Izafat
Encyclopedia
The Izāfa or ezāfé also written as İzafet, Izafat and Izofa, is a Persian language
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

 grammatical construct which links two words together; it consists of an unstressed vocal -e or -i (with a connecting -y- after vowels) that sometimes approximately corresponds to the English preposition of. It is generally not indicated in writing in Farsi, though it is in Tajik
Tajik language
Tajik, Tajik Persian, or Tajiki, is a variety of modern Persian spoken in Central Asia. Historically Tajiks called their language zabani farsī , meaning Persian language in English; the term zabani tajikī, or Tajik language, was introduced in the 20th century by the Soviets...

.

Common uses of the ezafe are:
  • Possessive: barādar-e Maryam 'Maryam's brother' (this can also apply to pronominal possession—barādar-e man 'my brother'—but in speech it is much more common to use possessive suffixes: barādar-am).
  • Adjective-noun: barādar-e bozorg 'the big brother'
  • Given name/title-family name: mohammad-e mosaddegh Mohammad Mosaddeq, āghā-ye mosaddegh Mr. Mosaddeq


The term is inherited from Arabic iḍāfa, which means a genitive construction. It is also traditionally used in often in Iranic languages and sometimes Turkic languages, where it applies to a typologically quite different structure. Ottoman Turkish
Ottoman Turkish language
The Ottoman Turkish language or Ottoman language is the variety of the Turkish language that was used for administrative and literary purposes in the Ottoman Empire. It borrows extensively from Arabic and Persian, and was written in a variant of the Perso-Arabic script...

 did use it extensively borrowing it from Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

, in its original function (the official name of the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

 was Devlet-i Âliye-i Osmaniyye), although there it is transcribed as -i or ı rather than -e. It is also used extensively in Urdu
Urdu
Urdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...

, mainly in poetic
Poetic
Poetic may refer to:* Poetry, or a relation thereof.* Too Poetic, a deceased rapper and hip hop producer....

settings.
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