# Persian, Urdu: Words like گفتگو & جستجو (Past tense + imperative of the same verb)



## Shuaib

Hello All.

I have a few questions and I place them here (hoping that I am not violating any of the forum's rules by combining two or more unrelated topics within a thread):

1. Would anyone know other words in Farsi and Urdu like جستجوو گفتگو بندبست which are constructed by combining the past tense of an infinitive with its imperative? I think I could count five till recently but I seem to have forgotten the other two. I would love to learn more such constructs.

2. What is the origin of this pattern?


Many thanks.

(Moderator note: Off-topic questions removed).


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## Dib

Shuaib said:


> 1. Would anyone know other words in Farsi and Urdu like جستجوو گفتگو بندبست which are constructed by combining the past tense of an infinitive with its imperative? I think I could count five till recently but I seem to have forgotten the other two. I would love to learn more such constructs.



Not sure about the Urdu usage, but in a recent Persian thread on this forum I came across شُستشُو and رُفت و رُوب.


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## PersoLatin

1 پخت‌وپز


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## PersoLatin

You might like these too, I have tried to put them in some sort of category:

*زد وبند - ریخت وپا ش *    simple past and imperative of two related verbs
*دارومدار- کشمکش - بگیرنگیر - بگومگو* imperatives of the same verb (one is negative)
*زد  و خورد - رفت وآمد *   simple past tense of two related verbs
*بزن بزن - بزن وبکوب - بروبیا - بخورونمیر*  ... imperatives of the same or different verbs
*بود ونبود - آمد نیامد *  simple past tense of the same verb (one is negative)


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## Qureshpor

Taking the word "*گفتگو*" to start off with, I would like to ask our Persian and Urdu speakers if they could please add all the short vowels that are missing from it. In other words, could you please fully vocalise it and then provide its transcription.


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## PersoLatin

goftogu/گفتگو contracted form of  گفت و گو/ goft o gu


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## Qureshpor

PersoLatin said:


> goftogu/گفتگو contracted form of  گفت و گو/ goft o gu


Thank you PersoLatin. Could you please add all the short vowels onto the Persian word گفتگو.


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## PersoLatin

Qureshpor said:


> Could you please add all the short vowels onto the Persian word گفتگو.


گُفتُگو/goftogu, the short vowels are o's in the Latinised version (as it is not easy to see, on first گ  and ت)


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## Qureshpor

Thank you PersoLatin. I shall get back to you soon. Hopefully, we'll also hear from one or two Urdu speakers as well.


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## PersoLatin

I am intrigued, with three vowels in the word (short /o/ & long /oo/), there are 8 possible combinations, (/a/ & /e/ excluded), some seem awkward to pronounce:
goftogo
goftogu
goftugo
goftugu
guftogo
guftogu 
guftugo
guftugu


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## Alfaaz

Qureshpor said:
			
		

> Taking the word "*گفتگو*" to start off with, I would like to ask our Persian and Urdu speakers if they could please add all the short vowels that are missing from it. In other words, could you please fully vocalise it and then provide its transcription.


گُفْتگُو - _guft-guu_

This is the pronunciation listed in Platts and Urdu Lughat (audio example included).
In colloquial speech, the pronunciation seems to end up with a (partial?) _pesh _on the ت - _guftuguu _or_ guftoguu_.

گُفت و گُو - _guft-o-guu = guf-to-guu_


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## Qureshpor

Thank you, Alfaaz SaaHib. Leaving aside what the dictionaries say, how do you pronounce and write گفتگو?


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## Alfaaz

Qureshpor said:
			
		

> Thank you, Alfaaz SaaHib. Leaving aside what the dictionaries say, how do you pronounce and write گفتگو?


_guftuguu, justujuu_

It would be interesting to hear your perspective, especially if you've found anything while researching that might have prompted the question!


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## marrish

Qureshpor said:


> Taking the word "*گفتگو*" to start off with, I would like to ask our Persian and *Urdu* speakers if they could please add all the short vowels that are missing from it. In other words, could you please fully vocalise it and then provide its transcription.


[*Urdu:*] I say it with a short /u/ on the initial kaaf-e-faarsii and an even shorter reflex of /u/ on taa' and a final long(-ish) /uu/ but I suppose that in fast, casual speech the middle vowel is elided, or, perhaps reduced to a short schwa.
.گُ۰فْ۰+تُ.گُ.و (گُفْتُگُو)۔

The late Prof. Shamsul Rahman Faruqi had just this much to say in one of his books:
گفتگو     ____   عام طور پر ت کو بالکل ساکن بولا جاتا ہے لیکن بہار میں ت کو صاف صاف مفتوح کر کے "گفتَ گو" بولتے ہیں۔ اسے علاقۂ بہار کا مقامی تلفظ سمجھنا چاہئے۔
/Generally taa pronounced with no vowel at all /saakin/ but in the [province of] Bihar [India] they say گفتَ گو clearly with a _fatHah_. It should be deemed a regional pronunciation of Bihar./


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## Qureshpor

I am grateful for responses from PersoLatin and Alfaaz and marrish SaaHibaan. All three have said that the word گفتگو is "guft-u-guu" (PersoLatin has indicated this as "goftogu" which is the modern Iranian Persian pronunciation). If گفتگو is fully vocalised then we are all in agreement that it is written as  گُفْتُگُو. I am aware that Persian speakers do not place a -ُ over the گ which as far as I understand is a convention of the Persian written language of modern times, because as far as they are concerned the و alone provides the -uu sound in the said word.

