Persian Lesson 26 – ‘Break’ in Persian, interrogative in S. P. tense

Salam! Khosh amadid!

Hello everyone, welcome back!

To begin with, let’s have a look at parts of three messages.

1- … I need to know one thing that I could not find anywhere in your site. What is the word/letter for Zero? …

A good one, isn’t it? I have simply forgotten the first number! Zero = /sefr/.

Sefr

2- … I just want to know is it a class in university or just for fun? And also what should I do in order to be able to learn this language fluently?…

Well, it’s neither a class in university nor simply for fun! It’s a class on Internet!!

In one word, it’s for love. Probably, I have reasons to suffer this much trouble to prepare these lessons for you. You may accept it as just a simple gift from a teacher who has been separated from hundreds of his true students who loved him as a young father. Whatever the reasons are, they must be really far from money-making purposes.

To learn this language, like any other language, simply you should try! As I have told you repeatedly, practice makes perfect. Unlike me, you should have clear reasons in learning this language! You’d better focus on your goal first. Try to practice it with somebody. Listen to some Persian speaking radios or other sources to improve your listening ability. Try to stay close to its culture through listening to its music or whatever you think is helpful. Make a comparison between learning English, if English is your second language, and Persian. How could you improve your English? So, there must be a similar way in learning Persian or any other languages. How long did it take you to become acceptably fluent in English? The same thing might happen when you are learning another language. Generally, it takes us some two years to partially understand a particular language. But in some cases, we could accelerate this process via some factors, such as staying with some people who speak in that language, taking a practical conversation course, and so on. We know that there are many linguistic elements that can explain it better, but frankly, it is beyond the patience of this lesson to count them one by one!

3- This message has three questions in it.

Question A- Words are sometimes introduced with “(here)” in the English translation. Examples: To break = (here): , To fly (here) = , Short (here) = , and Younger(here) = . To what does the “(here)” refer?

As you know, words may have different meanings in different contexts. The word “(here)” refers to the meaning of this particular word in the given sentence. Look at the two examples below:

Birds flew. (Intransitive verb)
I flew a kite. (Transitive verb)

I think you agree that the word ‘fly’ is not completely the same in these two sentences. In ‘birds flew’, the word ‘flew’ means: to move through the air by means of wings or a machine. While, in ‘I flew a kite’, the same word means: to cause something to move through the air. Is this correct?

In English, however, we have the same word for these two meanings. But, this word has two equivalents in Persian in these two situations. The word ‘fly’ as noun means /pærva:z/. Nevertheless, for the word ‘fly’ as a verb, we have two words in Persian.

1- It means /pærva:z kærdæn/ if it refers to this meaning: to move through the air by means of wings or a machine. So, for ‘birds flew’ we have this sentence in Persian: /pærændega:n pærva:z kærdænd/.

2- It means /pærva:z da:dæn/ if it refers to this meaning: to cause something to move through the air. So, for ‘I flew a kite’ we have the following sentence in Persian: /mæn yek ba:d ba:dæk ra: pærva:z da:dæm/.

Question B-You have given three words for “to break”: To break = /tæreka:ndæn/, To break (here) = /khæra:b kærdæn/ , and /shekæstæn/ (Lesson 23, Useful Drills, translation sentence number 9). How do I know which to use?

Answer: this one is also a context-oriented one. Let’s see the word ‘break’ in English.

I broke my computer.

Does the word ‘broke’ mean that I broke my computer into pieces? Certainly not. It means that the physical appearance of my computer is ok, but it is not working due to some internal problem, malfunctioning, or something like this. But, we use ‘broke’ for this in English.

So, if this is the case and we mean some malfunctioning of something such as computers, cars, TVs and so on, we should use /khæra:b kærdæn/ in Persian.

Now, look at this example:

I broke his head.

Certainly, here the word ‘broke’ doesn’t refer to malfunctioning of his head. It means that I have really broken his head!! His head is bleeding!

So, if we mean ‘breaking the physical appearance of something’ such as breaking a window, a cup, a table, a head!, we should use /shekæstæn/ in Persian.

How about the following sentence?

I broke his balloon.

Here, we mean that the balloon is blasted, burst, or something. In this case, we should use /tæreka:ndæn/ in Persian.

As you see, we have different words to convey different meanings. I hope it’s not confusing.

Question C- I do not understand when to use ‘they’ = /a:nha:/ vs /isha:n/.

Answer: I think I have already explained it somewhere.

‘They’ means /a:nha:/ when the subject is plural. Example: they went = /a:nha: ræftænd/.

‘They’ means /isha:n/ when the subject is ‘he’ or ‘she’ and we want to show our respect to that person. This is very polite and common to use plural verbs for single verbs in Persian.

Example: he went = /u: ræft/. This is the exact Persian equivalent for this English sentence. However, to show our respect to that person, we’d better say /isha:n ræftænd/ not /u: ræft/. The same is true with plural ‘you’ for singular ‘you’. We’d better say /shoma:/ for /to/.

I deeply hope the problem is solved. If not, I’ll break my fingers to stop writing for good!!

All right, now it’s your turn to answer!!

Quiz:

1- Say these words in Persian:

Street- homework- girl- country- kite- balloon- to fly- room- car- bag- knife- bus

2- Say these numbers in Persian:

5- 10- 18- 33- 123- 312- 960- 1255- 15000- 65231- 156897- 855446- 5635472-

3- Say these sentences in Persian:

A- They didn’t find their white dog any more.
B- That bad man cut 500 green trees last year.
C- That big bulldozer destroyed our beautiful house 22 years ago.
D- I didn’t touch that big light the day before yesterday.

Any problems? Try to review the lessons once more!!

All right,

Today, we are going to say this sentence in Persian: did he break your table?

Great guess! Today, we are going to see the question form of sentences in simple past tense.

We already know how to say : he broke your table. Don’t we? Let’s try it again now.

/u: mi:zeta:n ra: shekæst/. Is this correct? Wonderful!

Now, look at this word: /a:ya:/.

Aya

Put this word at the beginning of the above sentence and replace the full stop with a question mark. That’s it! We have proudly changed the above sentence into a question form!!

Note: here, the intonation of the verb(the way we pronounce the verb) should change a bit; like what you see in the following sentence:

/a:ya: u: mi:zeta:n ra: shekæst/?

Aya oo mizetan ra shekast

Is this clear? Perfect!

Now try this one:

He saw that man. /u: a:n mærd ra: did/. Question? /a:ya: u: a:n mærd ra: did/?

Aya oo an mard ra did

All right, please go to Useful drills page to try more.

Let’s write page is waiting for you if you want to see the main stress of the new words.

See you next week!

Khoda Hafez!

Lesson 26

• Let’s Write 26
• Useful Drills 26
• Persian Samples 26