ESL Tip Sheet 3: Farsi (Persian)

The written language

• Arabic alphabet, written from right to left. This can cause students to reverse letters in words.
• No capital letters. 59.
• Quotation marks are seldom used even though speech is usually written as direct speech: *She said I will help them. 51; 46c.

Sentence structure and word order

• Common order is S-O-V. 32a.
• Coordination is more common than subordination. Students might overuse and. 32g.
• Farsi includes the object pronoun in a relative clause: *The editor whom you met her last week has gone to Canada. 42g.
• Although and but can occur in the same sentence. *Although it is raining but we will still have the picnic. 46d.

Nouns and pronouns

• No distinction between he and she, and no equivalent of it. 41c.
• Nonhuman plurals have no plural endings. 62a.
• No plural form is used after a numeral: *four new lamp. 44; 62a.
• Only one relative pronoun for human and nonhuman subjects or any case, so students might not distinguish between who and which. 42a.

Verbs and verbals

• No auxiliary equivalent of do. 38d.
• No gerund form (-ing), so students might use infinitive: *She avoids to go. 45c; 47d.
• Uses the equivalent of have to form the past progressive. 38e.
• The spoken language interchanges past tense and present perfect. 38e.
• Present tense is used in same way as present progressive, present perfect, and future in English: *I study here for a year. 38f.

Adjectives and adverbs

• Adjectives follow nouns. 43a.

Articles

• No articles: Farsi indicates definiteness and specificity with a noun suffix. Any unmodified noun may be generic: *Computer has changed our lives. Students might have difficulty with the and with marking generic nouns. 44.