Speak / Lesson 44
Subjunctive To Have and To Be
We’re continuing on with our power series, learning a good bit of grammar and words to help fill in our vocabulary. So Lessons 21 and 22 were devoted entirely to the verbs "to be" and "to have", respectively. These are both very important verbs in the language, and both happen to have special subjunctive stems, so we are going to devote this entire lesson to their subjunctive forms. Thankfully, they’re both related!
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Download lesson MP3GREETINGS:
hello
سَلام
how are you?
چِطوری؟
Note: In Persian, as in many other languages, there is a formal and an informal way of speaking. We will be covering this in more detail in later lessons. For now, however, chetor-ee is the informal way of asking someone how they are, so it should only be used with people that you are familiar with. hālé shomā chetor-é is the formal expression for ‘how are you.’
Spelling note: In written Persian, words are not capitalized. For this reason, we do not capitalize Persian words written in phonetic English in the guides.
ANSWERS:
I’m well
خوبَم
Pronunciation tip: kh is one of two unique sounds in the Persian language that is not used in the English language. It should be repeated daily until mastered, as it is essential to successfully speak Persian. Listen to the podcast for more information on how to make the sound.
| Persian | English |
|---|---|
| salām | hello |
| chetor-ee | how are you? |
| khoobam | I’m well |
| merci | thank you |
| khayli | very |
| khayli khoobam | I’m very well |
| khoob neestam | I’m not well |
| man | me/I |
| bad neestam | I’m not bad |
| ālee | great |
| chetor-een? | how are you? (formal) |
| hālé shomā chetor-é? | how are you? (formal) |
| hālet chetor-é? | how are you? (informal) |
| khoob-ee? | are you well? (informal) |
| mamnoonam | thank you |
| chetor peesh meeré? | how’s it going? |
| ché khabar? | what’s the news? (what’s up?) |
| testeeeee |
Leyla: Hello and welcome to lesson 44 of Learn Persian with Chai and Conversation. We’re so glad to have you with us!
Matt: We’re continuing on with our power series, learning a good bit of grammar and vocabulary words to help fill in our vocabulary, and we’re going to continue to do so in this lesson. So Lesson 21 and Lesson 22 of Chai and Conversation were devoted entirely to the verbs to be and to have respectively. These are both very important verbs in the language, and they both happen to have special subjunctives stems, so we are going to devote this entire lesson to the subjunctive forms of to be and to have. Thankfully, they’re both related, so that makes it a bit easier. Matt, what is the infinite of to be.
Matt: Budan
Leyla: Exactly, budan. So the subjunctive stem of budan is ‘bash’
Matt: bash
Leyla: What is the infinitive form of to have?
Matt: dashtan
Leyla: Exactly dashtan. So the subjunctive stem of to have is dashteh bash
Matt: dashteh bash
Leyla: so bash and dashteh bash. So let’s hear these in example to start with. I can be happy. Man meetoonam khoshhal basham
Matt: Man meetoonam khoshhal basham
Leyla: So, as we’ve been covering in the past two lessons, meetoonam is I can. Man meetoonam khoshhal basham
Matt: Man meetoonam khoshhal basham
Leyla: In all the other cases we learned, the subjunctive stems of the second verbs were be. In this exception, is bash. Man meetoonam khoshhal basham
Matt: Man meetonam khoshhal basham
Leyla: So I want to be happy is man meekham khoshhal basham
Matt: Man meekham khoshhal basham.
Leyla: So this is a good example to use to go through the conjugations of this verb. So one more time, I want to be happy, meekham khoshhal basham
Matt: meekham khoshhal basham
Leyla: you want to be happy informal, meekhay khoshhal bashee
Matt: meekhay khoshhal bashee
Leyla: He or she wants to be happy, meekhad khoshhal basheh meekhad Matt: khoshhal basheh
Leyla: We want to be happy, meekhaym khoshhal basheem meekhaym Matt: khoshhal basheem
Leyla: You want to be happy, formal meekhayn khoshhal basheen
Matt: They want to be happy, meekhan khoshhal bashan
Leyla: Ok, great, so now we can move on to other sentences. How about I want to be in Italy. Man meekham dar Italia basham
Matt: man meekham dar italia basham
Leyla: Let’s make this sentence a little bit more complex by saying I want to be in Italy with you. Listen carefully with the word sentence man meekham ba to dar Italia basham
Matt: man meekham ba to dar italia basham
Leyla: How about, we want to be happy. Ma meekhaym khoshhal basheem
Matt: ma meekhaym khoshhal basheem
Leyla: Great. Now let’s move on to the subjunctive form of to have. So again, the subjunctive form of to have is dashte bash
Matt: dashteh bash
Leyla: This is quite different, because it splits the word from one word to two. Dashteh bash
Matt: dashteh bash
Leyla: So let’s say I want to have a car. Meekham masheen dashteh basham
Matt: meekham masheen dashteh basham
Leyla: So that’s quite different. So how about if you want to ask ‘can I have a car?’ ‘meetoonam masheen dashteh basham?
