The richly inflected morphological system of Old Iranian has been drastically reduced in Persian. The language has no grammatical gender or articles, but person and number distinctions are maintained. Objects of transitive verbs are marked by a suffix. The latter is marked by means of prefixation. Passive is formed with the verb 'to become', and is not allowed with specified agents.
Verbs agree with the subject in person and number.
Persian verbs are normally compounds consisting of a noun and a verb. Persian distinguishes short and long vowels. Words are stressed on the last syllable. Persian scholars were prominent in both Turkish and Indian courts during the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries in composing dictionaries and grammatical works. A Persian Indian vernacular developed and many colonial British officers learned their Persian from Indian scribes.