Sentence Structure

Sentence structure refers to the many ways that different parts of speech are put together to create semantic meaning. One mark of fluency and proficiency is how naturally one constructs original sentences in the target language.

Fortunately in Persian, the sentence structure is generally very regular. Under normal circumstances the verb is always placed at the end of the sentence. Writing from right to left, the basic sentence structure in Persian is as follows:

verb subject
I go man miravam می‌روم من
he/she/it sat (down) u nešast نشست او

More complex sentences may be constructed according to the following structure:

verb object preposition modifier subject
رفتم سینما به دیروز من
.من دیروز به سینما رفتم
man diruz be sinamā raftam
“I went to the movies yesterday.”

.این مرد معلّم ماست
in mard mo’allem-e māst
“This man is our teacher.”

.خانهٔ ما خیلی بزرگ است
xāne-ye mā xeyli bozorg ast
“Our house is very large/big.”

.من یک خواهر بزرگتر دارم
man yek xāhar-e bozorgtar dāram
“I have an older sister.”

In Persian personal endings are used to mark the person, the number, and the tense. Therefore, from the technical point of view, a verb and the appropriate personal ending may be considered a complete sentence, or at least a clause. For instance, in the clause می‌روم mi ravam ‘I go, I am going, I shall go’ (in which the subject pronoun من man ‘I’ has been elided, and the personal ending م represents the person/subject), the two elements of subject and verb are present.