Persian nouns

Persian nouns have no grammatical gender, and the case markers have been greatly reduced since Old Persian—both characteristics of contact languages. Persian nouns now mark with a postpositive only for the specific accusative case; the other oblique cases are marked by prepositions. Possession is expressed by special markers: if the possessor appears in the sentence after the thing possessed, the "ezafe" may be used; otherwise, alternatively, a pronominal genitive enclitic is employed.

Ezafe

"Ezafe" is name for the short vowel "e", with the same sign which signifies consonantal h or "he" (ه) in Persian. "Ezafe" is used as an enclitic to denote possession: "ketab-e man" means "my book." When "ezafe" follows a noun ending in a vowel, it becomes a glide known as "hey ye" and represented by the character ﮥ, pronounced -ye; e.g. "khaneh-ye man" for "my house."

Pluralization

The most common and productive form of pluralization for Persian nouns is with the suffix "hā" (ها). This is typically used for non-human nouns.Another productive plural suffix is "ān" (ان), used for human nouns.Many nouns borrowed from Arabic feminine forms pluralize using the "āt" (ات) suffix.Nouns borrowed from Arabic human forms often pluralize using the "in" (ین).

The most challenging type of nominal pluralization is for the so-called Arabic broken plurals. These nouns pluralize like their Arabic language counterparts: the internal vowels change in unpredictable ways.