Breakdown of من دروغ نگفتم، اما هیچکس باور نکرد.
من
I
اماammâ
but
گفتنgoftan
to say / to tell
دروغdorugh
lie
هیچکسhichkas
nobody
باور کردنbâvar kardan
to believe
Questions & Answers about من دروغ نگفتم، اما هیچکس باور نکرد.
How is the negative past tense formed in نگفتم?
It comes from the verb گفتن (to say). The past stem is گفت. To make it negative, we add the prefix نـ (na-) to the front, and to show it is "I" doing the action, we add the ending ـم (-am). Put together, it makes نگفتم (nagoftam).
In English we say "I didn't lie", but what does دروغ نگفتم literally mean?
In Farsi, "lie" is usually the noun دروغ. To express the action of lying, Farsi uses the compound verb دروغ گفتن, which literally means "to tell a lie" or "to say a lie". So دروغ نگفتم literally translates to "I didn't tell a lie".
Why is the verb نکرد negative when هیچکس already means "nobody"? Doesn't that make a double negative?
Yes, it makes a double negative, and that is a strict rule in Farsi! Whenever you use negative pronouns like هیچکس (nobody) or هیچچیز (nothing), the verb in the sentence must also be negative. You are literally saying "Nobody didn't believe".
Where does the negative prefix go in a compound verb like باور کردن (to believe)?
In compound verbs, the negative prefix نـ (na-) only attaches to the action verb part, never the noun part. Here, the action verb is کردن (to do) and its past stem is کرد. We just add the negative prefix to get نکرد, leaving باور exactly as it is to make باور نکرد.
The English translation says "nobody believed it". Where is the word for "it" in the Farsi sentence?
There isn't one. In Farsi, if the object of the verb is completely obvious from the context, it is often just left out. You do not need to add a word like آن (that/it) here for the sentence to make perfect sense.
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