Learn how to ask "Where?"
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| Salam be hamegi, Sāre hastam! Hi everybody! I’m Sareh. |
| Welcome to PersianPod101.com’s “Persian in 3 minutes”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Persian. |
| In the last lesson, we learned how to ask "What" questions in Persian. |
| This time, we are going to ask questions using the interrogative word "Where?" |
| Imagine you want to ask where your friend is now. You will ask him Kojā hasti? This is the exact translation of "Where are you?" |
| [slowly] Kojā hasti? |
| So let’s break down this answer: |
| First we had: |
| Kojā, which is the basic translation of "Where" in Persian. |
| Hasti, which is "you are", is a pronoun of hast, and because i is added to it, it shows us that we are asking/addressing someone. |
| So normally we don't need to add to, "you", anymore, unless when we want to emphasize. |
| So, altogether it is Kojā hasti?, "Where are you?" |
| So in Persian, "Where" is mainly translated as Kojā |
| For example, if you want to ask "Where do you live?" You will say Kojā zendegi mikoni? |
| In Persian, the interrogative word is placed in the 1st position here, then the affirmative form of the verb with its suffix. Zendegi mikoni consists of zendegi, meaning “live”, and mikoni, a pronoun of the verb "kardan" meaning “to do”, which we’ve studied before. So, without adding Kojā, the verb of zendegi mikoni altogether means "you are living". |
| The word Kojā never changes. That is the easy part of Persian language. It is so easy that just by adding Kojā to any pronoun of hast or ast verbs, we can easily ask about their place. So we get |
| Kojā st? meaning “where is it” Kojā m? meaning ”Where am I” and Kojā im? meaning “Where are we?” and so onetc. |
| In Persian, unlike English, we add prepositions BEFORE "where". To ask about the destination in an informal way for example, you need to say Be kojā miravi? |
| This literally means "Where are you going to?" |
| Be is a preposition which means "to". |
| But when you want to ask "from where", you need to add the preposition of az instead. |
| az kojā literally means "from where." |
| But you need to be extra careful here. When we ask az kojā, the meaning changes depending on the verb we use next. If you add miāyi, which is a pronoun of āmadan meaning “to come”, and say az kojā miāyi?, it means "where are you coming from?" |
| But if you add miravi, the pronoun of raftan, meaning “to go”, it will become az kojā miravi? Which literally means "from where are you going?" You can use this when asking about the start of a route. |
| We also have tā , which means "until". We can also use this preposition for kojā. Do you know what "tā kojā miravi?" means? |
| Now it’s time for Anita's Advice |
| Now we know how to ask where someone is in Persian. But the thing is that saying Kojā hast?, or Kojā hasti? is not so common and sounds more like something you read in a book. So let me give me a very interesting tip. |
| We can use the suffixes which we normally add to the roots of a verb, like i, id, im, and add them to Kojā instead! It will sound even more natural! |
| For example : |
| Kojāyi? (Where are you) |
| Kojāyim? (Where are we) |
| Kojām? (Where am I) |
| So we can simply say az kojāyi? "where are you from", without using any verbs. |
| Isn't that fun? We can also use the same formula with Chi meaning “what”, Kodām meaning “which” and some other interrogatives. |
| Before ending this lesson, let’s look back at all the ways to translate "Where" in Persian: |
| - Kojā is "Where" as in "Where do you live?" Kojā zendegi mikoni? |
| - az is insisting on the origin or the starting point, as in "Where do you come from?" az kojā miāyi? |
| - be is insisting on the destination or arrival point, as in "Where are you going to?" |
| Be kojā miravi? |
| - tā is focusing on the itinerary, on the desired route, as in "Until where are you going" |
| tā kojā miravi? |
| In this lesson, we learned how to correctly use the Persian word for "Where", kojā, and also its different variations. |
| Now you can avoid getting lost! |
| In the next lesson you’ll learn more about asking questions, this time using "When" in Persian. |
| I’ll be waiting for you in the next “Persian in 3 minutes”! |
| Khodāfez! |
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