What is Ezafe in Persian?

What is Ezafe in Persian?

"Have you ever wondered what "Ezafe in Persian" means and how you should use it?

Many learners often find it a bit confusing in the beginning but don't worry, here is all you need to know about this tricky vowel!"

Ezafe is an unstressed vowel -e  which is pronounced similar to the letter "e" in English "ten" and connects different words together. We have discussed about Persian alphabet and Persian vowels before, but using this unstressed vowel needs some information."

History of Ezafe in Persian

Originally, just like every other early Indo-European language (such as Latin, Greek, and Proto-Germanic), in Old Persian nouns had case endings. A genitive construction would have looked much like an Arabic iḍāfa construct, with the first noun being in any case, and the second being in the genitive case, as in Arabic or Latin.

However, over time, a relative pronoun such as tya or hya (meaning "which") began to be interposed between the first element and its genitive attribute.

Tisdall states that the modern Persian ezafe stems from this relative pronoun which, that in Eastern Iranian languages (Avestan) was yo or yat. Pahlavi (Middle Persian) shortened it to ī (spelled with the letter Y in Pahlavi scripts), and after noun case endings passed out of usage, this relative pronoun which (pronounced /e/ in New Persian), became a genitive "construct" marker.

Thus the phrase

• mard-e xub مردِ خوب

historically means "man which (is) good" rather than "good man."

Where to use Ezafe in Persian?

In Persian, we use it primarily in four situations:

• Possession: to connect the possessed noun with its owner
• Adjectival phrases: to modify nouns
• Naming: to connect people and titles; places, days,seasons and their names.
• Place and direction: to indicate a place or direction.

Using Ezafe for possession

We use the ezafe is used for indicating possession as well. The possessor follows the possessed.

For example:

When a word ends in a consonant, the ezāfe is pronounced but not written. However, we can mark it using the diacritical mark kesre کسره, which becomes the kesre-ye ezāfe کسرهٔ اضافه.

Note:

If any of the words has adjectives, its adjectives come right after it.

Using Ezafe for adjectives

Adjectives are linked to their noun using an ezafe. Unlike English, the noun precedes its adjective in Persian.

Note:

When the noun ends with a vowel, another letter or sound should step between the ezafe and the noun to prevent the two vowels being pronounced right after each other. This letter is “ی”, which in this position, should be pronounced like the letter “y” in the English word “yes”.

 

As you see, the letter “ی” in this case is always pronounced but not always written. In fact, writing it as a separate letter is a very new standard and is only common in Iran. The conventional way is to simply avoid writing but for some words like "کارهای سخت" it should be written.

An adjective can follow a singular or plural noun. As in English, the adjective stays in single form when the noun becomes plural. One noun can take one or more adjectives.

As you see in the above example, the letter “ی” is used here again to link two vowels together.

As in English, the word “و”, meaning “and”, can come to attribute more than one adjective to a noun or more than one noun to an adjective:

Notice that the word “و” can be read both as “o” and “va”, but the latter sounds rather formal.

Using Ezafe for naming

We utilize Ezafe in cases for naming people and things as well.

Note:

If a word ends in the short vowel designated by the heh do-cheshm (ه), then ezāfe may be marked in another way as well.

In this case,  a hamze ء is added on top of the final heh:

This method of writing in not being used that much in recent Persian writings and was mostly used in the past. If you ever see that in a book or text, keep in mind that it is equal to the usage of "ی" described before.

Using Ezafe for place and direction

Many of the words indicating place and direction are also followed by an ezafe when preceding a noun.

"In this post we tried to expalin the usage of Ezafe in Persian with different examples to make it clarified for people who are new to this language. You can start learning Pesian from basic level by using our courses for free."