ما

The royal-we use of ما is alive in Persian. A father telling his teenager "ما اینطور بزرگ نشدیم" (we weren't raised this way) means "I wasn't raised this way" but uses the plural to claim the weight of a generation behind him. Politicians use it to sound less personal: "ما به این نتیجه رسیدیم" (we have come to this conclusion) is softer and more authoritative than "من به این نتیجه رسیدم". In intimate poetry, lovers sometimes use ما to fold themselves into a unit: "ما دو تا" (the two of us) is a tiny phrase that carries a whole relationship.