (literary forms)

|-

|-

! Person !! Singular !! Plural

|-

! 1st

| -am || -emân

|-

! 2nd

| -at || -etân

|-

! 3rd

| -aş || -eşân

|}

{| class="wikitable"?!

|+Possessive determiners (Iranian dialectal forms)

|-

|-

! Person !! Singular !! Plural

|-

! 1st

| -am || -emun

|-

! 2nd

| -et || -etun

|-

! 3rd

| -eş || -eşun

|}

Examples:

• ketâbetun rû-ye mîze 'your book is on the table'
• ketâbam rû-ye mîz ast 'my book is on the table'

When the stem to which they are added ends in a vowel, a y is inserted for ease of pronunciation. However, with the plural marker ـ‌ها -hâ, it is also common in Iranian dialects to drop the -a-/-e- stem from the possessive marker. For example, 'my cars' could be translated as either mâşînhâyam with the -y- or mâşînhâm. It can be simplified even more to the colloquial spoken form by dropping h, for ease of pronunciation, to mâşînâm. Sometimes, -hâ is written attached to the word: mâşînhâ.

Ezâfe

Another way of expressing possession is by using subject pronouns or a noun phrase with ezâfe. Although in the third person this implies a change of person. These can also never be used as a possessive or direct object within a clause in which the same is the subject of the verb.

• ketâb-e şomâ rû-ye mîze 'your book is on the table'.
• ketâb-e man rû-ye mîze 'my book is on the table'.
• ketâb-e ostâd rû-ye mîz ast 'the professor's book is on the table'.
• Akbar barâdar-e u râ dîd 'Akbar saw his(i.e.: someone else's) brother'.
• Akbar barâdareş râ dîd 'Akbar saw his(i.e.: his own or someone else's) brother'.
• Correct: barâdaram râ dîdam 'I saw my brother'.
• Incorrect: barâdar-e man râ dîdam Since the subject pronoun is used as a possessive pronoun as well with ezafe construction.

Object pronouns

Object pronouns are the same as subject pronouns (followed by the postposition را râ), but objects can also be marked with the possessive determiners described above, which get attached to the verbs instead of nouns and don't need the postposition; consider the example "Yesterday I saw him" shown below.

{| class="wikitable"

|+Direct object incorporation

!Transliteration

!Persian

!Notes

|-

|dîrûz û râ dîdam

|

|Postposition را râ needed when using a subject pronoun as an object pronoun.

|-

|dîrûz dîdamaş

|

|No postposition needed; possessive determiner attached to the verb.

|}

Demonstrative pronouns

The demonstrative pronouns are (în, this) and (ân, that) respectively. Their plural forms can be (înhâ, these) and (ânhâ, those) for inanimate nouns, or (înân, these) and (ânân, those) for animate nouns. Note that and are also used as third-person subject pronouns.

Demonstratives can also be combined with the indefinite pronouns (yekî, one) and (yekîhâ, ones) to give: (în yekî, this one), (ân yekî, that one), (în yekîhâ, these ones) and (ân yekîhâ, those ones).

Adjectives

<!---->

Adjectives typically follow the nouns that they modify by using the ezâfe construct. However, adjectives can precede nouns in compounded derivational forms such as xoš-baxt (literally 'good-luck') 'lucky', and bad-kâr (literally 'bad-deed') 'wicked'. Adjectives can come in any different orders after a noun and, in that case, show emphasis.

The comparative form ('more ...') is the suffix -tar (), and the superlative ('the most ...') is the suffix -tarin ().

Comparatives that are used attributively follow the nouns that they modify, but superlatives precede their nouns.