Matt: Meetoonam masheen dashteh basham?
Leyla: Exactly. So let’s go over the conjugations of this verb with the concept of wanting to have a car. First, the sentence I want to have a car. Meekham masheen dashteh basham
Matt: meekham masheen dashteh basham
Leyla: You want to have a car, informal. Meekhay masheen dashteh bashee
Matt: meekhay masheen dashteh bashee
Leyla: He or she wants to have a car, meekhad masheen dashteh basheh
Matt: meekhad masheen dashteh basheh
Leyla: We want to have a car, meekhaym masheen dashteh basheem
Matt: meekhaym masheen dashteh basheem
Leyla: You want to have a car, formal, meekhayn masheen dashteh basheen
Matt: meekhayn masheen dashteh basheen
Leyla: They want to have a car, meekhan masheen dashteh bashan
Matt: meekhan masheen dashteh bashan
Leyla: Great! We also learned quite a few special verbs in the last lesson, and one of them was must. Do you remember what must is in Persian Matt?
Matt: Bayad
Leyla: Exactly. So how would you say ‘I have to have a car?
Matt: bayad masheen dashteh basham
Leyla: exactly. Bayad masheen dashteh basham Ok great, I think we get the hang of these two forms. Let’s learn a few more examples of sentences that use these verbs to test our knowledge. So here’s a good question for any language-‐ can I have your phone number? So first, the word for phone number is shomareh telephone
Matt: shomareh telephone
Leyla: So your phone number is, of course, shomareh telephonet
Matt: shomareh telephonet
Leyla: So can I have your phone number: meetoonam shomareh telephoneto dashteh basham?
Matt: meetoonam shomareh telephoneto dashteh basham
Leyla: Great! Now can you figure out how to say ‘you can have my phone number?’
Matt: meetoonee shomareh telephonamo dashteh bashee
Leyla: Exactly. How about if we want to make this a bit more polite and say ‘may I have your phone number?” the word for may is momkene.
Matt: Momkene shomareh telephoneto dashthe basham? Exactly!
Leyla: Ok great. Now let’s see if we can learn the negative forms of these two subjunctive verbs. First, we learned ‘I want to be happy, do you remember what that is Matt?
Matt: Meekham khoshhal basham
Leyla: Right. So now let’s learn I don’t want to be angry. That would be nemeekham asabani basham
Matt: nemeekham asabani basham
Leyla: Great. So the negative gets added to the first verb. So now let’s learn you can not be late. Late is deer.
Matt: deer
Leyla: So nemeetoonee deer bashee nemeetoonee deer bashee. So you can not be late.
Matt: Nemeetoonee deer bashee nemeetoonee deer bashee
Leyla: So now let’s try the negative of to have. An example of this would be he might not have a car. Momkene masheen nadashteh basheh
Matt: Momkene masheen nadashteh basheh
Leyla: Or the word cover charge in Persian is voroodee
Matt: voroodee
Leyla: So shayad voroodee nadashteh basheh. What does this mean Matt?
Matt: It means maybe it doesn’t have a cover charge.
Leyla: Exactly, so maybe it’s free. Shayad voroodee nadashteh basheh
Matt: Shayad voroodee nadashteh basheh.
Leyla: Great! Let’s go over a few more examples for practive. How would you say I can be here.
Matt: Meetoonam eenja basham
Leyla: Exactly. How about we could be there. meetooneem oonja basheem Matt: meetooneem oonja basheem.
Leyla: How about we make it slightly more complicated with, we could be there tomorrow. Meetooneem farda oonja basheem
Matt: meetooneem farda oonja basheem
Leyla: To make it slightly even more detailed you could say ‘meetooneem farda sobhe zood oonja basheem’. So sobhe zood means early in the morning. Sobhe zood
Matt: sobhe zood
Leyla: So what does the full sentence mean Matt? Meetooneem farda sobhe zood oonja basheem
Matt: We could be there early tomorrow morning
Leyla: Exactly. Meetooneem farda sobhe zood oonja basheem Meetooneem Matt: farda sobhe zood oonja basheem.
Leyla: Ok great, so we’ve gone over two very important verbs in their subjuctive forms here, dashtan and boodan. And with that, we’ll wrap up this lesson!
Matt: Thanks so much for joining us!
Leyla: We’d like to take a moment this lesson to say that if you enjoy Chai and Conversation, we’d really appreciate it if you could take a moment to leave us an honest review in iTunes
Matt: It really goes a long way in spreading the word of the podcast. Also, check out our new webpage at www.chaiandconversation, with chai spelled CHAI, and see all the new content we have to offer there.
Leyla: And until next time, khodahafez from Leyla and
Matt: beh omeedeh deedar from Matt!