Conjugation in Spoken Persian

Personal endings change in spoken Persian. In third-person singular, the present ending “-ad” changes to “-e” e.g. minevisad → minevise (He writes). In second-person plural, the ending “-id” is usually replaced with “-in” e.g. minevisid → minevisin (You write). In third-person plural, the ending “-and” is usually shortened to “-an” e.g. minevisand → minevisan’ (They write).

The following table shows the conjugation of نوشتن (“neveštan”; to write) in perfective past, imperfective present and perfective present subjunctive:

Perfect tenses

In perfect tenses, past participle and personal endings form a contraction. For example, “nevešteam” (I have written) is contracted to “nevešt’am”. It should be noted that “neveštam” (I wrote) and “nevešt’am ” (I have written) are not pronounced identically. In “neveštam” the stress falls on the penultimate syllable (ne‑VEŠ‑tam), whereas in “nevešt’am” the stress is on the last syllable (ne‑veš‑TAM). The only form that remains distinct in writing is third-person singular.

Further reductions

Historically, there is a common phonemic reduction 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. This reduction has occurred in conjugation as well. The following tables show the spoken conjugation of رفتن (“raftan”) and گفتن (“goftan”) in imperfective present.