The word 'than' is expressed by the preposition (az):

Verbs

Normal verbs can be formed by the following pattern:

NEG – DUR or SUBJ/IMPER – root – PAST – PERSON – OBJ

• Negative prefix: na, which changes to ne before the Imperfective prefix (ne-mî-)
• Imperfective or durative prefix: mî-
• Subjunctive/Imperative prefix: be-
• Past suffix: -d, which changes to -t after unvoiced consonants
• Personal suffix: e.g. -am 'I', -i 'you (sg.)' etc.
• Object suffix: the most commonly used is -aš or -eš 'him/her/it'

{| class="wikitable"

|+Person Suffixes (Literary Forms)

|-

|-

! Person !! Singular !! Plural

|-

! 1st

| ـَم -am || ـیم -îm

|-

! 2nd

| ـی -î || ـید -îd

|-

! 3rd

| ـَد -ad* || ـَند -and

|}

<nowiki>*</nowiki> In the past tense, the past stem alone is used without any ending (e.g. رفت raft, not رفتد *raftad)

{| class="wikitable"

|+Person Suffixes (Spoken Forms)

|-

|-

! Person !! Singular !! Plural

|-

! 1st

| ـَم -am || ـیم -îm

|-

! 2nd

| ـی -î || ـید/ـین -îd/-în

|-

! 3rd

| ـه -e* || ـَن -an

|}

<nowiki>*</nowiki> In the past tense, the past stem is used alone, without any ending (رفت raft, not رفته *rafte).

{| class="wikitable"

|+Object suffixes (Literary Forms)

|-

|-

! Person !! Singular !! Plural

|-

! 1st

| ـَم -am || ـِمان -emân

|-

! 2nd

| ـَت -at || ـِتان -etân

|-

! 3rd

| ـَش -aş || ـِشان -eşân

|}

{| class="wikitable"

|+Object suffixes (Spoken Forms)

|-

|-

! Person !! Singular !! Plural

|-

! 1st

| ـَم -am || ـِمون -emûn

|-

! 2nd

| ـِت -et || ـِتون -etûn

|-

! 3rd

| ـِش -eş || ـِشون -eşûn

|}

Tenses

Here are the most common tenses:

Infinitive

The infinitive ending is formed with ـَن (-an): خوردن xordan 'to eat'. The basic stem of the verb is formed by deleting this ending: خورد xord.

Past

The past tense is formed by deleting the infinitive ending and adding the personal endings to the stem. In the third person singular, however, there is no personal ending so خوردن xordan would become خورد xord, 'he/she/it ate'.

Imperfect

The imperfect tense is made by taking the past tense as described above and prefixing it with می mî-, thus می‌خوردم mîxordam 'I was eating', 'I used to eat'. This tense can also have a conditional meaning: 'I would eat', 'I would have eaten'.

Perfect

The perfect tense is formed by taking the stem of the verb, adding ـه e to the end and then adding the different persons of the present tense of 'to be'. So خوردن xordan in the perfect first person singular would be خورده‌ام xordeam 'I have eaten' and the 3rd person singular would become خورده است xorde ast. However, in the spoken form, ast is omitted, making خورده xorde 's/he has eaten".

Pluperfect

The pluperfect tense is formed by taking the stem of the perfect (خورده xorde), adding بود bud, and then adding the personal endings: خورده بودم xorde bûdam 'I had eaten'. In the third person-singular, بود bud is added, with no ending.

Future

The future tense is formed by taking the present tense form of خواستن xâstan 'to want' and conjugating it to the correct person; that verb in the third person singular is خواهد xâhad. Next, it is put in front of the shortened infinitive of the verb (خورد xord, which forms خواهد خورد xâhad xord 'he/she/it will eat'). For compound verbs, such as تمیز کردن tamîz kardan 'to clean', خواهد xâhad is between both words, and کردن kardan is reduced to its stem to form تمیز خواهد کرد tamîz xâhad kard 'he/she/it will clean'. In the negative, خواهد xâhad has نـ na- added to form نخواهد خورد naxâhad xord 'he will not eat'. The future tense is generally avoided in colloquial Persian.

Present

The present tense is formed by taking the present stem of the verb, adding the prefix می mî-, and conjugating it. The present stem is often not predictable from the infinitive and so it must be learned separately. The present stem of the verb خوردن xordan 'to eat', for example, is خور xor, and so the present first-person singular is می‌خورم mîxoram 'I eat, am eating, do eat'. The third-person singular ending is ـد -ad. The negative نـ is pronounced ne- before mî-, but in all other tenses, it is pronounced na-. Frequently, the present tense is used with an adverb (such as فردا fardâ 'tomorrow') instead of the future tense described above.

