Learn the basic facts concerning grammatical cases in Persian
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Intro |
|---|
| Antoni: How many grammatical cases are there in Persian? |
| Negar: And how do they work? |
| Antoni: At PersianPod101.com, we hear these questions often. Imagine the following situation: Ben Lee is confused about the number of cases in Persian. He asks his teacher, Mona Motahari, |
| "How many cases are there in Persian?" |
| Ben Lee: (dar zabaan-e faarsi chand haalat vojood daarad?) |
| در زبان فارسی چند حالت وجود دارد؟ |
| Dialogue |
| Ben Lee: (dar zabaan-e faarsi chand haalat vojood daarad?) |
| در زبان فارسی چند حالت وجود دارد؟ |
| Mona Motahari: (do haalat-e asli vojood daarad.) |
| دو حالت اصلی وجود دارد. |
| Antoni: Once more with the English translation. |
| Ben Lee: (dar zabaan-e faarsi chand haalat vojood daarad?) |
| در زبان فارسی چند حالت وجود دارد؟ |
| Antoni: "How many cases are there in Persian?" |
| Mona Motahari: (do haalat-e asli vojood daarad.) |
| دو حالت اصلی وجود دارد. |
| Antoni: "There are two main cases." |
Lesson focus |
| Antoni: In this lesson, you will be learning about the grammatical cases in Persian. Essentially, there are two grammatical cases in Persian, but you would not be faulted for thinking there are more. This is because, in the past, Old Persian actually had eight different grammatical cases. However, during the Middle Persian period, the inflection system was done away with, for the most part. Instead, it was replaced by a system of case markers. |
| These case markers take the form of adpositions, which are a class of words that includes prepositions, postpositions, and circumpositions. Prepositions come before the words they modify—hence the prefix "pre-" in the word "preposition." Postpositions, on the other hand, are placed after the word they modify, while circumpositions are used around the words they govern. |
| Because of these case markers, Persian word order is very flexible when compared with English word order, but we'll talk more about the various case markers a bit later. What's important to know, for now, is that the two cases that are still used in Persian are the nominative and the accusative. |
| The nominative case, or |
| Negar: (haalat-e nahaadi), |
| حالت نهادی |
| Antoni: is the primary case and no markers are used. The nominative case is the one in which the noun being used is the subject of the verb in a sentence. You might say that it is the noun that is actively doing something. The nominative is also the case that's used in dictionaries. |
| In the accusative case, the postposition case marker |
| Negar: (raa) |
| را |
| Antoni: is placed behind the noun. The noun, in the accusative case, is the direct object of the verb in a sentence. The direct object is the one receiving the action, so to speak. In Persian, the term for the accusative case is |
| Negar: (haalat-e maf'ooli) |
| حالت مفعولی |
| Antoni: In a moment, we will look at some examples of how these two cases work, but, before we do that, let's quickly listen to the dialogue again. |
| [Recall 1] |
| Antoni: Do you remember how Ben Lee asks, "How many cases are there in Persian?" |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Negar as Ben Lee: (dar zabaan-e faarsi chand haalat vojood daarad?) |
| در زبان فارسی چند حالت وجود دارد؟ |
| [Recall 2] |
| Antoni: Now, let's take a look at our second sentence. |
| Do you remember how Mona Motahari says "There are two main cases?" |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Negar as Mona Motahari: (do haalat-e asli vojood daarad.) |
| دو حالت اصلی وجود دارد. |
| Antoni: Yes, as Mona says—and as was mentioned earlier—there are two primary cases in Persian. You will remember that these are the nominative and the accusative. An example of how the nominative case is used is in this sentence, meaning "The shirt is there.:" |
| Negar: (piraahan aanjaast.) |
| پیراهن آنجاست. |
| Antoni: One could also form the nominative with the plural form of the noun, like this: |
| Negar: (piraahan-haa aanjaayand.) |
| پیراهن‌ها آنجایند. |
| Antoni: meaning "The shirts are there." In both of these sentences, the noun was the subject of the verb. For this reason, there was no need to add a case marker to the noun. As you will recall, nouns in the nominative case don't take any case markers. However, if we want to form the accusative case, we do need a marker. First, a quick reminder that the marker we need is a postposition marker that sounds like this: |
| Negar: (raa) |
| را |
| Antoni: Let's make a sentence in the accusative case: "I saw that shirt." |
| Negar: (man aan piraahan raa didam.) |
| آن پیراهن را دیدم. |
| Antoni: As you can tell, in this sentence, the pronoun "I" is the subject, and the direct object is "the shirt." That is why the word |
| Negar: (piraahan) |
| پیراهن |
| Antoni: meaning "shirt," takes the postposition marker |
| Negar: (raa) |
| را |
| Antoni: Sometimes, in the accusative, a sentence will contain adjectives that tell us more about the direct object. Listen to what happens in that kind of situation: |
| Negar: (aan piraahan-e aabi raa didam.) |
| آن پیراهن آبی را دیدم. |
| Antoni: This translates to "I saw that blue shirt." Did you notice how the postposition case marker followed the grouping of "noun" and "adjective?" This is the rule for when a noun is modified by an adjective in the accusative case. |
| Now, let's say there is a modifying adjective, as well as other words that tell us more about the noun, such as in a sentence like "I bought the blue shirt that you were talking about." Here, the words "that you were talking about" tell us more specifically which shirt is being referred to. Therefore, we can say that they are modifying the noun even further. When something like this happens in a sentence, the additional modifying text comes after the postposition case marker. Listen to the Persian translation of that sentence: |
