داشتن

From Middle Persian (dʾštn' /⁠dāštan⁠/, “to hold, to have”), (YHSNN-tn' /⁠dāštan⁠/), 𐫅𐫀𐫢𐫤𐫗 (dʾštn /⁠dāštan⁠/), from Old Persian 𐎭𐎠𐎼𐎹𐎫𐎡𐎹 (d-a-r-y-t-i-y /⁠dārayatiy⁠/, “to hold, have”), from Proto-Iranian *dāráyati,^[1] from Proto-Indo-Iranian *dʰāráyati (“to hold, carry; to bear, support”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰer- (“to hold”).

• Audio (Iran):

  (file)

• Audio (Iran):

  (file)

دَاشْتَن • (dâštan) (present stem دار (dâr))

1. to have; to possess, to own

   چهار تا بچه داریم. ― čahâr tâ bačče dârim. ― We have four children.

2. to hold
3. (Iran, auxiliary, not in very literary language) to be (doing something)

   دارم می‌روم. ― dâram mi-ravam. ― I am going.

   داشتی قدم می‌زدی. ― dâšti qadam mi-zadi. ― You were walking.

• Unlike most other verbs, the simple present imperfective form of داشتن does not use the durative prefix میـ (mi-).
• داشتن as the progressive auxiliary is normal in both speech and many text genres, but is still avoided in more conservative literary registers as a colloquialism. Its usage in this sense was first recorded in colloquial usage in the 1870s, having been entirely absent from Classical Persian.^[2] Geographically, its utilisation is limited to Iran, and it is substituted for conjunct verb constructions from ایستاده (istâde, “standing”) and رفتن (raftan, “to go”) in Transoxiana and Afghanistan, respectively.^[3][4] For example, the present continuous sentence "He is reading the book" would be translated as follows (with Classical Persian transliterations):

Iranian: او دارد کتاب را می‌خواند (ō dārad kitāb rā mēxwānad)

Dari: او کتاب را خوانده می‌رود (ō kitāb rā xwānda mērawad)

Tajik: او کتاب را خوانده ایستاده است (ō kitāb rā xwānda īstāda ast)

Meanwhile, the past continuous sentence "He was reading the book" would be translated as follows:

Iranian: او داشت کتاب را می‌خواند (ō dāšt kitāb rā mēxwānd)

Dari: او کتاب را خوانده می‌رفت (ō kitāb rā xwānda mēraft)

Tajik: او کتاب را خوانده ایستاده بود (ō kitāb rā xwānda īstāda būd)

• In medieval texts, the nuance of داشتن is often closer to English "to hold; to keep", and possession is usually marked by را (râ, “at”, the indirect object marker) + بودن (budan, “to be”).