Persian nouns

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Persian nouns have no grammatical gender, and the case markers have been greatly reduced since Old Persian—both characteristics of contact languages. Persian nouns now mark with a postpositive only for the specific accusative case; the other oblique cases are marked by prepositions. Possession is expressed by special markers: if the possessor appears in the sentence after the thing possessed, the ezafe may be used; otherwise, alternatively, a pronominal genitive enclitic is employed.

Ezafe

Ezafe is name for the short vowel e, with the same sign which signifies consonantal h or he (ه) in Persian. Ezafe is used as an enclitic to denote possession: ketab-e man means "my book." When ezafe follows a noun ending in a vowel, it becomes a glide known as hey ye and represented by the character ﮥ, pronounced -ye; e.g. khaneh-ye man for "my house."

Pluralization

The most common and productive form of pluralization for Persian nouns is with the suffix hā (ها). This is typically used for non-human nouns. Another productive plural suffix is ān (ان), used for human nouns. Many nouns borrowed from Arabic feminine forms pluralize using the āt (ات) suffix. Nouns borrowed from Arabic human forms often pluralize using the īn (ین). The most challenging type of noun pluralization is for the class of what are termed Arabic broken plurals, which are formed through internal vowel alternation. These nouns pluralize in Persian like their counterparts in Arabic.