شنه Names. /. Ulif THE PERSIAN ALPHABET IN THE NUSKH OR ARABIC CHARACTER. FINALS. MEDIALS. INITIALS. Uncon. Connect. Connect. Connect. Power Το 5 ·5 3 ·3·ཕ ·ཤ 333344 Zo T 6 ر ز ژ و These seven letters with those which succeed them, have necessarily no initial nor medial connected form. The thirty-two letters of the Persian Alphabet have been divided by their Grammarians into three classes: ist, Musrooree, which are fifteen in number, each of which may sa, ثا ,za ظا. ,fa فا be expressed by two of their letters, ↳ ba, ↳ pa, ta, three letters; thus, ulif, ted from the Arabic, and never enter into the composition of any word that is not derived from that language. Furduosee throughout the Shahnamu has very rarely introduced words in which any of these eight letters occur. The Persians again have four letters peculiar to themselves, never used in Arabic, viz. چ ر پ All these letters of the Persian Alphabet are consonants, the same as in Arabic; and the former have adopted from the latter three characters for vowels, which they call Futh, or j Zubur, sounding u. books; and the omission will at first perplex the Learner, the sense of a word often depending on them; as in which with zer (gil) signifies clay, and with pesh (gool) signifies a rose. The three orthographical signs commonly used, are Muddu, which placed over an initial Ulif gives it a broad sound, as : An: 2, Humzu which supplies the place of " S ya in words ending in & ha,i mookhtufee; and 3, Tushdeed, which W shews a letter to be doubled, as & Toorru, a lock of hair. The great difficulty lies in pronouncing properly those letters that were originally Arabic, some of which are scarcely utterable with critical exactness, but from the mouth of a native Arab. Therefore, every Arabic word adopted by the Persians, if not pronounced with the utmost precision, will, to the ear of an Arab, have no signification at all, as the word ukhz, which if properly sounded, signifies seizing; but if the is pronounced; has no meaning whatever, or else the word will have a sense different from what it is intended to express, as sull, God send mercy upon him! which if sounded M M Jsull, means drawing out, as a sword out of the scabbard : and, indeed, the generality are obliged to content themselves with making the distinction in writing only. P THE PARTS OF SPEECH. The Persian Language, like the Arabic, has three parts of speech, the verb Jei fiul, the noun حرف lism; and the particle hurf, i. e. adverb, conjunct. prepos. and interject. A verb is an action implying one of the three times or tenses, viz. paste mazee, present Jhal; or future moostuqbil. And it is named after one of these ten ses, thus: fial mazee, or the past فعل ماضي - gooft, he spoke گفت action. ful hal, or the فعل حال -megoyud, he speaketh میگوید present action. فعل مستقبل-khwahud gooft, he will speak خواهد گفت ful moostuqbil, or the future action. NOUNS. 1. Nouns, or names, are of two kinds; substantive, which denote a substance or thing, as a book, kitab کتاب us a horse اسب dostee friendship; and adjective, which denote some quality of a substantive, as khoob good,kilan big. 2. Nouns in Persian have not different terminations to distinguish the genders, there being either distinct nouns for masculine and feminine; thus, murdoom a man, ☺j zun a woman; |