Persian |ezafeh| (Re: White Wolf Language-Butchery)

>Looks a bit to me like what happens in Persian or some Afghan
>languages. I'm not sure of the function of that particle, but there are
>words (such as place names e.g. Mazar-i-Sharif) which have -i- or -e-
>in the middle.
Well since I studied Farsi a little a few years back, I better chime in on
this...

The |ezafeh| or |izafah| of Persian (Farsi, Dari and Tajiki), and also Urdu
from Persian loans, is a single vowel /e/ (or /je/ after vowels), or a short
/i/ in non-Farsi dialects, that links two words in some type of
relationship; it is an interfix in fact. It is indeed used to mark a
genitive relationship, thus |gorbeh-ye-mard| "the man's cat". It is also
used in noun-adjective links, like |gorbeh-ye-bozorg| "the big cat".

It also links some but not all prepositions to their objects: |tu-ye-khaneh|
"in the house", |ru-ye-mard| "to the man" (I might have some errors in
translation, but you should get the idea anywho.)

Now possessive pronouns can also function as suffixes without the |ezafeh|:
both |gorbeh-ye-man| and |gorbeham| (?) mean "my cat". Verbs, incidentally,
are suffixed for direct object pronouns: |dust daramesh| "I loved him", lit.
"love I-gave-him".

Which means I seriously need to re-learn my Farsi -- right now I'm
half-assed studying Arabic, which has indeed supplied much Persian's
vocabulary....

~Danny~