Compound Verbs

Compound verbs are verbs that are made of a non-verbal part (such as a noun, an adjective, or a preposition) and a simple verb. A compound verb may sometimes give a meaning distant from the original meaning of the two parts. You might want to compare it to English constructions such as "look after". It was mentioned earlier that the number of simple verbs used in today’s Persian is something less than 250. All other verbs are compound verbs composed of one of these simple verbs and different nouns and prepositions. Here are a few common compound verbs:

The following examples show the same compound verbs in action:

As it can be seen, when the non-verbal part is a preposition, the verb may look very well like a simple verb (as in the second and last examples above). In such cass, the main thing that distinguishes compound verbs is that when conjugated in the present tense, “می” comes in between the two parts of the compound verb (the last example).

Most compound verbs are made using the verb “کردن” (to do, to make).

When there is an object, the object can be attached to the non-verbal part of the compound verb as an enclitic personal pronoun. The first two of the following examples correspond to the first two examples in the previous list.

A list of the most common Persian compound verbs is available here. It is highly recommended to go through them at least once before moving on to the rest of the grammar lessons.