Present Perfect

Before learning the present perfect tense, it is essential to learn about past participles (words like English "taken", "gone", etc.). The past participle is formed from the stem of a verb and can be used both as a separate noun with its own meaning and as part of a verb in conjugation. In Persian, the past participle is made using the following formula:

Thus, the past participle of the verb “رفتن” (“to go”) is “رفته” ("gone"). First the "an" at the end of the infinitive is omitted to get to the past stem “رفت”, and then adding the suffix “ه” gives us the past participle “رفته”.

For compound verbs, the past participle is made using exactly the same formula as above. For example, the past participle of the verb “آب رفتن” (“to shrink”, literally composed of the words for "water" and "to go") is “آب رفته”, meaning “shrunk”.

The present perfect is composed of two parts:

1. The past participle of the verb

2. The corresponding present simple tense form of the verb “to be” (its short form)

Here is an example for the verb “to say”:

As you can see, two forms are possible for the third person singular. Some prescriptivists will tell you that the shorter form (without “است”) is incorrect or inferior, but this is not true even according to prescriptivists' usual criteria.

The Persian present perfect is similar to its English equivalent in meaning and usage. Perhaps the most important point of difference is that Persian speakers use the present perfect also for things they have learned but have not witnessed. For instance, in a sentence such as "John just informed me that Mary got sick yesterday.", English speakers use the past simple form "got sick" whereas Persian speakers prefer a present perfect.

In pronunciation, the stress is on the last syllable of its past participle part. When it is used in the negative form, like any negative verb, the stress is on the “نـ” prefix.