Breakdown of هم گاوصندوقها و هم موزه غارت شده بودند.
و
and
موزهmuze
museum
همham
also, too / both ... and / together / each other
گاوصندوقgâvsandoogh
safe (strongbox)
غارت کردنghârat kardan
to loot
Questions & Answers about هم گاوصندوقها و هم موزه غارت شده بودند.
How do we know ghārat shode budand means had been looted rather than were looted?
This is the past perfect passive. It uses the past participle ghārat shode followed by the auxiliary verb budand. If it were the simple past passive for were looted, it would just be ghārat shodand. Using the shode bud- structure pushes the action further back in the past to mean had been.
Why does the verb end in the plural -and if the word right before it, muze, is singular?
Because the overall subject of the sentence is compound. It includes both the safes and the museum. Together they form a plural subject, so the auxiliary verb takes the third-person plural ending -and to become budand.
How does the ham ... va ham ... structure work here?
This is the standard Farsi pattern for expressing both ... and .... The first ham comes before the first item, gāvsandoqhā, and va ham comes before the second item, muze. It translates literally to also safes and also museum.
What makes up the word for safes, gāvsandoqhā?
It is a descriptive compound noun. gāv means cow or bull, but it is often used as a prefix to mean large, strong, or heavy. sandoq means chest or box, and -hā is the plural marker. So a bull-box is a heavy safe or strongbox.
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