In this blog post, we will teach you the past tense of the verb “to be” in Dari, and its different conjugated variation. In Dari, there are two infinitives for the “to be” verbs, the imaginary infinitive هستن  hastan which is used for the present  tense , and the real infinitive بودن  boodan which used for past tense.  It is only the verb “to be” in Dari that has two infinitives.

The past tense of the verb “to be” is derived from the infinitive بودن  boodan by simply dropping the last letter  ن  “an” of the infinitive and adding the personal endings of the verbs. The personal endings of the verb are suffixes that are added to the stem of a verb in order to show who the subject of the verb is. For example, the personal ending for “I” is  م “am” therefore in the sentence من در کابل بودم   man dar Kabul boodam, the personal ending which is highlighted is am.

The following are the past tense of the “to be” verbs in Dari.

Dari                                        transliteration                   Meaning

من بودم                                      man boodam                     I was

تو بودی                                      tu boodee                          you were (singular)

او بود                                         oo bood                             he/she/it was

ما بودیم                                      maa boodaim                     we were

شما بودید                                    shumaa boodeed               you were (plural)

آنها بودند                                    anhaa boodand                  they were