# Persian: mi darim [می داریم]



## jaxlarus

درود به همه شما، دوسن هام...


​ This is a text message [sms] I received from a friend, as a reply to a prior message of mine:

دوری جستن از انسان هائ که دوستشان می داریم، بی فایده است.
زمان به ما نشان جواهد داد که جایگزینی برای آنها خواهیمیافت​ 
What I had written it is the following:

 دوست محبوبم، فراموشتان ابداً نکردم. در فکرم، در قلبم، در دعاهام همیشه هستید​ 
I did my best to transliterate the Perso-Latin script into Perso-Arabic and I’m almost positive that that’s what he intended to write. In any case, this is the original message as he had written it himself:

Dori jostan az ensanhayi ke dosteshan midarim, bi fayedeh ast. Zaman be ma neshan khahad dad ke jaygozini baraye anha nakhahim yaft…

And as I understand the translation is something like this:


> _Avoiding [leaping away from] the people we love [whose love we have], is pointless [is without any use]. Time will show us [give us the sign] that we won’t find any substitute for them [nothing to replace them with]._


 My questions:
1.How wrong or how right am I in transliterating and translating his message?
2.Why did he use the present imperfective prefix [می] along with the verb داشتن (in red)? Isn’t it supposed to be just داریم?

 Thank you all in advance.


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## arsham

jaxlarus said:


> ​ Dori jostan az ensanhayi ke dosteshan midarim, bi fayedeh ast. Zaman be ma neshan khahad dad ke jaygozini baraye anha nakhahim yaft…
> 
> And as I understand the translation is something like this:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _Avoiding  the people we love , is pointless. Time will show us that we won’t find any substitute for them.
> _
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> My questions:
> 1.How wrong or how right am I in transliterating and translating his message? There were few mistakes, unfortunately I can't type in Persian now but will post  the text in perso-arabic script later!
> 2.Why did he use the present imperfective prefix [می] along with the verb داشتن (in red)? Isn’t it supposed to be just داریم? This is intended to give a formal/literary  "look" to the  sentence, but it's  not necessary and  it's not used in normal  speech as you pointed out
> 
> Thank you all in advance. you're wlcome
Click to expand...


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## arsham

دوری جستن از انسانهایی که دوستشان می داریم بی فایده است. زمان به ما نشان خواهد داد که جایگزینی برای آنها نخواهیم یافت


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## Alijsh

jaxlarus said:


> 2.Why did he use the present imperfective prefix [می] along with the verb داشتن (in red)? Isn’t it supposed to be just داریم?


_Mi_ comes from the adverb _hami_ that denoted continuity and being constant similar to the function of _hamishe_ (always). When you say _dust midârim_, you are emphasizing on the continuity. So, it means something like "you always like, you keep liking". It is not synonymous to _dust dâram_ (I like) and there's a nuance.


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## arsham

Alijsh said:


> _Mi_ comes from the adverb _hami_ that denoted continuity and being constant similar to the function of _hamishe_ (always). When you say _dust midârim_, you are emphasizing on the continuity. So, it means something like "you always like, you keep liking". It is not synonymous to _dust dâram_ (I like) and there's a nuance.


 
This is true of Middle Persian, but already in Classical Persian hami and mi were highly grammaticalized and were no longer recognised as independent adverbs! The usage of mi in front of daashtan in various tenses and budan in conditional clauses is a relatively recent development. I don't recall having encountered mi+daashtan in classical texts (though I've not read them all!). As for budan, the proper conditional form for 3rd person sg. is budi (or more accurately bude with long e or yaa-ye majhul). In classical Persian these forms rapidly gained indicative force and overlapped with the proper imperfect in mi-/hami-. Eventually , mi superseded them in both cases, but in some dialects like Dezfuli and Shushtari there's still a clear difference between conditional forms in -i/e and the imperfect!


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## Qureshpor

arsham said:


> This is true of Middle Persian, but already in Classical Persian hami and mi were highly grammaticalized and were no longer recognised as independent adverbs! The usage of mi in front of daashtan in various tenses and budan in conditional clauses is a relatively recent development. I don't recall having encountered mi+daashtan in classical texts (though I've not read them all!). As for budan, the proper conditional form for 3rd person sg. is budi (or more accurately bude with long e or yaa-ye majhul). In classical Persian these forms rapidly gained indicative force and overlapped with the proper imperfect in mi-/hami-. Eventually , mi superseded them in both cases, but in some dialects like Dezfuli and Shushtari there's still a clear difference between conditional forms in -i/e and the imperfect!




