Translation

Mornings, Parmadani's opens at ten o'clock. It is open every day except Sunday afternoons. It closes at six o'clock in the evening.

bon, firm, business: bon e Parmadani's, [the firm of] Parmadani's; hamojaboni, to the rug shop

vas sqouda, open: vas mansqouda, close (customarily)

pouvonjat, ten o'clock: pouvonjato, at ten o'clock

ayoi, its/his/her/their: avi, my/our; abui, your; ani, our (including the person addressed) (possessive adjectives)

sqovat, opening: ayoi sqovat vayole, its opening is

beqi, every

aive, day: auanaive, Sunday (also week)

pe, except

poujaunvonjat, six o'clock [lit. 18-hours: the 24-hour clock is employed]: poujaunvonjato, at six o'clock

Marianne, the other sales assistant, helps me. I am learning the names of Persian wares: rugs from Qom, Tabriz and Isfahan.

veqi, other, another: nuni veqi, the other

darsede, sales assistant

lesegadi, help s.o.

resot, name (of things, not people)

saqir, thing: saqira e Persia, of Persian ware[s] [lit. things]

yoyole, namely

ye, from

meyon, city: ye meyona e, from the cities of

And, I'm learning many other things, too: such as how to be a good sales assistant.

remí, many/much

e, like (e means "and" when linking names or things in a list)

ge, how: nu ge, how?; e ge, such as (like) how

sediada e, be, become [lit. become like]

xayari, good (context indicates when "well" is meant)

Marianne and I had coffee with Mrs Saba when she arrived.

ava, I/me/we (if we, not including the person addressed): an, we (including the person addressed); abu, you; ayo, he/she/it/they (free-standing forms of subject pronouns)

hamodi, drink sth (here, translates "have")

nuri, some or any (indefinite possessive adjective acting as partitive article)

sarat, coffee (beverage): (sou) sara, coffee-shrub; (cu) sara, coffee (raw product)

gasta, with (comitative)

gosasi, Mrs, Ms; busasi, Mr

Each day, Mrs Saba comes in at around eleven o'clock. Mr Saba doesn't come to the business because he is too busy. The Sabas are rich -- they like to spend four months or so in Teheran and return to Melbourne for the Iranian winter.

jaqi, each: aiveyo jaqi, each day

vas sebouda, come (vas indicates custom or habit)

e zoi e, around, about, approximately (e zoi after nouns, rendered as or so)

poumarvonjato, at eleven o'clock

rah, not/no

giniole, because

airebi, too, overly

dibanda, be busy

buhai Saba, the Sabas (buhai makes proper nouns plural)

nasuda, be rich

yos, both (may precede third person to strengthen idea of plural)

pevada eher, like to

duvonda e, spend, pass (time)

iyohat, month (iyohata [genitive] is used after numbers)

oher, at, in

imasebovatta, return, go back

haunta, for, during

asyuca hus, winter

Uzeut

Remarks

1. Desqes: Countable nouns of time may stand uninflected at the beginning of a sentence, marked off with a comma. Such nouns form the second part of such compounds as auanaive desqes, Sunday mornings, beqi auanaive desqou, every Sunday evening, etc. Such words are inflected in the locative if qualified: desqeso jaqi, every/each morning

2. Initial capital letters are only employed for foreign proper nouns: words like bon, sasi or auanaive are not capitalised. (Similarly, tanerai, Taneraic, and javant, Javant.)

3. Words such as bon and saqir are called classifiers. Classifiers are common before names of plants (sou), flowers (sula), fruits (pula), animals (vou), peoples (tou, jitou) and places (but meyon, city, although operating as a classifier, does not behave like the foregoing classifiers; viz., free-standing prefixes). Inflection occurs at the end of the compound: eg, bon hamoja, the rug business; bon hamojá, of the rug business (not *bona hamoja). NB, a rug shop is a hamojabon; "the rug business" may also be rendered as darhamojabonqa.

4. E is multi-functional. The ligative e must be used to link classifiers with foreign proper nouns. As all loan-words, i.e., foreign proper nouns, are unassimilable, the classifier is inflected: eg, meyona e Quma, of Qom (not *meyon e Qumá).

5. Although gender is not differentiated in radicals (levis), the prefixes go- (female) and bu- (male) may be attached to nouns of primary relationship (ma, father or mother: parent(s) > goma, mother; buma, father), honorifics (sasi, Mr(s), Ms > gosasi, M[r]s; busasi, Mr) and animals (beiji, cat > gobeiji, she-cat; bubeiji, tom-cat).

6. Subject Object Free-standing Pronouns________

va- -va ava I; me/we, us (exclusive)

an- -an an we; us (inclusive)

bu- -bu abu you

yo- -yo ayo he, she, it, they;

him, her, it, them

7. Free-standing pronouns are used in conjunction with proper nouns: Nicole e ava, Nicole and I. They are also used with the copula vayole: ayo vayole sabri zon, it is a big room.

8. Nuri, a (an)/some/any and nunieni, this/these are demonstrative adjectives (nuni, that/those). They are sometimes used like articles. Nuri is used before nouns of quantity (especially food or drink): aibandi nuri pula beden, eat (have) an apple (some apples). (Pula is a classifier for fruit; beden by itself could refer to the tree.)

9. Cardinals: marnu (1), yabnu (2), cannu (3), meinu (4), sunu (5), yannu (6), auannu (7), jaunnu (8), sautnu (9), pou (10) (when counting on fingers, for example, the -nu ending for numbers 1–9 is dropped): Mar yab can mei su yan auan jaun saut pou! One two three four five six seven eight nine ten!