| Negar: (aan piraahan-e aabi raa ke migofti kharidam.) |
| آن پیراهن آبی را که می‌گفتی خریدم. |
| Antoni: As you could hear, the additional modifying text followed the case marker. |
| Sometimes, you might find that you need to construct a sentence with two objects. English sentences are constructed in such a way that, usually, the first object is indirect and the second one is direct, such as in the sentence, "I gave him that shirt." That said, one could also phrase it like this: "I gave the shirt to him." In this sentence, the direct object is first and the indirect object is second. This is the way Persian sentences are constructed when there are two objects—the direct object comes before the indirect object. Here is an example that means "I gave him the shirt:" |
| Negar: (piraahan raa be oo daadam.) |
| پیراهن را به او دادم. |
| Antoni: Another function of the accusative is to make generic nouns specific. Let's look at a simple example. If we say, for instance, "I bought a shirt," then the word "shirt" is not very specific or identifiable. All it tells us is that the person did not buy anything else but a shirt. Here is what that sentence sounds like in Persian: |
| Negar: (piraahan kharidam.) |
| پیراهن خریدم. |
| Antoni: In order to make the noun "shirt" or |
| Negar: (piraahan) |
| پیراهن |
| Antoni: specific and identifiable, all we have to do is add the accusative case marker to the noun. Let's hear what that sounds like: |
| Negar: (piraahan raa kharidam.) |
| پیراهن را خریدم. |
| Antoni: And there you have it. Simple. The sentence now means "I bought the shirt," implying that this is a specific shirt that is identifiable by the person being addressed. |
| And that draws to a close our discussion of the two cases in Persian. After a short summary of what you have learned so far, we will talk briefly about some of the other adpositions that are found in Persian. |
| [Summary] |
| Antoni: In this lesson, you learned that there are two main cases in Persian. These are the nominative and the accusative. The nominative case is the primary case in Persian, and the accusative case is the one in which the direct object of the verb is marked by the postposition marker |
| Negar: (raa) |
| را. |
| Antoni: You also learned that this case marker can turn a generic noun into a specific, identifiable one. |
| Expansion/Contrast (Optional) |
| Antoni: As mentioned earlier, we will now have a brief look at the other cases and case markers in Persian. In the accusative case, the marker was a postposition marker, but what's notable about most of the other case markers is that the instrumental, dative, ablative, and locative cases are all marked by prepositions. The vocative is, like the accusative, also marked by a postposition marker, while the genitive is marked by a conjunction. |
| Let's now look at the specific markers for each case. We'll begin with the instrumental case, for which the marker is the preposition |
| Negar: (baa) |
| با |
| Antoni: which means "with" or "by" and marks a noun that denotes the means by which the subject of a sentence achieves or accomplishes an action. For example: |
| Negar: (man baa docharkhe raftam.) |
| من با دوچرخه رفتم. |
| Antoni: "I went by bicycle." Here, we have the preposition before |
| Negar: (docharkhe) |
| دوچرخه |
| Antoni: meaning "bicycle," which is the means for the subject "I" to go somewhere. |
| The marker for the dative case is also a preposition and tells us which noun is the indirect object of the sentence. It sounds like this: |
| Negar: (be) |
| به |
| Antoni: This literally means "to." Let's check an example for this one: |
| Negar: (man doostam raa be khaane aavardam.) |
| من دوستم را به خانه آوردم. |
| Antoni: "I took my friend home." As you can guss, here the indirect object |
| Negar: (khaane) |
| خانه |
| Antoni: means "home" since we have the marker for the dative case before that. |
| If a word describes the motion away from a place, then it is probably demonstrating the ablative case for which the marker is the preposition: |
| Negar: (az) |
| از |
| Antoni: This preposition means "from," and, as example, we have: |
| Negar: (man az madrese aamadam.) |
| من از مدرسه آمدم. |
| Antoni: "ّI came from school." |
| Antoni: If a word in a sentence denotes a location, then it is likely to be an instance of the locative case being used. For this, the marker is the preposition |
| Negar: (dar) |
| در |
| Antoni: means "in," and an example for this one is: |
| Negar: (man dar daaneshgaah dars mikhaanam.) |
| من در دانشگاه درس می‌خوانم. |
| Antoni: "I study in university." |
| Antoni: The vocative case marker is used in a sentence where a person, animal, or object is being directly addressed. This case requires the postposition marker |
| Negar: (â). ا |
| Antoni: Please note that often the vocative case sounds too poetic for a normal conversation in modern Persian. An example for this case is: |
| Negar: (parvardegaaraa) |
| پروردگارا |
| Antoni: which means "O Lord." |
| And, finally, let's look at the genitive case marker, which is |
| Negar: (e) |
| -ِ |
| Antoni: The genitive case marks a relationship between two or more words and, in grammar references, is often introduced as |
| Negar: (efaafe) |
| اضافه |
| Antoni: And, as an example, we have: |
| Negar: (ketaab-e mo'allem) |
| کتابِ معلم |
| Antoni: which means "teacher's book." |
| And there you have it. You should now have a better idea of how grammatical cases work in Persian. |
Outro |
| Antoni: Do you have any more questions? We're here to answer them! |
| Negar: خداحافظ (khodaahaafez) |
| Antoni: See you soon! |
| Credits: Negar (Persian, Iran), Antoni (English, synthetic voice) |
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