Learn Persian (Farsi)

What is an Imperfective Tense?
The imperfective aspect refers to an action that is considered as ongoing, habitual, or repeated.

How to make a Past Imperfective Verb in Persian
Making a Past Imperfective verb in Persian is quite easy. You just need to add “mi” to the beginning of the Past Simple form of the verb.

mi+ Past Root + Person’s suffix

Although there is not an exact equivalent for this tense in English, Past Progressive (Past Continuous) tense can be considered as the closest tense in English to Past Imperfective Tense in Persian.

I was playing tennis yesterday.
/man diruz tennis bāzi mikardam./

When I was young, I was travelling a lot.
/vaqti javān budam, xeyli mosāferat miraftam./

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(Right to Left) ←

(Left to Right) →

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Can you do the same for these verbs:
To drink: /nušidan/ past tense root: nušid
To see: /didan/ past tense root: ?
To read: /xāndan/ past tense root: ?
To say: /goftan/ past tense root: ?
To jump: /paridan/ past tense root: ?

Making negative verbs in Past Simple is similar to Negative Present Simple tense.
The only difference is, in Present Simple you add NE (ن) in the beginning of the verb, while in Past Simple, you add NA (ن) in the beginning of the verb.

In fact in both you add the same letter (i.e. /n/) but with different following vowel.

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Example:

(Right to Left) ←

(Left to Right) →

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Can you do the same for these verbs:
To drink: /nušidan/ past tense root: nušid
To see: /didan/ past tense root: ?
To read: /xāndan/ past tense root: ?
To say: /goftan/ past tense root: ?

The structure of past simple verbs in Persian is very similar to present simple verbs.
In order to generate a past simple verb in Persian, we are taking steps introduced in this lesson.

Please note that in Past tenses, we need to use Past Tense root of the verb.

1. Tense prefix (WHEN?)

Past Simple tense has no Tense Prefix. It means that the verb starts with Past Tense root.

2. Past tense root (WHAT?)

Making past tense root in Persian is very easy.

All infinitives in Persian, end in /an/ (ن). Not to mention that the letter “a”, is a vowel and is not an actual letter in Persian script.

All you have to is, drop N from the end of the infinitive and you will have the Past tense root.

Example:

Infinitive: To Eat /xordan/ خوردن

Past tense root: /xord/ خورد

3. Person suffix

Introduced in this lesson

Exception: Singular Third person does not take its Person’s suffix (i.e. “D”).

All infinitives in Persian end in either /DaN/ or /TaN/, while majority of them end in /DaN/. It means that if the Singular Third person’s suffix was applied to Past Simple verb, the verb would be:

/xordad/ خوردد

The example above illustrates that the same letter /d/ (د) would be repeated at the end of the verb. Repetitive letters do not sound very nice in Persian language, and possibly due to this hypothesis, the repetitive letter of /d/ has been dropped in order to make the verb easier to be pronounced.

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Example:

(Right to Left) ←

(Left to Right) →

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Can you do the same for these verbs:
To drink: /nušidan/ past tense root: nušid
To see: /didan/ past tense root: ?
To read: /xāndan/ past tense root: ?
To say: /goftan/ past tense root: ?