Breakdown of اگر بال داشتیم، در آسمان پرواز میکردیم.
درdar
in
داشتنdâshtan
to have
آسمانâsemân
sky
اگرagar
if
بالbâl
wing
پرواز کردنparvâz kardan
to fly
Questions & Answers about اگر بال داشتیم، در آسمان پرواز میکردیم.
The sentence refers to an imaginary present situation, so why are the verbs داشتیم and میکردیم in the past tense?
To express an unreal present situation (the second conditional), Farsi uses past tenses. This is similar to English, which uses 'had' instead of 'have' for conditions. The اگر (if) clause takes the Simple Past (داشتیم for 'we had'), and the result clause takes the Past Continuous (پرواز میکردیم for 'we would fly').
Why does the Farsi sentence use the singular بال instead of a plural form when the English translation says 'wings'?
When talking about a generic category or a general concept rather than specific countable objects, Farsi often keeps the noun singular. Here, بال simply represents the concept of 'having wings', so a plural suffix is not needed.
In the verb پرواز میکردیم, why does the prefix می appear in the middle of the phrase rather than at the very beginning?
This is because پرواز کردن is a compound verb, made of a noun (پرواز, meaning flight) and a light verb (کردن, meaning to do). Tense prefixes like می only attach to the verbal portion, so it goes directly before کردیم.
Why isn't the pronoun ما (we) explicitly stated at the beginning of the sentence?
Farsi is a pro-drop language, meaning subject pronouns are often left out because the verb endings provide enough information. Both داشتیم and میکردیم end with the first-person plural suffix ـیم, which clearly tells us that the subject is 'we'.
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