AMFA Persian Language Proficiency Test cheat sheet

Persian is stress-timed at the word level but syllable-counted in formal recitation; final syllables of a phrase carry the pitch contour, so question vs. statement is decided by the last word's intonation, not word order.

Colloquial speech drops final -an to -e(n) and shortens ā to u/o in many Tehrani forms: 'nān' → 'nun', 'khāne' → 'xune'; listening items often test recognition of these vowel shifts.

The ezāfe (e/ye) links nouns to adjectives and possessors and is usually unstressed but audible as a glide; missing it signals a compound noun rather than a modified one.

Formal register uses 'shomā' and full verb endings; informal uses 'to' with shortened copula ('-i', '-e', '-im', '-id', '-an'), so register can be inferred from the pronoun-plus-copula pair alone.

Persian has no grammatical gender and no definite article; definiteness is carried by stress on the noun or by 'in/ān', so listening distractors rarely hinge on gender agreement.

Numbers above 20 are joined with 'o' ('bist o yek'); dates use ordinal suffixes '-om' and months are solar Hijri names (Farvardin, Ordibehesht, Khordād...).

Negation is the prefix 'na-/ne-' on the verb ('miram' → 'nemiran'); the negative prefix attracts stress, which is a reliable acoustic cue for catching negated statements in audio.

Persian script is right-to-left and cursive; only 7 letters are non-connecting after (ا د ذ ر ز ژ و), so word boundaries are read by spotting those breaks and the non-joining forms.

Short vowels are usually unwritten; the reader supplies a/e/o from context, so unfamiliar words must be matched against known roots rather than sounded out letter by letter.

The ezāfe chain 'noun-e adjective-e noun' is the main parsing challenge: every linked element after the head noun belongs to the same phrase until a verb or preposition closes it.

Sentence order is Subject–Object–Verb; the verb is final and carries person, number, and tense, so scanning to the end of a clause reveals the subject even when it is omitted.

'Rā' marks a definite direct object and follows the object phrase; its presence distinguishes 'I saw the book' from an indefinite or generic object.

Formal written prose uses 'ke' for relative clauses and 'va/ammā/vali' for coordination; 'vali' is colloquial-leaning while 'ammā' is bookish.

Passive is formed with past participle plus a form of 'shodan' ('neveshte shod'); 'kardan' counterparts are active, so voice is read from the auxiliary.

Past stem plus '-am/-i/-∅/-im/-id/-and' gives the simple past; present stem with 'mi-' gives the present/habitual ('miravam'), and 'be-' gives the subjunctive.

The past participle (past stem + '-e') plus 'budan' forms the perfect ('rafte-am'); the same participle plus 'shodan' forms the passive.

Subjunctive follows 'ke' after verbs of wanting, ordering, and possibility (mixāham ke, lāzem ast ke) and after 'bāyad'; the 'ke' may be omitted but the subjunctive mood remains.

'Rā' is a postposition enclitic on the definite direct object; it never attaches to indefinite objects marked with '-i' unless the object is specific.

Comparative is '-tar' and superlative '-tarin'; both attach directly to the adjective ('bozorgtar', 'bozorgtarin') without a separate word for 'more'.

Plural inanimate nouns take '-hā'; animate/human nouns may take '-ān' ('dāneshju-yān'); Arabic broken plurals appear in formal vocabulary only.

The copula in the present is enclitic ('-am, -i, -ast/-e, -im, -id, -and') and attaches to the predicate, not to a separate verb 'to be'.

Many verbs are light-verb compounds: 'kardan' (do), 'dādan' (give), 'zadan' (hit/strike), 'keshidan' (draw) combine with nouns to form meanings not predictable from parts ('telefon zadan' = to call).

Arabic-derived vocabulary dominates formal and religious registers; native Persian equivalents dominate everyday speech, so register can be judged from the lexical layer.

Common idioms: 'dast-e kasi dard nakonad' (may it not hurt anyone), 'delam gereft' (I feel blue), 'sar-e kāri raftan' (to go wrong).

Polite formulas: 'lotfan', 'bebaxshid', 'xāhesh mikonam', 'qābel-e shomā rā nadāre' - fixed phrases whose literal translation misleads.

'Chand' asks quantity and 'che' asks identity; 'kodām' asks 'which one', and 'ki' asks 'who' - mixing these is a frequent distractor pattern.

Kinship and address terms shift with formality: 'pedar/mādar' vs. colloquial 'bābā/māmān'; 'āqā' and 'xānom' follow the name in formal address.

Numbers and classifiers: 'tā' is the general classifier ('se tā ketāb'), while units of measure (kilu, metr) attach without 'tā'.

Persian is written right-to-left; the Arabic-derived alphabet has 32 letters, and four letters (پ چ ژ گ) exist only in Persian.

The zero-width non-joiner (نیمفاصله) separates prefixes and suffixes like 'mi-' and '-hā' from the stem while keeping them visually joined; its omission is a spelling error in formal text.

The ezāfe is written as a kasra in fully vocalized text but normally omitted; in careful prose it may appear as a small connecting stroke under the final letter.

Formal writing prefers 'ast' over the colloquial enclitic '-e' and avoids contractions; essays typically close with a summary sentence introduced by 'dar pāyān' or 'be-tor-e kolli'.

Punctuation follows the Arabic/Persian set: '،' for comma, '؛' for semicolon, '؟' for question mark, and '«»' for quotation.

Paragraph structure in formal Persian favors a topic sentence, supporting examples with 'barā-ye mesāl', and a concluding 'natiye' (conclusion).

Numbers are written left-to-right inside right-to-left text; a date such as 1403/05/12 is read as year/month/day in the solar Hijri calendar.

Colloquial Tehrani reduces the present progressive: 'miram' can mean 'I am going' in speech, whereas formal writing distinguishes 'miravam' (habitual) from 'dāram miravam' (progressive).

The copula contracts in speech: 'xubam' (I am fine), 'irāni-i?' (are you Iranian?) - the second-person '-i' is the standard check for register.

'Bale' and 'āre' both mean yes; 'āre' is colloquial, 'bale' formal, and 'na/xeyr' mirror the same split.

Turn-taking uses 'xob', 'be har hāl', 'rāsti' (by the way), and 'mibinid ke' - discourse markers that signal a shift rather than content.

Polite refusal uses 'motasefāne nemitunam' or 'šarmande-am, vali...'; direct 'na' is acceptable among peers but marked in formal speech.

Ta'ārof (ritual politeness) requires offering and declining at least once before accepting; 'qābeli nadāre' is the standard formula when offering something.