this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2026
510 points (97.0% liked)
memes
22190 readers
3702 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads/AI Slop
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live. We also consider AI slop to be spam in this community and is subject to removal.
A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
Sister communities
- !tenforward@lemmy.world : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world : Linux themed memes
- !comicstrips@lemmy.world : for those who love comic stories.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Persian(Farsi) also doesn't have a word for "The". We just say the word. There's also no gender prefixes. The whole language is gender neutral.
Our ancestors were really up to something thousands of years ago.
In English, there is an implied difference between “the girl downstairs was playing violin” (‘the girl’ implying expected knowledge - “oh, her”) versus “a girl downstairs was playing violin” (‘a girl’ - random, likely unknown).
More broadly “a thing” - one of many, “the thing” - a specific one.
How would that translate to Farsi?
We do the opposite. If something is known we just say it.
"The girl(1) is playing(2) violin(3) downstairs(4)"
دختر(۱) در طبقهی پایین(۴) ویالن(۳) مینوازد(۲)
To refer to an unknown thing we add a prefix ی to the thing
A girl -> دختری
The girl -> دختر
Don't know about Farsi, but in Russian you would have to declare your knowledge and specificity of the subject. You can transmit some of that information by changing word emphasis, but it's not very clear.
As for your sentences I would translate them as:
The first one puts more emphasis on the "girl". The second one puts more emphasis on "downstairs", almost suggesting that the identity of the girl doesn't matter, kinda "some girl who happened to be downstairs". But it is not as explicit as a definite/indefinite article for sure.
If you want to make it certain that the identity of the girl doesn't matter, you could use an adjective to that extent: Внизу [downstairs] какая-то девушка [some girl] играла [was playing] на скрипке [violin].
If you want to make it certain that both you and the person you're talking to know about the girl, you can use a determiner: Та девушка [that girl] внизу [downstairs] играла [was playing] на скрипке [violin].
I guess the is implied, count is explicit. A thing becomes one thing and the thing becomes thing.
Is the number one used like "a" then? Like a direct translation of the 2 phrases would be "Girl downstairs is playing the violin." and "one girl downstairs is playing the violin." As opposed to English using the/a respectively?
As per Google translate it seems so.
And it kinda has me thinking what all of that extra fat really does for a language. I never feel confused about meaning when speaking Persian, so the the/he/she/it/they/them really can't be doing that much heavy lifting if you can just completely ignore it and have a perfectly functioning language without it.