This page will delve into the usage of gender in the Persian language where applicable. Furthermore, the following article will detail both the usage and application of nouns in sentences and interrogative words in sentence-making. The lesson will assist those learning Persian with advancing their sentence-making abilities, in continuation to the previous two lessons.

Gender in Persian

The concept of gendered nouns or conjugating lemmas based on gender is not present in Persian. Persian is considered a gender-neutral language in contrast to other languages like Spanish, Arabic and French which are considered heavily gendered languages. Persian, in fact, goes a step further ahead of English and lacks gendered pronouns and gendered nouns (e.g: prince and princess) all together, as we saw in our previous lesson. 

Instead, context decides to whom one is referring to. If one must specific the gender in question, then one could add gendered titles, namely āghā (آقا) and khānom (خانم), before the word (e.g: mo'allem (معلم) is "teacher" in Farsi, to specifically refer to a male teacher, one could say mo'allem-e āghā (معلم آقا)). 

Nouns

Nouns can be altered by adding the plural suffix to the end of the word. Generally, as a rule of thumb, the Persian suffix -hā (ها-) is used to form the plural in Persian, and can turn into -ā (ا-) occassionally (e.g: dust-hā (دوست ها) turns into dustā (دوستا)). Nevertheless, if a noun ends with a vowel, then the -hā (ها-) is retained. 

In the literary language, particularly poetry and more formal conversations, the plural suffix -ān (ـان) may be used when the nouns are animate, though this is not always the case. For instance, the word for "scholar" in Farsi is dāneshmand (دانشمند), and the plural of said noun is dāneshmandān (دانشمندان). Variants of the plural suffix -ān (ـان) include -gān (ـگان) and -yān (ـیان), the former is rarely used and is hardly seen outside of literary works. In a similar fashion, the plural suffix -yān (ـیان) is also rarely used and is hardly seen outside of literary works, but is an alternative form of -gān (ـگان) when the noun ends with a vowel (e.g: irani (ایرانی) turns into iraniyan (ایرانیان)).

It is important to note that the way Persian uses plurality is different from English. For instance, if the noun has a number in front of it (e.g: "three books"), the word "book" should not be made plural, simply because the number preceding it already made it plural so to speak. Thus, plurality is only used when the noun is: 

• definite and 

• doesn't have a number in front of it.

Interrogatives

Interrogatives in Persian are essentially identical in terms of usage in contrast to English. Nevertheless, because spoken and written Persian often contrast, the pronunciation and usage of interrogatives, particularly in colloquial Persian spoken in Tehran, differs from formally written Persian.

The following seven interrogatives are the most commonly used ones in Persian, and are quite useful for everyday conversation, especially when asking questions.