My reason for requesting friends to vocalise گفتگو concerns exclusively the presence or absence of a -ُ over the ت and all three responders have placed the -ُ over the ت. I too do the same. However, in another forum an Urdu poet writes this word with a "sukuun" or "jazm" over the ت, that is to say "guftguu" and I wanted to find out how Persian and Urdu members of the group perceived the pronunciaion of this word.

*guftuguu *is given in the following dictionaries.

LuGhat Nama - Iranian Persian Dictionary
Sulayman Hayyim - Iranian Persian Dictionary
Kitabistan 20th Century Standard- Pakistani Dictionary

*guftguu* is given in the following dictionaries

Steingass - Indian (Indo-Persian) Dictionary
Platts - Indian Urdu Dictionary
Urdu LuGhat- Pakistani Urdu Dictionary

Based on this and the additional comment in marrish SaaHib's post, it appears that in modern day Urdu, the common pronunciation is *guftguu *which strangely enough is in variance with the views of three persons in this forum from Urdu background! But three people from Urdu background and one from Persian is not large enough a number to draw statistical conclusions!

So, what is the correct pronunciation. Well, based on the perspective of one Persian speaker, three Urdu speakers, two Persian dictionaries and an Urdu dictionary, the word ought to be *guftuguu*. If we take into account our Urdu poet from another forum, marrish SaaHib's quote from a well known authority on the Urdu language and three dictionaries (One Indo-Persian and two Urdu), the word is *guftguu*. Not much to chose from and the score is almost level and there is no clear discernable difference! I was hoping that *guftuguu *would be a clear outright winner. One lives in hope!

Why should it be "guftuguu"? Well, language pronunciations change but theoratically speaking it should be "guftuguu". Why?

Below I am copy/pasting a section from my own post from an earlier thread.

Hindi: व

As you have indicated, the word for "and" in Persian was -u- (equivalent to a pesh). When the Persian language began to be written in the Arabic alphabet which normally showed no short vowels, there was no real problem when a word like "gul" was simply written as "gl". But to indicate -u- for and, the next best thing was to use an Arabic letter which was connected to -u-, namely "waaw".

So, aab-u-havaa was written as آب و ھوا

du (two) as دو

tu (thou) as تو

chu (like) as چو

In all such words the -u- had a "pesh" sound, just like the pesh vowel in "gul". Even today, in Dari, the word for "two" is NOT "do" but, "du" and for "thou", it is "tu" and NOT "tuu" (as we pronounce the Persian تو nor "to" as the Iranians pronounce the تو).This -u- sound over a period of time became a majhuul -o-sound, as in "aab-o-havaa" and the Iranian "to" and "do". (Our Persian "tuu" could be influenced by our Urdu "tuu". Same goes for "do"). So, apart from the Dari "du" and "tu", the-u- sound on the whole has become-o-, just like the izaafat-i-, has become the majhuul -e- in Indo-Persian, Dari and Iranian Persian.

What is all this leading to. It is this representation of the original -u- with the Arabic Waaw, that could be a "polluting" factor in our thinking that the Persian '-u-' is of Arabic origins. It is quite possible that the letter waaw representing the sound -u-in the written documents began to be read as one would read an Arabic "waaw", ie. "wa". This then fluctuated between wa and va.

I don't have any scholarly proof for this. Just think of it as Qurehpor's hunch!!

eskandar SaaHib had this to say.

"I believe your hunch is quite right! In Middle Persian, logograms (huzvarishn) were often used where words were written according to their Aramaic meaning but pronounced according to Middle Persian. For example, shaah (king) was written MLK (Aramaic 'malka', cognate to Arabic ملك 'malik') but read as 'shaah'. (See more examples here). As far as I know the Persian use of و (or its Aramaic equivalent) began as a logogram for 'u' and continued in New Persian written in the Arabic alphabet, with و primarily representing 'u' (later 'o') and then later it began to be read as 'wa' (later 'va') as well."

Finally, here is a chunk from fdb SaaHib's post.

"There are two words for “and” in Persian, which, confusingly, are both written as و.

There is the inherited Persian word _u_, from Middle Persian _ud_, from Old Persian _uta. _This is purely Indo-European. In modern Persian this is normally only used if the two words connected by it are in close junction.

Then there is the Arabic word _wa_. This is pure Semitic.

It is true that in Middle Persian (Pahlavi) the conjunction _ud_ is written with the Aramaeogram W. Aramaic _w-, wa- _is indeed cognate with Arabic _wa_, but this has no bearing on New Persian or Hindi/Urdu. The Muslims in Persia and India could not read Pahlavi and were not affected by the vagrancies of Pahlavi spelling."


