نقد کردن

What it means

نقد کردن (naghd-kardan) means to critique, to subject a work or an idea to structured evaluation. It is what a literary critic does to a novel, what a film columnist does to a release, what a political commentator does to a parliamentary bill. The verb implies both analysis and judgment delivered together, in a recognizable form (an essay, a review, a televised panel).

The verb sits above its lower-register cousin انتقاد کردن (enteqād-kardan, to criticize, find fault), which is what your relatives do at family dinners. Naghd-kardan implies craft and intent. When a newspaper’s culture editor writes that someone نقد کرد a book, the reader expects argument, not complaint.

Compound verb structure

Naghd-kardan is a standard Persian compound verb, an Arabic-origin noun (نقد) plus the native Persian light verb کردن (kardan, to do). The noun stays invariant; کردن carries all conjugation. The object usually attaches with را (rā) in formal speech, with رو (ro) in colloquial.

• Present: من نقد می‌کنم (man naghd mikonam), تو نقد می‌کنی (to naghd mikoni), او نقد می‌کند (u naghd mikonad)
• Past: من نقد کردم (man naghd kardam), تو نقد کردی (to naghd kardi), او نقد کرد (u naghd kard)
• Subjunctive: که نقد کنم (ke naghd konam)
• Negation: نقد نکردم (naghd nakardam, I did not critique)
• Passive: نقد شد (naghd shod, it was critiqued)

The passive form is common in journalistic writing, where the focus stays on the work being critiqued rather than the critic.

How to use it

in montaqed har hafte yek film rā naghd mikonad.

This critic critiques one film every week.

این منتقد هر هفته یک فیلم را نقد می‌کند.

siyāsat-e dowlat bāyad āzādāne naghd shavad.

Government policy should be freely critiqued.

سیاست دولت باید آزادانه نقد شود.

Where it comes from

The noun نقد comes from Arabic root n-q-d, with the historical sense of inspecting coins to distinguish genuine from counterfeit, generalized in Persian to the inspection of any work. Kardan is the native Persian general-purpose light verb, going back to Middle Persian kardan. The compound emerged through the standard Persian pattern of grafting Arabic content nouns onto Persian light verbs to handle the imported intellectual vocabulary.

In our voice

In Iran, naghd-kardan a government policy in public is a constrained act, since press freedom is limited and red lines shift. Naghd-kardan a novel or a film is comparatively free territory and the cultural press takes full advantage. Learning the verb opens the door to a whole stream of Iranian critical writing, including the long tradition of literary essays in publications like کارنامه and فرهنگ امروز.

References

• Dehkhoda, نقد
• Vajehyab, نقد کردن