A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF MAZANDARANI, FARSI AND ENGLISH WORD ORDER, VERBS AND TENSES

This study deals with contrasting three languages, namely English, Farsi (Persian), and Mazandarani (Tabari). The study followed two main goals: first, providing Mazandarani and Farsi teachers with pedagogical implications in teaching English as a foreign language (EFL); and second, taking a step toward preventing the Mazandarani (Mazani) language from gradual extinction. By comparing the word order, verbs, and tenses of the three aforementioned languages, it was concluded that in some cases Mazandarani, and in other cases Farsi, is more similar to English. With respect to word order, Mazandarani and Farsi are SOV but English is SVO. Regarding verbs and tenses, contrary to English, Mazandarani and Farsi are inflected. This inflection plays an important role in forming different tenses in the conjugation process.