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## PersoLatin

[





Qureshpor said:


> It is true that in Middle Persian (Pahlavi) the conjunction _ud_ is written with the Aramaeogram W. Aramaic _w-, wa- _is indeed cognate with Arabic _wa_, but this has no bearing on New Persian or Hindi/Urdu. The Muslims in Persia and India could not read Pahlavi and were not affected by the vagrancies of Pahlavi spelling."


I am not sure if I understand you correctly, are you saying the short o New Persian speakers have been using for centuries, for “and” is actually the same as the Arabic ‘va’? Also I don’t see what being a Moslem Persian has to do with pronunciation of /o/, again I might have misunderstood you.

I raised a thread asking if that was indeed the case, because it didn’t make sense to me for it ti be true, and as you have said fdb explained its origin as  ‘ud’ & the older ‘uta’ (cognate with et and e in Romance languages, for ‘and’)


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## PersoLatin

Qureshpor said:


> However, in an another forum an Urdu poet writes the word with a "sukuun" or "jazm" over the ت, that is to say "guftguu" and I wanted to find out how Persian and Urdu members of the group perceived the pronunciaion of this word.


In poetry seeing goftgu is not surprising.

As well as the formal goftogu, you’d hear  goftegu colloquially also goftagu .


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## Qureshpor

PersoLatin said:


> In poetry seeing goftgu is not surprising. As well as the formal goftogu, you’d hear  goftegu colloquially also goftagu .


Thank you, PersoLatin. Looking at marrish SaaHib's message it appears the situation is the similar for Urdu barring "guftegu". Perhaps, this exists too amongst some people.


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## Qureshpor

PersoLatin said:


> [I am not sure if I understand you correctly, are you saying the short o New Persian speakers have been using for centuries, for “and” is actually the same as the Arabic ‘va’? Also I don’t see what being a Moslem Persian has to do with pronunciation of /o/, again I might have misunderstood you.
> 
> I raised a thread asking if that was indeed the case, because it didn’t make sense to me for it ti be true, and as you have said fdb explained its origin as  ‘ud’ & the older ‘uta’ (cognate with et and e in Romance languages, for ‘and’)



Hi PersoLatin.

The part you have quoted is a direct copy from fdb's post and I did indicate this in my post.

No, the Persian "u"  ( -ُ ) having origins in Middle Persian "ud" meaning "and" which was later represented in the new Persian script based on Arabic script with و which later became to be uttered as "o" is NOT Arabic. The Arabic word for "and", as you no doubt will know is "wa وَ". The Persian "u"/"o" at a later stage started being pronounced as "wa/va" because of the usage of letter و and it being coincidental with the Arabic و (and)... See further explanation below.

آب و دانہ  > aab-u-daanah > aab-o-daanah > aab-wa*-daanah > aab-va*-daanah

* This wa/va is a result of the fact that و was used for the Persian "u/o" but as this letter also happened to be a word used in Arabic and pronounced as "wa" started being used in Persian for "and". The modern day Afghans pronounce it as "wa" (unless when they are using و/"o" as used in poetry) but the Iranians pronounced it as "va".

So,

یکے پھلوان بود دھقان نژاد
دلیر و بزرگ و خردمند و راد

فردوسی

yake pahlavaan buud dihqaan niZaad
diler-u-buzurg-u-xiradmand-u-raad
diler-o-buzurg-o-xiradmand-o-raad


چون بار بگسست و ھر کس بَجای خویش باز گشتند۔۔۔۔

تاریخِ بیھقی

chuun baar bi-gusast wa/va har kas ba-jaay-i-xvesh baaz gashtand...

I don't know when the shift from u/o to wa/va took place.

What fdb said with reference to Muslims is this. "The Muslims in Persia and India could not read Pahlavi and were not affected by the vagrancies of Pahlavi spelling."


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## PersoLatin

Qureshpor said:


> Finally, here is a chunk from fdb SaaHib's post.
> 
> "There are two words for “and” in Persian, which, confusingly, are both written as و.
> 
> There is the inherited Persian word _u_, from Middle Persian _ud_, from Old Persian _uta. _This is purely Indo-European. In modern Persian this is normally only used if the two words connected by it are in close junction.
> 
> Then there is the Arabic word _wa_. This is pure Semitic.
> 
> It is true that in Middle Persian (Pahlavi) the conjunction _ud_ is written with the Aramaeogram W. Aramaic _w-, wa- _is indeed cognate with Arabic _wa_, but this has no bearing on New Persian or Hindi/Urdu. The Muslims in Persia and India could not read Pahlavi and were not affected by the vagrancies of Pahlavi spelling."





Qureshpor said:


> What fdb said with reference to Muslims is this. "The Muslims in Persia and India could not read Pahlavi and were not affected by the vagrancies of Pahlavi spelling."


Thanks for clarifying that, I didn't appreciate the 'chunk' included everything following it. 

My comment about the relevance of "The Muslims in Persia and India..." still stands, I will look in the thread that I myself had raised to see if it was explained in there.


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