Learn Farsi: وقتی تلفن زنگ زد، ما در آشپزخانه داشتیم غذا درست می‌کردیم. - When the phone rang, we were making food in the kitchen.

We use the past tense of داشتن (to have) as a helper verb, conjugated for 'we' as داشتیم. Then, we use the past continuous form of the main verb: درست می‌کردیم. Together, داشتیم ... درست می‌کردیم means 'we were making'.

Why are داشتیم and درست می‌کردیم separated by the word غذا (food)?

In Farsi's past progressive tense, the helper verb (داشتیم) and the main verb (درست می‌کردیم) act like bookends. The object of the sentence—in this case, غذا (food)—is usually placed right between them. This splitting of the two verbs is the most natural word order in Farsi.

Why is the verb for the phone ringing (زنگ زد) in the simple past, while the cooking verb is in the past progressive?

This shows an interrupted action, just like in English! 'We were making food' (داشتیم غذا درست می‌کردیم) was an ongoing, continuous action, so it uses the past progressive. The phone ringing (زنگ زد) was a quick, single event that happened in the middle of our cooking, so it uses the simple past.

In the verb درست می‌کردیم, why is the می prefix in the middle instead of at the beginning?

درست کردن (to make/prepare) is a compound verb made of two parts: the word درست (correct/ready) and the verb کردن (to do/make). When conjugating compound verbs, the continuous prefix only attaches to the verb part (). So it becomes , never .