# Persian: for  برا vs. براى



## PersoLatin

Is there such a word as براى and shouldn't it be برا, when it is used on its own? So isn't the correct answer to, 'How do say 'for' in Persian?', برا?

The ى in براى is, or should be, added (as a liaison) only when an ezâfé is required, e.g. براى من, in the same way as you'd say پاى من - pâye man.


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## sepinarc

yes, "برای" is the exact word that we use for "for". Since in almost every example that came to my mind, "برای" is added to another noun, it always comes with the "ی" at the end. However, there are several instances in informal conversations that we just drop the "ی", but we never do so in more formal settings or in writing. As you might already know, the written and spoken Persian can sometimes be very different, because we tend to shorten the words quite frequently. In the following example you can see that the question "whose book is this?" and the answer "This book is mine" can be transformed to a shorter question and answer:
- این کتاب مالِ/برای چه کسی هست؟ 
- این کتاب برای من است.
alternative in spoken Persian:
- این کتابِ کیه؟
- برا منه

I hope this helps and that it wasn't confusing!


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## PersoLatin

sepinarc said:


> However, there are several instances in informal conversations that we just drop the "ی", but we never do so in more formal settings or in writing.


Thank you sepinarc.

My point is that ى is not part of the word so I disagree that sometimes we 'drop' it, I think it is more correct to say, we only use it when we need to, otherwise we use it as it is i.e. برا. Examples; for the former براى من, for the latter برام, I appreciate the latter is less formal, or even colloquial which can suggest the word was without ى in the first place.

colloquial examples:
برام، برات، براش، برامون، براتون، براشون، برا چى، برا كى

I think at some point ى was added to the colloquial ones, to make them sound more formal & polite, e.g.:
برايم، برايت، برايمون، برايتون، برايشون even برايتان، برايشان etc.


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## eli7

PersoLatin said:


> برام، برات، براش، برامون، براتون، براشون، برا چى، برا كى


برایم - برایت - برایش - برایتان - برایشان - برایمان

As you said, these are the colloquial forms, but in teaching Farsi to speakers of other languages, we need to distinguish the difference between formal and informal usage, better to teach them the formal ones, then they will learn the informal soon 

I cannot think of  برا as the equivalent of the word "for". The correct form would be برای  without concerning the second word added.


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## Dib

In light of what fdb has posted on another thread, I guess, it would be practically impossible to determine whether the underlying form is برای or برا:



fdb said:


> The pseudo-preposition _barā-yi_ is not found before the New Persian period. I think it originated with the preposition+noun+postpostion group _ba X rāy_ “for X, for the sake of X” (this is quite common in Early NP; see Lazard, _La langue..._ p. 369). It would then seem that at some point _X rāy _was reinterpreted as a possessive phrase (possessed noun + possessor noun) and that consequently _ba X rāy_ was restructured as _ba rāy-i X_. In any event, _barā-yi _derives from *rā(y)* ...



On the other hand, I agree with eli7, that in a pedagogical context (like this forum itself) it is preferable to treat it as برای, because that's the only form that occurs in formal Persian.


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## PersoLatin

Dib said:


> In light of what fdb has posted on another thread, I guess, it would be practically impossible to determine whether the underlying form is برای or برا:


Maybe, in the light of that post from fdb, and your own input Dib, we can conclude that برای - _barāy _is the correct form, (_rādiy > rāy_) but when we refer to it, on its own, we don't add the usual ezáfé, so _barāy _as opposed to_ barāye.



Dib said:



			I agree with eli7, that in a pedagogical context (like this forum itself) it is preferable to treat it as برای, because that's the only form that occurs in formal Persian.
		
Click to expand...

_Of course, and I agree but we do need to know how we got here.



eli7 said:


> As you said, these are the colloquial forms, but in teaching Farsi to speakers of other languages, we need to distinguish the difference between formal and informal usage, better to teach them the formal ones, then they will learn the informal soon


This thread was about educating me, hopefully it was also of benefit to others.


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## eli7

PersoLatin said:


> This thread was about educating me, hopefully it was also of benefit to others.


Concerning your native language, which you have mentioned it is Persian, I thought you are perfectly familiar with Farsi


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## PersoLatin

eli7 said:


> Concerning your native language, which you have mentioned it is Persian, I thought you are perfectly familiar with Farsi


I don't think you are saying, native speaker of a language should know the etymology of all words in that language.


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## eli7

PersoLatin said:


> I don't think you are saying, native speaker of a language should know the etymology of *all* words in that language.


Not all, but s/he should know enough!
Easy. Keep asking questions and we will help if we can


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## PersoLatin

eli7 said:


> Not all, but s/he should know enough!


Ok, I will look out for future answers from you, especially as you haven't answered any of mine yet. I have raised many threads on etymology of Persian words and most, if not all, have been answered by non natives, this in no reflection on the natives Persian speakers.

Please also read this thread, this is another simple etymology question which I have asked, knowing fully well what چرا means.


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## fdb

I have looked over what I wrote before and think it might have been just a bit misleading. The postposition for the indirect object is rāy in Middle Persian, but in New Persian it is always rā, not rāy. Since براى occurs only in New Persian it would have been better to analyse it as ba-rā-yi, not as ba-rāy-i.


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## PersoLatin

Thank you for that fdb. In the light of that, what is your view on the question in the OP (below)?


PersoLatin said:


> Is there such a word as براى and shouldn't it be برا, when it is used on its own? So isn't the correct answer to, 'How do say 'for' in Persian?', برا?


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## fdb

Can you give an example of برا being "used on its own"?


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## PersoLatin

fdb said:


> Can you give an example of برا being "used on its own"?


Maybe the correct answer to this question: 'how do you say 'for' in Persian?', this is the only example I can think of, but thinking about it, that may be the only correct context.


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## Dib

PersoLatin said:


> Maybe the correct answer to this question: 'how do you say 'for' in Persian?', this is the only example I can think of, but thinking about it, that may be the only correct context.



I guess, technically speaking, you could equally choose one from barā, barāy, barāye - adding that the ezāfe is required in case of choosing one of the first two forms. I'd personally prefer 'barāye' with the ezāfe already built in. Similarly, if someone asks me "how do you say 'in' in colloquial Persian?", I'd say "tu or tuye", i.e. explicitly giving two forms, since the ezāfe is optional there.


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## PersoLatin

Dib said:


> if someone asks me "how do you say 'in' in colloquial Persian?", I'd say "tu or tuye", i.e. explicitly giving two forms, since the ezāfe is optional there.


Playing the devil's advocate, please allow me to disagree, after all if someone asks me 'how do you say 'on', in Persian?', I would say 'ru' without mentioning 'ruye', or 'how do you say 'in', in Persian, using an Arabic word?', I would say 'dâxel' without mentioning 'dâxele'.

Regarding براى, I can't remember ever being taught it formally, everyone just knew it as barâye, the hidden ezâfé was not noticed, or was conveniently ignored.

Another point, in English (also French) you'd say 'what for' but in Persian, we seem to say 'for of what', or 'what for of', the correct form surely should be 'barâ čé' and not the popularly used, 'barâye čé', and I believe, the latter is the corruption of the former.


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## Dib

My stand is, as I said:



Dib said:


> I guess, technically speaking, you could equally choose one from barā, barāy, barāye - adding that the ezāfe is required in case of choosing one of the first two forms.



The choice is purely a technicality, required only when _discussing_ the language, needing a *metalinguistic* citation form for words, rather than in actual language usage. The only possible objection that might be raised - as far as I can see - against your choice of "barā" is that it doesn't exist in actual *linguistic* usage*. But, it would be a weak argument in my opinion. Metalinguistic traditions do allow such choices. Sanskrit dictionaries are full of citation forms that do not exist in real linguistic usage (e.g. all verb roots, many nominal stems). And the traditional Indian descriptions of Sanskrit grammar is full of even more drastic choices of citation forms, e.g. a suffix that shows up in the stem form as -ana- is referred to as lyuṭ, and another that is usually completely omitted or sometimes shows up as a -t- in the stem form is referred to as kvip, and I am perfectly happy with this terminology. They make perfect sense within the framework, the grammarians have long established - each of the letters in the citation form provides information about specific properties of the suffix. (Don't ask me to explain though, I am not an expert of Sanskrit grammatical traditions. I know the language, but the grammatical tradition only superficially. )

Your choices are far less drastic, and perfectly acceptable. It's just that there are multiple valid choices here.



PersoLatin said:


> Another point, in English (also French) you'd say 'what for' but in Persian, we seem to say 'for of what', or 'what for of', the correct form surely should be 'barâ čé' and not the popularly used, 'barâye čé', and I believe, the latter is the corruption of the former.



I fail to see why the English/French examples are relevant. Every language has its own different history. In fact, even in the history of these two languages it was like this:
1) Old English said "for hwām?" / "for hwon?" using the dative or instrumental case of what, as if saying "for to what?" or "for with what?", and
2) Latin used "pro quo?" using the (so-called) ablative of what, as if "for from what?" or "for with what?" etc.

As a matter of fact, even Old Persian has "avahya-rādiy" = "for this" / "therefore", where "this" apears in genitive, i.e. "for of this", if you please.

---

* The same objection may be raised against "ru" if we limit ourselves to its prepositional usage.


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## PersoLatin

Dib said:


> I fail to see why the English/French examples are relevant. Every language has its own different history. In fact, even in the history of these two languages it was like this:
> 1) Old English said "for hwām?" / "for hwon?" using the dative or instrumental case of what, as if saying "for to what?" or "for with what?", and
> 2) Latin used "pro quo?" using the (so-called) ablative of what, as if "for from what?" or "for with what?" etc.
> 
> As a matter of fact, even Old Persian has "avahya-rādiy" = "for this" / "therefore", where "this" apears in genitive, i.e. "for of this", if you please.


