Appendix:Persian ezâfe

The ezâfé ( in Persian, in Tajik) is a grammatical construct in Persian that serves a wide variety of purposes, the most common being the formations of possessive phrases and linking nouns to the adjectives that modify them. In the most general sense, it serves as a way to markedly connect certain words together semantically.

Orthography and Pronunciation
In Iranian and Dari Persian, which are written in the Perso-Arabic style script, the ezâfe is frequently unwritten. It is never identified in writing after words that end in consonants, and is frequently not identified when following words that end in the short vowel. However, there are two ways to mark ezâfe after these words ending in : Whether to leave the ezâfe unmarked or use hamza or ye is largely a matter of stylistic preference, though some will argue vehemently that one or more are incorrect. For instance, Persian purists argue that the hamza is specific to the Arabic language and cannot be used for Persian grammatical forms not found in Arabic. Students of Persian can expect to encounter all three methods of handling ezâfe with words ending in the short vowel. It should be noted that the form with ye must not be confused with the suffix -i which forms adjectives from nouns.
 * 1) Adding hamza / ye-ye ezāfe:
 * 2) Adding ye:

Following the long vowels and, the ezâfe is written ی

In Tajiki Persian, which is usually written in the Cyrillic script, izofa is written. Note that adding izofa to words ending in -ӣ changes the spelling to -ии.

Possession
The ezâfe is one of the main ways to link words together to express possession. The most basic translation in these cases is "of".

With descriptive adjectives
In Persian, adjectives normally follow the nouns they modify. In such cases, the noun takes ezâfe.

Combination of possession and adjectives
Both uses of the ezâfe construction can easily be combined in such a way that every adjective follows the noun it modifies.

Linking names
In Persian, firstname and surname (and similar constituents) are separated by ezafe: After /  in historical names: Ezafe is not used in the names of contemporary non-Persians even when the name is pronounced in its Persianized form: