Persian phrasebook past imperfective · Past imperfective in Persian phrasebook
All Destinations | Europe | Asia | North America | Africa | South America | Oceania | Hotels
Past imperfective in Persian phrasebook
Past imperfective in Persian phrasebook
English does not have a grammatical form that corresponds exactly to this aspect. As an example, in languages having imperfective aspect, "I ran five miles yesterday" would use past simple form, whereas "I ran five miles every morning" would use past imperfective form. Romance languages like French, Spanish and Italian have only one imperfective tense, which from the viewpoint of Persian, is the counterpart of "past simple". In contrast, each "past simple", "present perfect", "past perfect", "present simple", etc. have an imperfective tense that are simply made by prefixing "mi" to the stem or participle (depending on the formation of the tense). None of these imperfective tenses has an equivalent in English, though and Romance languages have only an equivalent for the Persian's past imperfective.
Formula: mi + past simple (i.e. past stem + past enclitic).
raftan (to go): miraftam, mirafti, miraft; miraftim, miraftid, miraftand
xâstan (to want): mixâstam, mixâsti, mixâst; mixâstim, mixâstid, mixâstand
The past imperfective is also used in conditional tenses and as with "conditionnel" of French, it is used to make polite expressions (that's why this tense has been mentioned in the primer): yek livân âb mixâstam (French: je voudrais un verre d'eau, English: I'd like a glass of water).
Note - Because of a vowel harmony, the negation prefix "na" becomes "ne" before "mi". Therefore, we say nemiraftam rather than expected namiraftam. However, in Afghanistani and Tajikistani Persian, this change hasn't occurred and they still say namiraftam.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Persian phrasebook
Where To Stay & Best Hotels in Persian phrasebook - updated Apr 2024
SAVE up to 75% on Last Minute deals! Search for discount Persian phrasebook hotels, motels, apartments, hostels, guest accommodations and vacation resorts. Book now and pay at the hotel. Instant email confirmation!
>>> SEARCH FOR DEALS <<<
WHERE TO TRAVEL NEXT IN 2020
Persian phrasebook Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.