Just to provide one example..

ممکن ز تو چون نیست که بر دارم دل
آن به که به سودای تو بسپارم دل
گر من به غم تو نسپارم دل
دل را چه کنم بهر چه میدارم دل 

مولوی


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## arsham

QURESHPOR said:


> Just to provide one example..
> 
> ممکن ز تو چون نیست که بر دارم دل
> آن به که به سودای تو بسپارم دل
> گر من به غم تو نسپارم دل
> دل را چه کنم بهر چه میدارم دل
> 
> 
> مولوی



as I have already said in my reply I have not read them all and in that verse the addition of mi could be explained by the prosodical requirements of the poem and so it does not necessarily indicate any well established grammatical usage. You always need more than one example and that has to be interpreted statistically.
That said it shows that adding mi to daar- is not a recent feature.
Thanks for the quotation though!


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## Qureshpor

arsham said:


> as I have already said in my reply I have not read them all and in that verse the addition of mi could be explained by the prosodical requirements of the poem and so it does not necessarily indicate any well established grammatical usage. You always need more than one example and that has to be interpreted statistically.
> That said it shows that adding mi to daar- is not a recent feature.
> Thanks for the quotation though!




You are indeed right that one example does not prove anything. I did n't wish to burden the readers with multiple examples from Classical poetry but if anyone wishes to type miidaaram/miidaarii/miidaarad etc in the following site, a number of results will become evident.

http://rira.ir/rira/php/?page=view&mod=classicpoems&obj=home

Here is an example from the oldest Classical Persian prose (taariix-i-Bal3amii)

musalmaanaan guftand, "la3nat bar tu baad, ummiid (umaid/umayd?) me-daarem kih bah paay-i-xvesh bah gor aamadii".


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## arsham

QURESHPOR said:


> You are indeed right that one example does not prove anything. I did n't wish to burden the readers with multiple examples from Classical poetry but if anyone wishes to type miidaaram/miidaarii/miidaarad etc in the following site, a number of results will become evident.
> 
> http://rira.ir/rira/php/?page=view&mod=classicpoems&obj=home
> 
> Here is an example from the oldest Classical Persian prose (taariix-i-Bal3amii)
> 
> musalmaanaan guftand, "la3nat bar tu baad, ummiid (umaid/umayd?) me-daarem kih bah paay-i-xvesh bah gor aamadii".



I know the link you have provided, it is a very good one. Here is the reconstructed classical pronunciation of that verse:

Musalmânân guftand la'nat bar to bâdh umêdh mê dhârêm ke ba paay-e xwêsh ba gôr âmadhî
where dh is pronounced like th in that or like an arabic zaal. by the way, eyn was never pronounced as in arabic!
It is a nice verse to ponder upon on phonological and grammatical grounds and also for prosodical matters as I said previously.


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## Qureshpor

arsham said:


> I know the link you have provided, it is a very good one. Here is the reconstructed classical pronunciation of that verse:
> 
> Musalmânân guftand la'nat bar to bâdh umêdh mê dhârêm ke ba paay-e xwêsh ba gôr âmadhî
> where dh is pronounced like th in that or like an arabic zaal. by the way, eyn was never pronounced as in arabic!
> It is a nice verse to ponder upon on phonological and grammatical grounds and also for prosodical matters as I said previously.




Thank you for the Classical Farsi reconstruction. I was aware of the existence and the frequent occurrence of "dhaal" but I did not wish to confuse the issue. Most people think that this sound is of Arabic origins only (as far as Persian is concerned) and do not associate it with Persian at all. They of course forget the verbs guzashtan and paziiruftan etc. I remember trying to convince people about this in another forum, without much success. As a passing question, was "to" not "tu", the "u" being equivalent to the "u" in "gul" (not "gol")? This is the way Afghans (and I believe Tajiks) still pronounce this word. We in the subcontinet pronounce it as "tuu", perhaps influenced by our Urdu/Hindi "tuu".

