Learn the basic rules of Persian sentence structure
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| Michael: How are sentences structured in Persian? |
| Negar: And are the rules rigid? |
| Michael: At PersianPod101.com, we hear these questions often. In the following situation, Ben Lee, a foreign exchange student, thinks he sees a famous Iranian actor as he's walking with a friend at Tehran City's international airport. He gestures to his friend, Sousan Soheyli |
| "I know him! That's Parviz Parastui!" |
| Ben Lee: (man oon ro mishnaasam! oon parviz parastooyi-ye!) |
| من اون رو میشناسم! اون پرویز پرستوییه! |
| Dialogue |
| Ben Lee: (man oon ro mishnaasam! oon parviz parastooyi-ye!) |
| من اون رو میشناسم! اون پرویز پرستوییه! |
| Sousan Soheyli: (man ham oon ro mishnaasam!) |
| من هم اون رو میشناسم! |
| Michael: Once more with the English translation. |
| Ben Lee: (man oon ro mishnaasam! oon parviz parastooyi-ye!) |
| من اون رو میشناسم! اون پرویز پرستوییه! |
| Michael: "I know him! That's Parviz Parastui!" |
| Sousan Soheyli: (man ham oon ro mishnaasam!) |
| من هم اون رو میشناسم! |
| Michael: "I know him, too!" |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Michael: In this lesson, you will be learning about sentence structure in Persian. You will be pleased to hear, I am sure, that Persian sentence structure is not that difficult to learn. |
| Where English is a subject–verb–object language, Persian is a subject–object–verb language. It is also a very flexible language, so flexible, in fact, that it can be really fun to create verses and rhymes with because, for one thing, it's so easy to create these. |
| The flexibility of Persian sentence structure is due to the fact that, among other things, the parts of speech are so obvious. There is very little room for confusion as to what the object, subject and so on might be, no matter what order you put them in. One of the factors that contributes to this clarity is the direct object marker. Let's have another listen to the dialogue you heard earlier, and see how the object marker can facilitate the flexibility of Persian sentence structure. |
| [Recall 1] |
| Michael: Do you remember how Ben Lee says "I know him! That's Parviz Parastui!?" |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Negar as Ben Lee: (man oon ro mishnaasam! oon parviz parastooyi-ye!) |
| من اون رو میشناسم! اون پرویز پرستوییه! |
| Michael: You can tell that the first sentence follows the subject–object–verb structure, which is the conventional Persian sentence structure. However, it can also be said in a subject–verb–object–object marker format. This is how that would sound: |
| Negar: (man mishnaasam oon ro! oon parviz parastooyi-ye!) |
| من میشناسم اون رو! اون پرویز پرستوییه! |
| Michael: The object marker in Persian is this: |
| Negar: (raa) |
| را |
| Michael: The colloquial form of that is |
| Negar: (ro) |
| رو. |
| Michael: and it is used to tell us what the direct object in a sentence is. In the sentence we just listened to, you can hear the object marker: |
| Negar: (ro) |
| رو |
| Michael: When you hear or see this marker, it indicates the word before that is the direct object. |
| In case you don't know what a direct object is, let me explain. In English, if I say "Jack fed the dog," then the direct object is "dog" because it is the noun in the sentence that is receiving the action, as opposed to doing the action. It is also the only other noun in the sentence, besides the subject, which is also usually a good indicator that it is the direct object in the sentence. |
| An indirect object would be one that is not directly acted on by the subject. For instance, if I say, "Jack fed the dog a bone," then the word "bone" is the indirect object. I hope that makes sense. Let's explore this particular topic a little further by looking at the second half of the dialogue. |
| [Recall 2] |
| Michael: Do you remember how Sousan Soheyli says "I know him, too?" |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Negar as Sousan Soheyli: (man ham oon ro mishnaasam!) |
| من هم اون رو میشناسم! |
| Michael: This sentence also can be written in the object–object marker–subject–verb format. It would then sound like this: |
| Negar: (oon ro man ham mishnaasam!) |
| اون رو من هم میشناسم! |
| Michael: A quick reminder that here the object marker is |
| Negar: (ro) |
| را |
| Michael: and that it is used to indicate the direct object in a sentence. It's important to note that there is not always a direct object marker in a sentence, but there will always be a preposition in front of the indirect object. This way, if there are two objects in a sentence, you will always know which one is the indirect object and, therefore, which one is the direct object. This is one of the reasons the direct object marker might not be present in a sentence. |
