Page:A Grammar of the Persian Language.djvu/52

Rh but this hand, however difficult and barbarous, must be learned by all men of business in India, as the letters from the Princes of the country are seldom written in any other.

 OF THE NOUNS, اسْما

جِنْس.

55. The reader will soon perceive with pleasure a great resemblance between the Persian and English languages, in the facility and simplicity of their form and construction; both have no difference of termination to mark the gender, either in substantives or adjectives: all inanimate things are neuter; and animals of different sexes, either have different names, as پِسر pis̤ar, a son, a boy, k̤aniz̈, a girl, اسْپ asp, a horse; مادِیان mādiyān, a mare; or are distinguished by the words  nar, male, and  mādah, female, as  shēray nar, a lion;  shēray mādah, a lioness; these particles, however, are usually applied to irrational beings.

56. Arabick words indeed are often made feminine by receiving a silent (خفی Art. 29) final, added to it, as maعshūḳ, a friend; amicus,  maعshūḳah, a mistress; amica, as in this verse:

The rose in my bosom, the wine on my palm, and the beloved is to my desire.

57. But, if such noun do not signify a rational being, they consider it