Personal Pronouns

There are six personal pronouns in Persian:

There are some points to note about these pronouns:

The third person singular pronoun “او” is used only for persons. For other things, the pronoun “آن” is used instead.

In polite speech, individuals are addressed with plural pronouns. Using verbs in the plural form in such situations is also common.

In more formal prose, the third person plural pronoun (آن‌ها) can be replaced by “آنان” when being used for persons.

All of the pronouns listed above can actually serve as different parts of speech such as subject, object, object of preposition, etc.

Enclitic pronouns are always attached to other words and pronounced without a stress.

Enclitic pronouns have two main functions, as described below.

Enclitic pronouns attach to nouns to indicate possession.

In many occasions, including when there is focus on the possessor, the free pronoun becomes mandatory.

As you see, here again, two vowels cannot be pronounced right after each other. If the word ends in “ه” with an “e” sound, a glottal stop represented by the letter “ا” appears between the two vowels (as in “خنده‌اش” above). If the last letter of the word is "ā" (written as “ا”), a "y" sound (written as“ی”) appears between the two vowels (as in “صدایشان” and “دروغ‌هایتان” abvove). Obviously, if a noun has a plural marker such as “ها” and “ان”, the enclitic pronouns come after the plural marker (as in “دروغ‌هایتان”).

The object of a verb can be shown by suffixing the verb itself with an enclitic pronoun.

As you have probably noticed, some of these enclitic pronouns are identical with past simple verb suffixes. This can be a source of problems. For instance, what is the meaning of the word “زدم”? Does it mean “I hit”? Or does it mean “he hit me” (composed of the past simple verb “زد” meaning “he/she hit” and the first person singular objective pronoun“م”)? The answer is quite simple. It is most certainly the first one. Generally, in cases like this where such ambiguities are feared, enclitic pronouns are not used and objects appear instead as free personal pronouns, in a manner which will be discussed under objects.

Enclitic pronouns can also follow words denoting place and direction.