Introduction to Persian verbs / مقدمه ای بر افعال فارسی

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In Persian the verb usually comes at the end of the clause, although there are sometimes exceptions (for example in colloquial Persian it is common to hear phrases such as raftam Tehrān 'I went to Tehran' where the destination follows the verb)

In colloquial Persian, commonly used verbs tend to be pronounced in an abbreviated form, for example ast 'he is' is pronounced e, miravad 'he goes' is pronounced mire, and miguyam 'I say' is pronounced migam.

You’ll be surprised how far you can get with just two tenses in spoken Persian.

Persian speakers almost always use the present tense in place of the future tense, which you’ll almost never hear spoken outside of a news broadcast. We do it too, saying “I’m going out” when in fact we’re still sitting on the sofa. We mean “I will go out”. But it’s obvious what we really mean from the context.

And while there are of course a variety of past, future, progressive and other tenses in Persian, just as in every language, the present and simple past are a perfectly good catch-all for anything that’s happened, is happening or is going to happen.

Once you do go beyond the basics and start looking at grammar, you’ll find that other tenses simply build on the same two basic sets of conjugation rules, with the addition of four basic verbs you’ll also use in almost every sentence in Persian:

budan / بودن (‘to be’)

shodan / شدن (‘to become/to get’)

daashtan / داشتن (‘to have’)

khaastan / خواستن (‘to want’)

Many verbs nowadays are compound verbs and many old simple verbs have been replaced by a compound. One of the most frequent verbs (known as light verbs) used to form compound verbs is کَردَن kardan 'to do, to make'. For example, the word صُحبَت sohbat (originally from Arabic) means 'conversation', while صُحبَت کَردَن sohbat kardan means 'to speak'. Only the light verb (e.g. کَردَن kardan) is conjugated; the word preceding it is not affected. For example:

صُحبَت میکُنَم sohbat mikonam 'I speak' or 'I am speaking' (as in the ability to speak a language)

دارَم صُحبَت میکُنَم dāram sohbat mikonam 'I am speaking'

صُحبَت کَردهاَم sohbat karde am 'I have spoken'

صُحبَت خواهَم کَرد sohbat xāham kard 'I will speak'

Some other light verbs used to form compound verbs are:

دادن dādan ('to give') as in rox dādan 'to happen'

گرفتن gereftan ('to take') as in yād gereftan 'to learn'

زدن zadan ('to hit') as in harf zadan 'to talk, to speak'

خوردن xordan ('to eat') as in zamin xordan 'to fall down'

شدن šodan ('to become') as in ārām šodan 'to calm down'

داشتن dāštan ('to have') as in dust dāštan 'to love'

Some other examples of compound verbs with کَردَن kardan are:

فِکر کَردَن fekr kardan 'to think'

فَراموش کَردَن farāmuš kardan 'to forget'

گَریه کَردَن gerye kardan 'to cry'

تَعمیر کَردَن ta'mir kardan 'to repair'

Sources: Fluent in Three Months - https://www.fluentin3months.com/persian/
Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_verbs