Personal endings, also known as conjugational endings, are sets of endings that attach to the stems of a verb and help to conjugate it for different grammatical persons. Persian has a variety of conjugational endings, all originating from the weak form of the verb “to be”. Primary endings are used in non-past (present or future) tenses and are commonly referred to as “present endings”. Secondary endings are used in past tenses and are commonly referred to as “past endings”. The optative mood is obsolete in modern Persian (in favor of subjunctive mood) and extant forms are mainly in third-person singular. The ending “-∅” indicates a “null morpheme”, which means nothing is added to the end of a stem.

Primary Secondary Optative Imperative
1S م
-am		 م
-am		 ام
-âm		 م
-am
2S ی
-i		 ی
-i		 ی
*-i		 -∅
3S د
-ad		 -∅ اد
-âd		 د
-ad
1P یم
-im		 یم
-im		 یم
*-im		 یم
-im
2P ید
-id		 ید
-id		 ید
*-id		 ید
-id
3P ند
-and		 ند
-and		 اند
-ând		 ند
-and

Stress Position

Personal endings are enclitic. Contrary to a suffix, they are unstressed and do not shift the stress position to the last syllable, which is the normal stress position in Persian. In the presence of a personal ending, the stress falls on the preceding syllable. The following table shows the conjugation of the verb نوشتن (“neveštan”; to write) in perfective past tense along with the stressed syllable in each conjugated form.

1S نوشتم
ne-VEŠ-tam
I wrote		 1P نوشتیم
ne-VEŠ-tim
We wrote
2S نوشتی
ne-VEŠ-ti
You wrote		 2P نوشتید
ne-VEŠ-tid
You wrote
3S نوشت
ne-VEŠT
He/She wrote		 3P نوشتند
ne-VEŠ-tand
They wrote

Pronoun-dropping

In English, it is not possible to drop the subject pronoun in “I wrote” and say “wrote” because the person of the verb becomes unclear. In Persian, each grammatical person has a unique ending, which conveys the person and its number (singular or plural). For example, in نوشتم (“neveštam”), the personal ending “-am” indicates that the person of the verb is first-person singular. In Persian, subject pronouns do not normally accompany conjugated forms because they are redundant. Languages that have this feature are called “pro-drop” (pronoun-dropping) or “null-subject”.