Fair enough. A small point, I compared 'what for' in modern English with its equivalent in Persian, which, if at present is used correctly, has not moved on whereas "for to what?" or "for with what? have, to 'what for'.


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## PersoLatin

Dib said:


> The only possible objection that might be raised - as far as I can see - against your choice of "barā" is that it doesn't exist in actual *linguistic* usage*


I don't follow this, by '*linguistic* usage', do you mean 'used in the language'?  In case you do, then 'barā' does exist in colloquial & informal language, e.g. برام، برات، براش، برامون، براتون، براشون، (what for) برا چى (who for)، برا كى


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## Dib

PersoLatin said:


> Fair enough. A small point, I compared 'what for' in modern English with its equivalent in Persian, which, if at present is used correctly, has not moved on whereas "for to what?" or "for with what? have, to 'what for'.



This is an interesting observation. Indeed "avahya-rādiy" and "barāye u" have parallel semantic structures: "ba-rā" paralleling "rādiy" (which is likely some oblique case - instrumental? - of some unattested noun) and "-e u" paralleling "avahya-", apart from the shared vocabulary items in rā~rādiy and u~ava-. However, if fdb's idea in the other thread is correct, the intermediate form between the two is (roughly) "ba-u rā", which has a distinct shape. So, it's probably not a case of retention, rather evolution turning a full circle.



PersoLatin said:


> I don't follow this, by '*linguistic* usage', do you mean 'used in the language'?



Yes, I do.



> In case you do, then 'barā' does exist in colloquial & informal language, e.g. برام، برات، براش، برامون، براتون، براشون، (what for) برا چى (who for)، برا كى



Thank you for the correction, and sorry that I had only the formal language in my mind. In any case, the objection would be untenably weak even if we'd limit ourselves to the formal language.


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## PersoLatin

Dib said:


> "avahya-"


This is an aside, I have never understood where the second 'a' in ava comes from, it should just be 'av' which in Arabic script is او, if it really was written & pronounced ava, woudn't its Arabic equivalent be اوه?


Dib said:


> avahya


avahya looks so alien but isn't it simply اوی with an ezáfé, or zebar, on ی?


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## Dib

PersoLatin said:


> This is an aside, I have never understood where the second 'a' in ava comes from, it should just be 'av' which in Arabic script is او, if it really was written & pronounced ava, woudn't its Arabic equivalent be اوه?



Well, Old Persian was written and spoken 1000 years before Arab conquest of Persia. So, obviously it has no Arabic script orthography. Old Persian used its own cuneiform script, in which the word looked as in the attachment. Sign for sign, it may be transcribed as "a-v(a)-h(a)-y(a)-r(a)-a-di-i-y(a)". I don't know all the details of procedure to reconstruct the location of the "a" vowels, but a comparison with the cognate Sanskrit forms is instructive. The stem "ava-" has been barely attested in Sanskrit, but if it was regularly inflected, the corresponding form would be *avasya (genitive masculine/neuter singular). This would perfectly match an OP avahya-, given the s>h shift in Iranian.



> avahya looks so alien but isn't it simply اوی with an ezáfé on ی ?



No. OP had no ezāfe. That came into being first in Middle Persian from an OP relative pronoun, whose maculine singular nominative form happened to be "hya": spelt "h(a)-y(a)"; Cp. Sanskrit "syas".

However, avahya- cannot be ava- + (future ezāfe) hya, because of the following reasons:
1) hya agrees in gender and number with its antecedent. Standalone ava can only be a neuter acc/nom form. But the corresponding from of "hya" is "tya" (Skt. tyat).
2) The relative hya/tya is always written as a separate word using word dividers in OP, which is not the case here.


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## fdb

Some case form of the Old Persian pronoun _ava-_ (possibly the genitive singular _avahạya_) is the source of the Middle Persian pronoun _ōy_, New Persian اوى/ōy/ and او /ō/, so NP اورا“to him, him” does indeed continue OP _avahạya-rādī _(as I transcribe it, following Hoffmann’s system).


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## لوامنّ

I have stumbled on many instances of "برا" in informal writing.

I see is as the writer dropping the "ی" of the ezafe, this should be added mentally when reading. "برا من" should be read _"berâye man"_, in the same ways as "مال من"  is read _"male man"_.


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## PersoLatin

Dib said:


> *Attached Files:*
> 
> 
> url("styles/default/xenforo/gradients/category-23px-light.png"


Thanks for this Dib, I'll get my notes out now.


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## colognial

Is it possible that برای and برا are constructions made by adding the preposition به to the noun را/رای?


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## colognial

لوامنّ said:


> I have stumbled on many instances of "برا" in informal writing.
> 
> I see is as the writer dropping the "ی" of the ezafe, this should be added mentally when reading. "برا من" should be read _"berâye man"_, in the same ways as "مال من"  is read _"male man"_.



You do have a point, لوامنّ, though apparently nobody can know for sure which form stands for the pure word. It may just be that برای is the pure form, and برا is the shortened form used in everyday speech.


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