Examples have audio.
Objects
An object is usually followed by the “object marker” “را”.
کتاب را خواندم.
ما را دیدند.
علی کلید خانهاش را به من داد.
سارا و زهرا تکلیفشان را نوشتند.
I read the book.
They saw us.
Ali gave me the key of his house.
Sara and Zahra did (lit. wrote) their homework.
The question of where exactly “را” appears in Persian, like many other things in syntax (including when "the" is used in English), is one for which syntacticians have no straightforward and flawless answer. Speakers obviously have consistent intuitions regarding where the object marker is required, but giving a unified account of these cases is not an easy task. In any case, one prominent (and rather simple) theory is that the Persian object marker is avoided when the object is non-specific.
Non-specific objects
An indefinite noun (see the previous lesson) can be specific or non-specific. Compare these two English sentences: "Marry wants to hire a student, but she doesn't know which one." vs. "Mary wants to hire a student, namely Joe." In both of these sentences, "a student" is indefinite. However, it is non-specific in the first case and specific in the second one. Persian cares about this distinction and reserves the object marker only for specific objects. Of course, this is a very subtle difference and not easy to appreciate for a language learner. For learning how to use the object marker in Persian, my recommendation is to rely primarily on exposure to the language rather than linguistic analysis. Since the concept of specificity is usually difficult to handle for non-linguists, I recommend a simpler rule of thumb: usually, indefinite nouns do not thake the object marker. This is less accurate but easier to work with. A few examples are presented below.
لاله موهای بلندی دارد.
وبلاگ خوبی داری.
عکسهای قشنگی میگیرد.
عکسهای قشنگی را که گرفت به من داد.
Lale has long hair(s).
You have a nice blog.
She takes nice photos.
She gave the nice photos she took to me.
In the last example, the object marker “را” is used. The reason is that as we explained in the previous lesson, the noun phrase is no longer considered indefinite when the word “که” is used after it to explain about it. It is definite (therefore certainly specific) and must therefore be accompanied by an object marker when taking the role of an object.
Here are a few more examples with and without the object marker:
بستنیها را خوردند.
او پول من را دزدید.
من تهران را میشناسم.
ما همهچیز را میدانیم.
رئیس جمهور چیزهای عجیبی میگوید.
خودکار داری؟
همیشه تنها شام میخورد.
کتابی را که خریدی خواندم.
آنها کار سختی دارند.
They ate the ice-creams.
He stole my money.
I am familiar with Tehran.
We know everything.
The president says strange things.
Do you have a pen?
She always eats dinner alone.
I read the book you bought.
They have a hard job.
In the following examples, you can compare the two possible ways for using pronominal objects (enclitic and free).
تو را میشناسم.
میشناسمت.
آن را گرفت.
گرفتش.
ما را میبینند.
میبینندمان.
I know you.
I know you.
She took it.
She took it.
They see us.
They see us.
As mentioned in the previous lessons, the third person singular free personal pronoun is “او” for humans and “آن” for non-humans. When enclitic pronouns are being used, the third person pronoun is “ش” anyway, for both humans and non-humans. Thus, another case where we might prefer to use free pronouns is when we want to distinguish between human and non-human objects.