Breakdown of آن ماشین چند مسافر دارد؟
آن
that
ماشینmâshin
car
چندchand
how many / several / a few
داشتنdâshtan
to have
Questions & Answers about آن ماشین چند مسافر دارد؟
English says "how many passengers", so why is mosaafer singular here?
In Farsi, after numbers and question words about quantity like chand (how many), you always use the singular form of the noun. So you say chand mosaafer (how many passenger) instead of using a plural ending.
Why isn't there a word for "does" in the Farsi sentence?
Farsi doesn't use helper verbs like "do" or "does" to make questions. Instead, it just uses the main verb at the end of the sentence. Here, daarad simply means "has," and the question word chand does the job of turning the sentence into a question.
Why is chand mosaafer in the middle of the sentence instead of at the beginning like in English?
Farsi usually follows a Subject-Object-Verb word order. The subject is aan maashin (that car), the object being asked about is chand mosaafer (how many passengers), and the verb daarad (has) comes at the very end. Question words usually just sit in the exact spot of the missing information.
The word maashin sounds like "machine". Is it used for any machine?
While it comes from the French word for "machine", in everyday Farsi, maashin is the standard and most common word used specifically for a "car" or "automobile".