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Questions & Answers about شنا ورزشِ خوبی است.
Why does the letter 'ye' attach to khoobi (good) instead of varzesh (sport) to mean 'a good sport'?
In Farsi, when a noun is followed by an adjective using the ezafe connection (the short 'e' sound), the indefinite marker -i (meaning 'a' or 'an') attaches to the very end of the phrase. Therefore, 'a good sport' becomes varzesh-e khoobi rather than attaching the 'i' to the noun first.
In everyday spoken Farsi, how would the end of this sentence change?
In spoken Farsi, the formal verb ast (is) is usually shortened and attached to the preceding word. Because khoobi ends in a vowel, the shortened form becomes -e in colloquial speech. You will almost always hear shena varzesh-e khoobie in everyday conversation.
Is shena a verb form here, similar to the English '-ing' ending in 'swimming'?
No, shena is simply a standalone noun meaning 'swimming'. English turns verbs into nouns by adding '-ing', but Farsi generally relies on dedicated nouns or infinitives. To say 'to swim', Farsi uses the compound verb shena kardan (literally 'to do swimming'). Here, we are just using the base noun as the subject.