Every vs. all (har, hame-ye)

"Every" Single One

When a health inspector checks a restaurant, they look at everything. To talk about universal rules, you'll need the word for "every" or "each" (هر).

Grammatically, هر sits directly in front of a singular noun. You do not use an Ezafe connector between هر and the noun.

"All" of Them

To talk about "all" of something, use the word همه. Unlike "every," "all" groups multiple things together, so it is followed by a plural noun.

Crucially, همه requires an Ezafe to connect to the noun. Because همه ends in a vowel, the Ezafe is written as ی, making it همه‌ی (literally "all of").

Syntactic Contrast

Whether you use هر or همه‌ی depends on whether you are framing your sentence around a singular "each" or a plural "all." Notice the contrast below: no Ezafe with the singular noun, but a mandatory Ezafe with the plural noun.

Adding Adjectives and Objects

These quantifiers can be used whether the noun is the subject or the direct object. If the noun has an adjective, the adjective simply follows the noun with its normal Ezafe, unaffected by the quantifier up front.

When the entire phrase is a specific direct object, the object marker را goes at the very end of the noun phrase, after the noun and any of its adjectives.