What it means
تحلیل کردن (tahlil-kardan) means to analyze, to break something down in order to understand it. The verb is the working partner of the noun تحلیل (tahlil, analysis). Iranian news anchors تحلیل میکنند the election results, scientists تحلیل میکنند the data, friends at a cafe تحلیل میکنند the latest political scandal.
The closest English equivalents are “to analyze” and “to break down.” A weaker neighbor is بررسی کردن (barresi-kardan, to examine, review), which can be more surface-level. Tahlil-kardan implies you are decomposing something into its parts and explaining the relationships between them.
Compound verb structure
Tahlil-kardan is a classic Persian compound verb: an Arabic-origin noun (تحلیل) plus the Persian light verb کردن (kardan, to do, to make). Persian builds hundreds of compound verbs this way, the most productive verb-formation pattern in modern Persian. The conjugation lives entirely on کردن; the noun stays invariant.
- Present: من تحلیل میکنم (man tahlil mikonam), تو تحلیل میکنی (to tahlil mikoni), او تحلیل میکند (u tahlil mikonad)
- Past: من تحلیل کردم (man tahlil kardam), تو تحلیل کردی (to tahlil kardi), او تحلیل کرد (u tahlil kard)
- Subjunctive: که تحلیل کنم (ke tahlil konam)
- Negation: تحلیل نکردم (tahlil nakardam, I did not analyze)
The object usually attaches with را (rā, the direct-object marker) in formal Persian or with the colloquial postposition رو (ro).
How to use it
in maghāle ravand-e eqtesādi rā tahlil mikonad.
This article analyzes the economic trend.
این مقاله روند اقتصادی را تحلیل میکند.
dishab bā dustam vazʿiat-o tahlil kardim.
Last night I analyzed the situation with my friend.
دیشب با دوستم وضعیت رو تحلیل کردیم.
Where it comes from
The noun تحلیل comes from Arabic root h-l-l (حلل, to untie, dissolve), through the form II verbal noun pattern. Kardan is the native Persian general-purpose light verb, going back to Middle Persian kardan and ultimately Proto-Indo-Iranian *kar-. The compound emerged from the standard Persian grafting of Arabic content nouns onto Persian functional verbs, a pattern that absorbed Arabic vocabulary without disturbing Persian syntax.
References
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