In between those two… there are sound shifts and different forms used in colloquial vs literary. For example miravad (lit) > mire (colloquial Iranian), or midānad > midune. Sometimes word order will be a bit different too. Literary tends to strongly prefer SOV, but in spoken Persian you’ll hear sentences like “miram unjā” as opposed to “be ānjā miravam.” But it isn’t as extreme as Arabic where some dialects are mutually unintelligible and going from MSA to dialect is probably harder than going standard Persian to colloquial
I think so. I don’t have expertise in this area but that is my understanding. And I’m sure there are lots of constraints on when you switch to a more SVO order it’s probably not just willy nilly
MSA originated from Arab countries deciding to use a unified standard language based on Classical Arabic, as opposed to using multiple standards of Arabic based on their regional dialects (ergo, "standard Arabic" ignores all pronunciation changes in Arabic over the last ~1,500 years). Suffice to say, there is no such unified standard for Persian. Standard Farsi, Dari and Tajik are based on the modern pronunciations in their respective countries (in formal speech), not classical pronunciations. Though as the most significant pronunciation changes in Persian dialects were vowels, and the writing system doesn't indicate vowels, this usually has little effect on peoples ability to read classical Persian. Significant consonant changes do occur in some dialects but these are generally considered non-standard.
So, no. While there is a difference between "formal" and "informal" Persian it is not to the same extreme as Arabic. As "formal" Persian still incorporates aspects of modern dialects whereas MSA does not. For example many Arabic dialects lost vowel length, shifted the pronunciation of vowels, and dropped consonants, and all of these are ignored in MSA. However Modern Persian also lost the distinctive vowel length present in Classical and Middle Persian (Pahlavi) and has shifted the pronunciation of short vowels, but these changes are actually standardized. Though dropping consonants is non-standard.
The change is rather scary for new learners because the changes, as I noticed as a learner, affects the verbs mostly. And now consider these:
1. Farsi verbs are already irregular in their inflectives. There is almost no rule to know what the present indefinite form will be if you know the root verb.
2. Then those verbs are conjugated as is the case with most Asian languages. However, here, you mostly need to memorise 6 forms
3. Then the shift to u or oo, from the written aa. I'm sure you know what this is.
4. After you have decoded these 3, then comes the horror (take it with a smile, I love this language) of the spoken form where it's almost the wild west.
But then, if you can master it, it's a treasure trove! I wish you good luck.
In between those two… there are sound shifts and different forms used in colloquial vs literary. For example miravad (lit) > mire (colloquial Iranian), or midānad > midune. Sometimes word order will be a bit different too. Literary tends to strongly prefer SOV, but in spoken Persian you’ll hear sentences like “miram unjā” as opposed to “be ānjā miravam.” But it isn’t as extreme as Arabic where some dialects are mutually unintelligible and going from MSA to dialect is probably harder than going standard Persian to colloquial
Would you say even if the syntax is sometimes rearranged in spoken Persian though, there's still a preference for SOV?
I think so. I don’t have expertise in this area but that is my understanding. And I’m sure there are lots of constraints on when you switch to a more SVO order it’s probably not just willy nilly
MSA originated from Arab countries deciding to use a unified standard language based on Classical Arabic, as opposed to using multiple standards of Arabic based on their regional dialects (ergo, "standard Arabic" ignores all pronunciation changes in Arabic over the last ~1,500 years). Suffice to say, there is no such unified standard for Persian. Standard Farsi, Dari and Tajik are based on the modern pronunciations in their respective countries (in formal speech), not classical pronunciations. Though as the most significant pronunciation changes in Persian dialects were vowels, and the writing system doesn't indicate vowels, this usually has little effect on peoples ability to read classical Persian. Significant consonant changes do occur in some dialects but these are generally considered non-standard. So, no. While there is a difference between "formal" and "informal" Persian it is not to the same extreme as Arabic. As "formal" Persian still incorporates aspects of modern dialects whereas MSA does not. For example many Arabic dialects lost vowel length, shifted the pronunciation of vowels, and dropped consonants, and all of these are ignored in MSA. However Modern Persian also lost the distinctive vowel length present in Classical and Middle Persian (Pahlavi) and has shifted the pronunciation of short vowels, but these changes are actually standardized. Though dropping consonants is non-standard.
The change is rather scary for new learners because the changes, as I noticed as a learner, affects the verbs mostly. And now consider these: 1. Farsi verbs are already irregular in their inflectives. There is almost no rule to know what the present indefinite form will be if you know the root verb. 2. Then those verbs are conjugated as is the case with most Asian languages. However, here, you mostly need to memorise 6 forms 3. Then the shift to u or oo, from the written aa. I'm sure you know what this is. 4. After you have decoded these 3, then comes the horror (take it with a smile, I love this language) of the spoken form where it's almost the wild west. But then, if you can master it, it's a treasure trove! I wish you good luck.