Elon.io is an online learning platform
We have an entire course teaching Farsi grammar and vocabulary.
Questions & Answers about زندگی من زیبا است.
Why is there a "ye" sound between zendegi and man even though I don't see an extra letter for it?
This is the ezâfe connecting the noun "life" to "my" (literally: "life of me"). Because zendegi ends in the vowel sound "i" (the letter ی), the connecting sound becomes -ye instead of the usual -e to make it easier to pronounce. It is usually not written out as a separate letter.
Since we're learning about using infinitives (gerunds) as nouns, why isn't an infinitive used here for "life"?
English sometimes blurs the line between "life" (a pure noun) and "living" (a gerund/verbal noun). In Farsi, zendegi is a pure noun meaning "life." If you wanted to say "Living is beautiful" (focusing on the action), you would use the infinitive phrase zendegi kardan instead.
The word for "alive" is zendeh. Is that related to zendegi?
Yes! In Farsi, you can turn many adjectives that end in a silent "h" into abstract nouns by adding the suffix -gi. So zendeh (alive) becomes zendegi (life).
How would a native speaker say this in casual, everyday conversation?
They would likely shorten it to zendegim zibast. The separate word man (I/my) is replaced by the attached possessive ending -m, and the verb ast (is) merges with the previous word to just be -st.