| The direct object marker is used with definite objects. In other words, if a direct object noun is specific or definite, we add the same object marker. Let's look at an example. In this sentence, the direct object is indefinite: "I bought a book from a book store." We know it's indefinite in English because it's preceded by the indefinite article "a." In this sense, the Persian object marker is a bit like the definite English articles "the" or "that" and so on. The Persian version of this sentence with the indefinite object is: |
| Negar: (az ketaabforooshi yek ketaab kharidan.) |
| از کتابفروشی یک کتاب خریدم. |
| Michael: Now, listen to it with the definite object: |
| Negar: (az ketaabforooshi ketaab raa kharidam.) |
| از کتابفروشی کتاب را خریدم. |
| Michael: This second sentence means "I bought the book from a book store." |
| You have now learned how the direct object marker is used in a sentence and how to determine which object is the indirect object. |
| At this point, I'd like us to look at another aspect of Persian sentence structure that is useful to know—where, in English, grammatical modifiers such as adjectives are placed in front of the word they modify. In Persian, these are placed after the word that they modify. Let's listen to an example in Persian that means the same as the English, "She wore red shoes:" |
| Negar: (oo kafsh-e ghermez pooshid.) |
| او کفش قرمز پوشید. |
| Michael: This sentence, translated directly, would be "She shoes red wore." It takes a little getting used to, but you should get the hang of this order quite quickly. |
| Before we end this segment of the lesson, I'd like to talk about one more factor that influences the structure of Persian sentences. Persian is what is called a pro-drop language. This means that the pronoun in a sentence can be dropped, which is unusual for a subject–object–verb language. If the pronoun is dropped, it won't be clear what the subject of the sentence is until the verb ending at the end of the sentence is heard or read. You can hear in this sentence, for instance, how the pronoun is dropped and the verb ending tells us what the subject is: |
| Negar: (ketaab-e aabi raa didam.) |
| کتاب آبی را دیدم. |
| Michael: This sentence means "I saw the blue book." You can hear the suffix |
| Negar: (-am) ـَم |
| Michael: at the end of the verb. This particular verb suffix indicates the first person singular, and this means that, when you reach the end of the sentence and hear or read the verb, you will know that the subject is "I." This ability to drop the pronoun is another factor that contributes to the flexibility of the structure of Persian sentences. |
| [Summary] |
| Michael: In this lesson, you learned about Persian sentence structure. You learned that standard Persian follows the subject–object–verb format, but also that the language is very flexible in terms of word order. This is because it is easy to identify the objects in a sentence. The direct object is often accompanied by the direct object marker |
| Negar: (raa) |
| را |
| Michael: and the indirect object is always accompanied by a preposition. |
| Speaking of prepositions, another thing we talked about in this lesson is that Persian is a pro-drop language, which means that the pronoun can be absent from a sentence. When this happens, the ending of the verb will tell the listener or reader what the subject of the sentence is. |
| You also learned that grammatical modifiers follow the word they modify, whereas, in English, they precede the modified word. |
| Expansion/Contrast |
| Michael: In Persian, there is a particular construction called the: |
| Negar: (ezaafe) |
| اضافه |
| Michael: which is used to connect words. In practice, it sounds like this: |
| Negar: (-e) |
| Michael: When this construction is used to connect words, the noun comes first and the modifying word follows the noun. It can, for instance, be used to connect a possessed noun with its owner in a phrase like this one, meaning "my book:" |
| Negar: (ketaab-e man.) |
| کتاب من. |
| Michael: The same construction can be used to connect places, days, and seasons with their names. Here's an example meaning "the spring season," |
| Negar: (fasl-e bahaar) |
| فصل بهار |
| Michael: Interestingly, when a word ends in a consonant and the |
| Negar: (ezaafe) |
| اضافه |
| Michael: is used, then it is pronounced when spoken, but it is not written. On the other hand, when a word ends in a vowel, it is both pronounced and written. Also, it then sounds different, like this: |
| Negar: (-ye) |
| ی |
| Michael: As an example of this usage, we have: |
| Negar: (daaneshjoo-ye daaneshgaah) |
| دانشجوی دانشگاه |
| Michael: It means "university student." |
Outro |
| Michael: Do you have any more questions? We're here to answer them! |
| Negar: خداحافظ (khodaahaafez) |
| Michael: See you soon! |
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