ها

Derived terms

• هَٰذَا‎ (hāḏā)

Descendants

• → Galician: eis
• → Portuguese: eis
• → Spanish: he

Usage notes

• The pronunciation in careful speech is “-ha”, but the “h” is in the process of being lost. Some speakers currently use “-a” after a consonant and “-ha” after a vowel or diphthong, and some others use “-ya” after vowels and diphthongs instead, but it's most-common for it to assimilate to the preceding sound:
  • “-a” after a consonant
  • “-ha” after the vowel “a”
  • “-wa” after the vowel “o”/“u”
  • “-ya” after the vowel “e”/“i” and the diphthong “ay”
• It might also be spelled as ـا‎ when it's pronounced as “-a”, “-wa” or “-ya”.
• The form with “h” attracts stress to the syllable before it automatically. The form with a dropped “h” still behaves this way for some speakers, but others allow the automatic stress rules to take precedent:
  • كَتَبهَا (“he wrote her”) can only be pronounced katábha, but كَتَبَا (“he wrote her”) can be either katába or kátaba.
  • جَرِّبهَا (“try it!”, masculine imperative) can only be pronounced jarríbha, but جَرّبَا (“try it!”) can be either jarríba or járrba.

Usage notes

Although not reflected in all writing, this suffix should not attach the ه to the preceding character, though neither should any space should be written. In computing, this is accomplished with a zero-width non-joiner. For example, while some may write the plural of شب‎ (šab, “night”) as شبها or شب ها (typically for convenience, as many Persian keyboards do not have a ZWNJ), the preferred normal form would be شب‌ها‎ (šab-hâ), with the ب and ه separated, but without a substantial amount of intermediary space. Though this rule is not compulsory in general, and the suffix may be joined to the preceding word or separated, if the preceding word ends in a silent ه, it must be separated.

Synonyms

• ـان‎ (-ân), ـگان‎ (-gân), ـیان‎ (-yân)
• ـات‎ (-ât)
• ـین‎ (-in)
• ـون‎ (-un)