Verbs in spoken Persian

In spoken Persian, the conjugational endings are:

Look at the conjugation of «neveshtan» (to write):

Narrative tenses

In narrative tenses, the past participle and the past endings go on a contraction. For example: «neveshte+am» becomes «nevesht'am». Please note that «neveshtam» (I wrote) and «nevesht'am» (I have written» are not pronounced identically. In «neveshtam» the stress falls on the syllable right before that of the ending (the penultimate): «ne.vesh.tam», whereas in «nevesht'am» the stress is on the last syllable: «ne.vesh.tam». The only form that remains distinct in writing is 3S as it doesn't take ending. See:

As you see, Perso-Arabic (PA) script does not have a character to denote contractions. Unfortunately, this causes past simple and past narrative appear alike in writing (but not in speech, as explained). Even native speakers occasionally make a mistake in telling them apart. For example, when writing down a recorded informal interview…

…where «shoru` kardi» شروع کردی is in past narrative and must be written:

• shoru` kardei شروع کرده‌ای.

When writing in informal Persian in Perso-Arabic script, there's no way to write past narrative correctly (in fact, contractions in general). But when writing in Latin script, contractions can be shown with apostrophe: shoru` kard'i

TIP Although the difference can easily be detected from speech, noting the stress position but it can also be detected from the 3S form, which remains distinct. In order to decide whether شروع کردی is a narrative, you can simply consider the sentence in 3S form. For example, here it would be شروع کرده, which means the tense is past narrative. This tip can also be used for other narrative tenses. Example:

• تا حالا این آهنگ رو شنیده بودی؟

Considering it in 3S form, shows that it would شنیده بوده and thus, this tense is past precedent narrative and not past precedent! Writing it in written language:

• تا حالا این آهنگ را شنیده بوده‌ای؟

Further reductions

Historically, there's a common phonemic change in the evolution of Persian: reduction of VCV to V (V = vowel; C = consonant). That is to say, whenever a word has a VCV pattern, it is disposed to be reduced to either V's some time in the evolution of the language:

New Persian is more than 1100 years old. So, it is fairly natural to witness similar changes happened through this long period. Our written language is very preservative but the spoken language has evolved freely. Interestingly, the VCV pattern has also occurred in New Persian. Examples from verb category (more examples in the article VCV Pattern):