Persian Lesson 02 - Introduction to Simple Past Tense

 

Image depicting Muhammad, notice
his face is blanked out and
the fire around his head.

Persian verbs are of two types, simple and compound. Simple verbs are like رفتن , to go (infinitive). Compound verbs are usually composed out of two words, we will talk about them in the next lesson, but to satisfy your curiosity I will give the example of: to work: کار کردن.

What is Simple Past? In our case it is: (I, you, he/she/it, we, you, they) went. In Persian the pronouns are (in the same order as before, remember, read from right to left): من . تو . او . ما . شما . آنها . These are read man, to, u, ma, shoma, anha.

To say I went you write من رفتم . Notice that the letter ن  is removed and instead  م  is added. The 'm' letter is to indicate that the one who does the action is 'I', that is why you are not obligated to write  من رفتم and can usually limit yourself to writing: رفتم.

You (singular) went:تو رفتی    -   we add ی
She/he/it went: او رفت   -    we don't add nothing
We went: ما رفتیم    -    we add یم
You (plural) went: شما رفتید    -    we add ید
They went: آنها رفتند    -    we add ند

Learn the suffixes and do the same thing as above to these other verbs:
to see: دیدن
to speak:گُفتن 
to have: داشتَن
to take: گِرِفتِن

Till next time, goodbye (chodahafez): خداحافظ