Going back to "me-dhaaram" etc, I have come across numerous examples of its usage in a number of Classical Persian prose works.


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## arsham

To Qureshpor
I am glad that you have substantiated my view point. If you remember I said that I did not recollect any instances without ruling out the possibility in a definitive way. Memorizing classical verses is a very good exercise for mastering classical persian and it is obviously helpful in quick discussions like the threads here. 
As to convincing people about facts, I think you should not bother yourself by convincing people who are obviously uninterested in the CONTENT of what you are putting forth. The existence of zaal is a well known fact you can check in any prosody textbook. So if your audience insists on being convinced about it then maybe they are not interested in facts. By the way we had a discussion about dh here in this forum!
As to «to», its middle persian form is tô which is why I prefer to rather than tû. That said, phonetic reconstructions are never exact, we can never know how persian was precisely pronounced in the middle ages. So you have to rely on what you know from ealier periods.


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## Qureshpor

arsham said:


> As to convincing people about facts, I think you should not bother yourself by convincing people who are obviously uninterested in the CONTENT of what you are putting forth. The existence of zaal is a well known fact you can check in any prosody textbook. So if your audience insists on being convinced about it then maybe they are not interested in facts. By the way we had a discussion about dh here in this forum!



Indeed. Here is an example from such a source. I might not have copied it correctly.

دستت بسخا چون یاد بیضا بنموذ  
از جود تو بر جهان جهانی افزوذ
کس چون تو سخی نیست و نی خواهد بوذ
گو قافیه دال شو زهی عالم جود 

انوری  

Have you ever come across the concept of a nasal nuun (nuun-i-Ghunnah)   which is not "reckoned" in terms of prosody, in any of the prosody books? To make a question clear, here is how the first line of the famous Hafiz Ghazal is pronounced by people from the subcontinet.

agar aaN turk-i-shiiraazii ba-dast aarad dil-i-maa raa

instead of

agar aan...


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## jaxlarus

Er... Guys? 
I don't want to sound rude or ungrateful for the extra information, but I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more


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## arsham

To Qureshpor, as far as I know there have never been any nasal vowels in the earlier forms of Persian. Avestan does have nasal vowels but it is not the direct ancester of Persian. So I don't think Classical Persian had any nasal vowels. 
To Jaxlarus, I agree with you there are reference materials covering these questions!


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## Qureshpor

jaxlarus said:


> Er... Guys?
> I don't want to sound rude or ungrateful for the extra information, but I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more




Point taken jaxlarus but too much information is got to be better than too little!


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## Qureshpor

arsham said:


> To Qureshpor, as far as I know there have never been any nasal vowels in the earlier forms of Persian. Avestan does have nasal vowels but it is not the direct ancester of Persian. So I don't think Classical Persian had any nasal vowels.



Thank you arsham. Please take a look at the thread "Urdu: Rhyming nasal words", post 7 when you have a few spare moments. I would be interested in your views.

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2136108&highlight=nasal


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## arsham

QURESHPOR said:


> Thank you arsham. Please take a look at the thread "Urdu: Rhyming nasal words", post 7 when you have a few spare moments. I would be interested in your views.
> 
> http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2136108&highlight=nasal


In my grand mother's dialect (nahaavandi), final -ân is pronounced -o~ where ~ indicates nasalization. 
e.g. xômo~ instead of xodemân. But I would rather agree with Saahib Faylasoof, I doubt that nasalization has ever been a phonetic feature of the standard pronunciation.


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## eskandar

As long as we are on the topic of ذ in Classical Persian words not of Arabic origin (perhaps this deserves a split topic of its own)-- I have heard that, in addition to representing the archaic pronounciation [dh / ð] of this letter in words such as گذشتن, it was sometimes used in early New Persian texts to represent a regular [d] (for example رفتنذ instead of رفتند) to distinguish it from a written ر . Is this true?


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## Qureshpor

In a Dari Persian Youtube video that I saw recently, the presenter said that we can use می داریم or داریم without any distinction in meaning. This obviously (I assume) only applies to Dari.


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## ali likes the stars

arsham said:


> as I have already said in my reply I have not read them all


Just a question out of curiosity. Is there a fixed and well known number of texts? What does this "all" refer to?


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