The grammar of the Persian language is similar to that of many other Indo-European languages. The language 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.
While Persian has a standard subject-object-verb (SOV) word order, it is not strongly left-branching (e.g. it uses prepositions and not postpositions, it's mainly a head-initial language). Persian is a pro-drop language because its verbs have unambiguous personal suffixes making the use of pronouns optional: thus, the subject mark often appears as a suffix at the very end of the sentence.
The main clause precedes a subordinate clause, often using the familiar Indo-European subordinator ke ("which").
The interrogative particle âyâ (), that asks a yesâÂÂno question, in written Persian, appears at the beginning of a sentence. Grammatical modifiers, such as adjectives, normally follow the nouns they modify by using the ezâfe (çöçÃÂÃÂ), but they occasionally precede nouns. Persian is one of the few SOV languages to use prepositions. The only case marker in the written language, râ () (in the spoken language, ro or o), follows a definite direct object noun phrase.
Normal sentences are subject-prepositional phrase-object-verb. If the object is specific, the order is (S) (O + râ) (PP) V. However, Persian can have a relatively free word order, often called scrambling, because the parts of speech are generally unambiguous, and prepositions and the accusative marker help to disambiguate the case of a given noun phrase. The scrambling characteristic has allowed Persian a high degree of flexibility for versification and rhyming.
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 mostly used in urban areas and -a is mostly used in rural areas. The first one is in newer dialects and the second one is in older dialects. The consonants and vowels changed throughout history.
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 number one, yek, often shortened to ye.
Persian nouns and pronouns have no grammatical gender.
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 used only when the noun has no numbers before it and is definite.
In the spoken language, when nouns or pronouns end with a consonant, -hâ is reduced to -â .
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.
Nouns adopted from Arabic usually have special plurals, formed with the ending -ât or by changing the vowels. (E.g. 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. (Cf. "indexes" vs. "indices" in English for the plural of a word adopted from Latin.)
There are three cases in Persian: nominative (or subject) case, vocative case and accusative (or object) case. The nominative is the unmarked form of a noun, but the vocative and 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.
Inanimate subjects do not require plural verb forms, especially in the spoken language: ketâbhâ unjâst ('the books "is" there').
Persian is a null-subject or pro-drop language, so 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.
* rarely used
* uses 3rd person plural verb form
Persian resembles Romance languages like French in that the second person plural pronoun à Âomâ is used as a polite form of address. Persian to is used among intimate friends (the so-called TâÂÂV distinction).
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, ketâbaà ¡ could mean 'his book' or 'her book'.
Examples:
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 ÃÂâÂÂÃÂç -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 mâà Âînhâyam with the -y- or mâà Âînhâm. It can be simplified even more to the colloquial spoken form by dropping h, for ease of pronunciation, to mâà Âînâm. Sometimes, -hâ is written attached to the word: mâà Âînhâ.
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.
Object pronouns are the same as subject pronouns (followed by the postposition ñç 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.
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 typically follow the nouns they modify, using the ezâfe construct. However, adjectives can precede nouns in compounded derivational forms such as xoà ¡-baxt (literally 'good-luck') 'lucky', and bad-kâr (literally 'bad-deed') 'wicked'. Adjectives can come in any different orders after a noun and in this case adjectives that come at the end have more emphasis. Comparative forms ('more ...') make use of the suffix -tar (), and the superlative form ('the most ...') uses the suffix -tarin ().
Comparatives used attributively follow the nouns they modify, but superlatives precede their nouns.
The word 'than' is expressed by the preposition (az):
Normal verbs can be formed using the following pattern:
NEG â DUR or SUBJ/IMPER â root â PAST â PERSON â OBJ
<nowiki>*</nowiki> In the past tense, the past stem alone is used without any ending (e.g. ñÃÂê raft, not ñÃÂêï *raftad)
<nowiki>*</nowiki> In the past tense, the past stem alone is used without any ending (ñÃÂê raft, not ñÃÂêà*rafte)
Here are the most common tenses:
The infinitive ending is formed with ÃÂÃÂà(-an): îÃÂñïàxordan 'to eat'. The basic stem of the verb is formed by deleting this ending: îÃÂñï xord.
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 îÃÂñïàxordan would become îÃÂñï xord, 'he/she/it ate'.
The imperfect tense is made by taking the past tense as described above and prefixing it with ààmî-, thus àÃÂâÂÂîÃÂñïàmîxordam 'I was eating', 'I used to eat'. This tense can also have a conditional meaning: 'I would eat', 'I would have eaten'.
The perfect tense is formed by taking the stem of the verb, adding ÃÂàe to the end and then adding the different persons of the present tense of 'to be'. So îÃÂñïàxordan in the perfect first person singular would be îÃÂñïÃÂâÂÂçàxordeam 'I have eaten' and the 3rd person singular would become îÃÂñïàçóê xorde ast. However, in the spoken form, ast is omitted, making îÃÂñïàxorde 's/he has eaten".
The pluperfect tense is formed by taking the stem of the perfect, e.g. îÃÂñïàxorde, adding èÃÂï bud, and finally adding the personal endings: îÃÂñïàèÃÂïàxorde bûdam 'I had eaten'. In the third person singular, èÃÂï bud is added (with no ending).
The future tense is formed by taking the present tense form of îÃÂçóêàxâstan 'to want', and conjugating it to the correct person; this verb in third person singular is îÃÂçÃÂï xâhad. Next, it is put in front of the shortened infinitive of the verb, e.g. îÃÂñï xord, thus îÃÂçÃÂï îÃÂñï xâhad xord 'he/she/it will eat'. For compound verbs, such as êàÃÂò éñïàtamîz kardan 'to clean', îÃÂçÃÂï xâhad goes in between both words, and éñïàkardan is reduced to its stem, thus êàÃÂò îÃÂçÃÂï éñï tamîz xâhad kard 'he/she/it will clean'. In the negative, îÃÂçÃÂï xâhad receives ÃÂàna- to make ÃÂîÃÂçÃÂï îÃÂñï naxâhad xord 'he will not eat'. The future tense is generally avoided in colloquial Persian.
The present tense is formed by taking the present stem of the verb, adding the prefix ààmî-, and conjugating it. The present stem is often not predictable from the infinitive and so is to be learnt separately. The present stem of the verb îÃÂñïàxordan 'to eat' for example, is îÃÂñ xor, so the present first person singular would be àÃÂâÂÂîÃÂñàmîxoram 'I eat, am eating, do eat'. The third person singular ending is ÃÂï -ad. The negative ÃÂàis pronounced ne- before mî-, but in all other tenses, it is pronounced na-. Frequently the present tense is used together with an adverb (for example: ÃÂñïç fardâ 'tomorrow') instead of the future tense described above.
The present subjunctive is made by changing the prefix mî- of the present tense to èàbe- or bo- (before a verb with the vowel o): èîÃÂñàboxoram 'I may eat, let me eat', èÃÂÃÂÃÂóàbenevîsam 'I may write', 'let me write'.
Light verbs such as éñïàkardan '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 ïÃÂêïàgoftegu means 'conversation', while ïÃÂêïàéñïàgoftegu 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:
Other examples of compound verbs with kardan:
In the spoken language, certain commonly used verbs are pronounced in a shortened form:
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, made from nouns or adverbs joined to the following noun by an ezâfe (-e or -ye). They include the following: