An important step in learning any language is to get familiar with the way words are formed in that language. Persian is a language with relatively few independent stems and is therefore highly dependent upon prefixes, suffixes, and other methods of creating new words out of old ones. In this lesson you will get familiar with the structure of nouns and adjectives, how they are made from each other, how they are made using verb stems, etc.

It is very common to combine two words (noun or adjective) to make new nouns and adjectives.

There are also times when verb stems are used alongside nouns and adjectives to construct new nouns and adjectives. Here are some examples for present stems.

In many cases, new words are formed by adding prefixes and suffixes to existing words. Each of these affixes convey distinct meanings and it is even common for some of them to be attached to words with which they are not typically associated for expressing special meanings. Below are some examples of everyday words which are formed using prefixes. Suffixes will be considered in the next lesson.

• “با” (meaning “with”)

• “بی” (meaning “without”)

• “نا” (meaning “not”)

As you have probably noticed, in the last example, the suffix did not mean exactly “not”, though the meaning was similar.

• “هم” (meaning “with the same”)