Questions & Answers about او دربارهی آن خاطره با من صحبت میکرد.
How do we know میکرد means "was doing" in the past, rather than the present tense?
The prefix می (mi-) is used for both present and past continuous tenses. What tells you this is the past tense is the verb stem. کرد (kard) is the past stem of کردن (kardan, to do). Because the subject is the 3rd person singular ("he"), there is no personal ending added to the past stem. So, می + کرد + (no ending) = was doing.
Why is the می attached to کرد instead of صحبت?
صحبت کردن (sohbat kardan) is a compound verb made of a noun (صحبت, meaning "conversation") and a helper verb (کردن, "to do"). In Farsi, verb prefixes like می always attach directly to the helper verb, never to the noun part.
Why is there a ی attached to the word درباره?
The word درباره (dar bâre) is a preposition meaning "about". To connect it to the noun phrase that follows it (آن خاطره, "that memory"), it needs an ezâfe connector. Because درباره ends in a silent 'h' (ه), the ezâfe is pronounced as 'ye' and written as ی.
Why is با من (with me) placed right before the verb?
In Farsi, the standard word order places the verb at the very end of the sentence. Additional information, like the prepositional phrase با من, usually sits right before the verb complex. The literal flow of this sentence is 'He / about that memory / with me / conversation was doing.'