• فردا به سينما می‌رود fardâ be sînemâ mîravad 'tomorrow he will go to cinema'

Present subjunctive

The present subjunctive is made by changing the prefix mî- of the present tense to بـ be- or bo- (before a verb with the vowel o): بخورم boxoram 'I may eat, let me eat', بنويسم benevîsam 'I may write', 'let me write'.

Compound verbs

Light verbs such as کردن 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 گفتگو goftegu means 'conversation', while گفتگو کردن 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 (such as kardan) is conjugated; the preceding word it is not affected:

• دارم گفتگو می‌کنم dâram goftegu mîkonam 'I am speaking'
• گفتگو کرده‌ام goftegu kardeam 'I have spoken'
• گفتگو خواهم کرد goftegû xâham kard 'I will speak'

Here are other examples of compound verbs with kardan:

• فراموش کردن farâmûş kardan 'to forget'
• گریه کردن gerye kardan 'to cry'
• تلفن کردن telefon kardan 'to call, to telephone'
• بازسازی کردن bâzsâzî kardan 'to fix'

Auxiliary verbs

• باید bâyad 'must': Not conjugated. The dependent clause is subjunctive.
• شاید šâyad 'might': Not conjugated. The dependent clause is subjunctive.
• توانستن tavânestan 'can' (literally 'to be able to'): Conjugated. The dependent clause is subjunctive.
• خواستن xâstan 'want': Conjugated. The dependent clause is subjunctive.
• خواستن xâstan 'will': Conjugated. The main verb is tenseless.

Simplified spoken verbs

In the spoken language, certain common verbs are pronounced in a shortened form:

• رفتن raftan 'to go' (Literary present form rav-) Spoken present form r-: mîram 'I go', mîrî 'you go', berîm 'let's go'
• دادن dâdan 'to give' (Literary present form deh-) Spoken present form d-: mîdam 'I give', mîdîm 'we give'
• گفتن goftan 'to say' (Literary present form gu-) Spoken present form g-: mîgam 'I say', mîgîn 'you say'
• آمدن âmadan 'to come' (Literary present form ây-) Spoken present form â-: miyâm 'I am coming'
• خواستن xâstan 'to want' (Literary present form xâh-) Spoken present form xâ-: mîxâm 'I want'

Prepositions

Prepositions in Persian generally behave like in English and precede their object. They come in two kinds: the basic prepositions such as dar 'in', which are placed directly before the noun or pronoun without an ezâfe, and a more numerous class, which comes from nouns or adverbs that are joined to the following noun by an ezâfe (-e or -ye). Here are some prepositions:

• az (اَز) 'from'
• bâ (با) 'with'
• bar (بَر) 'on'
• barâ-ye (بَرایِ) 'for'
• be (به) 'to'
• bî (بی) 'without'
• dar (دَر) 'in'
• mânand-e (مانَنْدِ) 'like'
• mesl-e (مِثْلِ) 'like'
• rû-ye (رویِ) 'on'
• tâ (تا) 'till, until'
• tû-ye (تویِ) 'in'
• zîr-e (زیرِ) 'under'

