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. "I saw the blue book" "you (plural) saw the blue book"
The main clause precedes a subordinate clause, often using the familiar Indo-European subordinator ("which").
"he told me that he wasn't coming today"
The interrogative particle (), 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 (), but occasionally precede nouns. Persian is one of the few SOV languages to use prepositions. The only case marker in the written language, () (replaced in the spoken language by or ), follows a definite direct object noun phrase.
"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 + ) (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 or is often used as a definite article; is used mostly in urban areas and in newer dialects, and is used mostly in rural areas and in older dialects. Persian consonants and vowels have changed throughout history.
Literary: "the book is on the table". Spoken: "the book is on the table".
For plural nouns, the definite plural marker 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, , which is often shortened to .
'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 , 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 "many" or . is definite and is used only if the noun has no numbers before it.
"three books" "X'many books" "many books" "the books" "I like the book" "They are students" "They are the students"
In the spoken language, when nouns or pronouns end with a consonant, is reduced to .
Literary: 'they' Informal spoken: 'they'
In the literary language, animate nouns generally use the suffix (or variants and ) for plurals, but is more common in the spoken language.
Literary: 'birds' Spoken: 'birds'
Nouns adopted from Arabic usually have special plurals, formed with the ending or by changing the vowels: / 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 "" and " "" (and "" or "" in Tehrani accent, sometimes in Dari accent), respectively. The other oblique cases are marked by prepositions.
Nominative: / ('the book is there / the books are there');
Inanimate subjects do not require plural verb forms, especially in the spoken language: ('the books "is" there'). Vocative: Accusative: 'give me the book'. Possession using : '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 when they are used as the object but otherwise stay the same. The first-person singular accusative form 'me' can be shortened to or, in the spoken language, . Pronominal genitive enclitics (see above) are different from normal pronouns, however.
+Literary forms Person Singular Plural 1st 2nd 3rd (human) (non-human), * (human only, literary) (non-human/human), (human only and formal) * rarely used
+Spoken forms Person Singular Plural 1st 2nd 3rd * (honorary) / (normal), (honorary) * uses 3rd person plural verb form
Persian resembles Romance languages like French in that the second person plural pronoun is used as a polite form of address. Persian is used among intimate friends (the so-called T–V distinction).Obolensky et al. (1963), p.87. 'excuse me, are you an American?' '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, could mean 'his book' or 'her book'. +Possessive determiners (literary forms) Person Singular Plural 1st 2nd 3rd
+Possessive determiners (Iranian dialectal forms) Person Singular Plural 1st 2nd 3rd
Examples: 'your book is on the table' 'my book is on the table'
When the stem to which they are added ends in a vowel, a is inserted for ease of pronunciation. However, with the plural marker , it is also common in Iranian dialects to drop the stem from the possessive marker. For example, 'my cars' could be translated as either with the or . It can be simplified even more to the colloquial spoken form by dropping , for ease of pronunciation, to . Sometimes, is written attached to the word: .
Ezâfe Another way of expressing possession is by using subject pronouns or a noun phrase with . 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. 'your book is on the table'. 'my book is on the table'. 'the professor's book is on the table'. 'Akbar saw his(i.e.: someone else's) brother'. 'Akbar saw his(i.e.: his own or someone else's) brother'. Correct: 'I saw my brother'. Incorrect: 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 ), but objects can also be marked with the possessive determiners described above, which get attached to the verbs instead of nouns and do not need the postposition; consider the example "Yesterday I saw him" shown below. +Direct object incorporationTransliterationPersianNotesPostposition را needed when using a subject pronoun as an object pronoun.No postposition needed; possessive determiner attached to the verb.
Demonstrative pronouns The demonstrative pronouns are (, this) and (, that) respectively. Their plural forms can be (, these) and (, those) for inanimate nouns, or (, these) and (, those) for animate nouns. Note that and are also used as third-person subject pronouns.
Demonstratives can also be combined with the indefinite pronouns (, one) and (, ones) to give: (, this one), (, that one), (, these ones) and (, those ones).
Adjectives
Adjectives typically follow the nouns that they modify by using the construct. However, adjectives can precede nouns in compounded derivational forms such as (literally 'good-luck') 'lucky', and (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 (), and the superlative ('the most ...') is the suffix ().
Comparatives that are used attributively follow the nouns that they modify, but superlatives precede their nouns.
The word 'than' is expressed by the preposition ():
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'
+Person Suffixes (Literary Forms) Person Singular Plural 1st ـَم -am ـیم -îm 2nd ـی -î ـید -îd 3rd ـَد -ad* ـَند -and * In the past tense, the past stem alone is used without any ending (e.g. رفت raft, not رفتد *raftad)
+Person Suffixes (Spoken Forms) Person Singular Plural 1st ـَم -am ـیم -îm 2nd ـی -î ـید/ـین -îd/-în 3rd ـه -e* ـَن -an * In the past tense, the past stem is used alone, without any ending (رفت raft, not رفته *rafte). +Object suffixes (Literary Forms) Person Singular Plural 1st ـَم -am ـِمان -emân 2nd ـَت -at ـِتان -etân 3rd ـَش -aş ـِشان -eşân
+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 (): '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 personal endings to the stem. In the third person singular, however, there is no personal ending so would become , 'he/she/it ate'.
Imperfect The imperfect tense is made by taking the past tense as described above and prefixing it with , thus '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 to the end and then adding the different persons of the present tense of 'to be'. So in the perfect first person singular would be 'I have eaten' and the 3rd person singular would become . However, in the spoken form, ast is omitted, making 's/he has eaten".
Pluperfect The pluperfect tense is formed by taking the stem of the perfect ( ), adding , and then adding the personal endings: 'I had eaten'. In the third person-singular, is added, with no ending.
Future The future tense is formed by taking the present tense form of 'to want' and conjugating it to the correct person; that verb in the third person singular is . Next, it is put in front of the shortened infinitive of the verb ( , which forms 'he/she/it will eat'). For compound verbs, such as 'to clean', is between both words, and is reduced to its stem to form 'he/she/it will clean'. In the negative, has added to form '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 , 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 'to eat', for example, is , and so the present first-person singular is 'I eat, am eating, do eat'. The third-person singular ending is . The negative is pronounced as before , but in all other tenses, it is pronounced as . Frequently, the present tense is used with an adverb (such as 'tomorrow') instead of the future tense described above.
'tomorrow he will go to cinema'
Present subjunctive