Other than the fact that Persian words have migrated to most European languages, Persian / Farsi grammar can also be understood more easily if you already speak a European language. For example, you can learn Farsi grammar by simply comparing and contrasting Farsi with English and Spanish. The grammatical similarities between Farsi and English or Farsi and Spanish are more than what you may expect.
Farsi Vs. English Vs. Spanish: “To Be”
In the case of the verb “To Be”, which is probably the most frequent verb in any language, the Present Stem in Farsi is “hast”, but it is usually dropped and only the endings (in bold letters) are used. Please note that these are the colloquial or conversational versions:
- English: I am
- Spanish: Yo soy / Yo estoy
Farsi: Man hast-am
من هستم
Hast = Present Stem
-am = Verb ending which refers to “I” – “Yo”
- English: You are (Singular Informal)
- Spanish: Tú eres / Tú estás
Farsi: To hast-i
تو هستی
Hast = Present Stem
-i = Verb ending which refers to “You (Singular Informal)” / “Tú”
- English: He/she is
- Spanish: Él/Ella es – Él/Ella está
There are TWO possibilities in Farsi:
Oon hast
اون هست
This is preferred when “is” comes after a word which ends in a vowel.
OR:
Oon-e
اونه
This is preferred for all other cases.
- English: We are
- Spanish: Nosotros/Nosotras somos – Nosotros/Nosotras estamos
Farsi: Maa hast-im
ما هستیم
- English: You are (Plural OR Singular Formal)
- Spanish: Vosotros/Vosotras sois – Usted es/ Ustedes son – Vosotros/Vosotras estáis – Usted está / Ustedes están
Farsi: Shomaa hast-in
شما هستین
Please pay attention that in Farsi, similar to Spanish, we have two registers for “You”: one is singular informal (Spanish: Tú / Farsi: To تو) and the other one is singular formal (Spanish: Usted / Farsi: Shomaa شما)
- English: They are
- Spanish: Éllos/Ellas son – Éllos/Ellas están
Farsi: Oon-haa hast-an
اونها هستن
Subject Pronouns in Farsi and Spanish
As you can see, in Farsi as well as in Spanish, we can safely let go of the subject pronouns (I, you, he/she/it, we, them) in a sentence because the verb conjugation already indicates the subject. For example:
She is smart.
Es inteligente.
Baa-hoosh-e.
باهوشه
This is simply because the verb conjugation already reflects the pronoun (i.e. the verb already shows what person or thing it refers to).
Quite interesting, isn’t it? Explore more of Farsi grammar by checking out my other post here.