Final He and the Written Ezâfe Form ه‌ی

Many Persian words end in ه even though their last sound is the vowel /e/: خانه khâne, نامه nâme, تازه tâze. Traditional terminology calls this ه غیرملفوظ, “unpronounced he.” The label means that the letter is not pronounced /h/; it does not mean the whole ending is silent.

When such a word takes ezâfe, Iranian Persian inserts /y/ before the linker: khâne-ye man. This guide writes that audible link as ه‌ی: final he + U+200C ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER + Persian yeh. The grammatical jobs of ezâfe are developed on Ezâfe: The Invisible Linker; here the focus is how to recognize and type the ending.

Final ه can represent /e/ or /h/

Final he has one Unicode identity, U+0647, but two common readings. In words such as خانه, its final form helps write /e/. In words such as ماه “moon” and راه “way,” it represents the consonant /h/. The distinction is lexical: the bare spelling itself supplies no special mark that labels one class.

Building ه‌ی one code point at a time

The house form has three characters and one morphological value:

On screen, ه‌ی looks like two Persian letters separated by a very small boundary. It is neither two ordinary words nor one fully joined letter sequence. Compare the three encodings: خانه‌ی (house style), خانه ی (ordinary space), and خانهی (no boundary). Only the first preserves one orthographic word while blocking joining.

The yeh is written because two adjacent vowels need a consonantal bridge: final /e/ plus ezâfe /e/ becomes /e-ye/. English does not have an equivalent written linker; English simply places “my” before “house.” Persian puts the possessor after the noun and makes their connection audible.

When yeh appears—and when it does not

Write ه‌ی only when an /e/-final word is followed by an ezâfe-dependent adjective, possessor, title, or related noun. If the word stands alone or is followed by a predicate, there is no linker to write.

That pair is structurally important. In the first sentence, قدیمی is the predicate “is old,” so no ezâfe follows خانه. In the second, it belongs inside the noun phrase “the old house,” so ه‌ی is required.

After a consonant, ezâfe /e/ is normally invisible: کتاب من is read ketâb-e man. Do not mechanically add yeh after every noun. After written long ا or و, a visible linker yeh appears as in صدای بلند sedâ-ye boland and دانشجوی جدید dâneshju-ye jadid. Those vowel-final patterns receive their full treatment on Ezâfe After Vowels.

ۀ, هٔ, and the guide's one-form policy

You will encounter other print traditions. خانۀ من uses U+06C0, a precomposed “heh with yeh above.” خانهٔ من uses ه followed by combining hamza-above U+0654, although the historical sign functions as the ezâfe linker rather than as an ordinary lexical hamza. Both have substantial publishing histories, and خانهٔ remains common in professionally edited Iranian text.

This guide deliberately normalizes both to خانه‌ی. Do not mix ۀ, هٔ, and ه‌ی from page to page. The explicit Persian yeh is easy to search, survives font changes reliably, and keeps the morphological structure visible to learners. This is a house-style decision, not a claim that every Iranian publisher using خانهٔ is ungrammatical.

Stacking suffixes after final he

Other suffixes also reveal the boundary after final he. The plural is خانه‌ها, and an ezâfe after that plural is written خانه‌های قدیمی. The first ZWNJ separates the stem from ها; the final yeh carries the plural noun's ezâfe.

Common Mistakes

1. Omitting the written linker after final /e/

2. Replacing the half-space with an ordinary space

3. Using Arabic yeh instead of Persian yeh

4. Writing yeh after a consonant-final noun

Key Takeaways

Final ه in خانه writes /e/, whereas final ه in ماه writes /h/. Only the /e/-final class uses ه‌ی before an ezâfe dependent. Type that form as he + ZWNJ + Persian yeh, keep consonant-final ezâfe invisible, and use one Unicode spelling consistently.