See also

• Persian language
• Tajik grammar
• Kurdish grammar

References

Sources

• Abrahams, Simin (2005). Modern Persian: A Course-Book. Routledge.
• Bleeck, Arthur Henry (1857). A Concise Grammar of the Persian Language.
• Brookshaw, Dominic Parviz (2010). The Routledge Introductory Persian Course: Farsi Shirin Ast. Routledge.
• Boyle, John Andrew (1966). Grammar of Modern Persian. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden.
• Dahlén, Ashk (2010). Modern persisk grammatik (4th edition 2024) (Swedish)
• Doctor, Sorabshaw Byramji (1875). A New Grammar Of The Persian Tongue, Part 1, Accidence: For The Use Of The Higher Classes In Schools And Colleges (reprinted 2010).
• Elwell-Sutton, L.P. (1963). Elementary Persian Grammar.
• Forbes, B. (1985). A Grammar of the Persian Language (reprinted 2003).
• Forbes, Duncan (1869). A Grammar of the Persian Language (4th edition).
• Ibrahim, Meerza Mohammad (1841). A Grammar Of The Persian Language: To Which Are Subjoined Several Dialogues; With An Alphabetical List Of The English And Persian Terms Of Grammar.
• Johnson, Edwin Lee (1917). Historical Grammar of the Ancient Persian Language.
• Jones, Sir William (1771). A Grammar of the Persian Language.
• Kent, Roland G. (1950). Old Persian: Grammar, Texts, Lexicon.
• Lambton, Ann K.S. (1953) Persian Grammar. Cambridge University Press.
• Lazard, Gilbert; Lyon, Shirley A. (1993). A Grammar of Contemporary Persian (Persian Studies, No 14) (paperback).
• Mace, John (2003). Persian Grammar: For Reference and Revision. Routledge Curzon.
• Mahootian, Shahrzad (1997). Persian (Descriptive Grammars).
• Obolensky, Serge; Yazdan Panah, Kambiz; Khaje Nouri, Fereidoun (1963). Persian Basic Course units 1–12. Foreign Service Institute, Washington. (Republished as Spoken Persian in 1973.)
• Phillott, D. C. (1919) Higher Persian Grammar: For The Use Of The Calcutta University, vols, 1 and 2. (reprinted 2008)
• Platts, John T. (1894). A Grammar of the Persian language, Part I, Accidence.
• Rafiee, Abdi (1975). Colloquial Persian. Routledge.
• Rosen, Friedrich (reprinted 2010). Modern Persian Colloquial Grammar: Containing a Short Grammar, Dialogues and Extracts from Nasir-Eddin Shah's Diaries, Tales, Etc., and a Vocabulary (originally written in German in 1890).
• St. Clair-Tisdall, William (1902). Modern Persian Conversation-Grammar; With Reading Lessons, English-Persian Vocabulary and Persian Letters.
• Stilo, Donald L.; Clinton Jerome (1994). Modern Persian: Spoken and Written.
• Thackston, Wheeler M. (1993) An Introduction to Persian (3rd edition). IBEX.
• Windfuhr, Gernot L. (1979). Persian Grammar: History and State of Its Study (Trends in Linguistics State of the Art Reports, No 12).
• Windfuhr, Gernot L. (1980). Modern Persian: Intermediate level 1. University of Michigan Press.
• Yousef, Saeed & Torabi, Hayedeh (2012): Basic Persian: A Grammar and Workbook. Routledge.
• Yousef, Saeed & Torabi, Hayedeh (2013): Intermediate Persian: A Grammar and Workbook. Routledge.

Further reading

• Perry, John R. "Persian morphology." Morphologies of Asia and Africa 2 (2007): 975–1019.
• Windfuhr, Gernot L. Persian grammar: History and state of its study. Vol. 12. Walter de Gruyter, 2011.
• Hanaway Jr, William L. "Gernot L. Windfuhr. Persian and West Iranic: History and State of Research: Part One: Persian Grammar. The Hague: Mouton, 1979.[Trends in Linguistics: State-of-the-Art Reports, No. 12." Review of Middle East Studies 16.1 (1982): 56–58.

External links

• Persian Grammar by Navid Fazel (English; German)
• Persian Grammar and Resources
• Introduction to Persian grammar (in Persian)
• Learning Persian grammar: an introduction (in Persian)
• A brief Persian grammar course written by Ahmad Shamlou (in Persian)
• BBC's complete guide to Persian grammar (in Persian)
• Grammar and Its Standards is a manuscript, in Arabic, about Persian grammar. It dates from 1553.

Online Persian verb conjugators

• Persian verb conjugator – Online conjugation of Persian verbs