Élan Senior Member United States Joined 5436 days ago 165 posts - 211 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Persian
| Message 25 of 55 12 January 2014 at 11:25pm | IP Logged |
Is it possible to share Anki decks with audio? I hardly have the patience for entering regular flashcards into Anki, so
I could never make cards with audio! I'd love to try them out, though. :P Most of my flashcards are full sentences as
well, so I like your system. More time consuming, but much easier to learn grammar through flashcards that way.
RE: the extra "ye", I have trouble with that too. I think in some situations, it works without the extra "ye" added as
well.
Glad to hear you're having time to study. Woohoo! I'm so happy to be on this team with you!
@Sprachprofi, I love that video. I watched it the other night and it made me cry.
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druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4860 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian
| Message 26 of 55 12 January 2014 at 11:53pm | IP Logged |
@ellasevia: Thanks so much for the explanation! I get exposed to a lot of structures that I don't yet understand grammatically, so it's great for me that you and Élan can explain these things to me when I encounter them and start wondering about them. I like your example sentence, I agree with your "beautiful" assessment :)
@Élan: After experimenting a bit while learning Korean, I noticed that drilling sentences is more useful than drilling simple words and audio sentences usually make it even easier for me to remember them. If you don't mind waiting until the end of the month I can share the whole batch for the first 20 Chai and Conversation podcasts with you (and anyone else who is interested).
I'm also very happy to be on the Persian team with you all! As Reza likes to put it, our team is "klein aber fein" (a German idiom which means "small but very good"). Always makes me wonder where he picked up that phrase...
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druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4860 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian
| Message 27 of 55 20 January 2014 at 12:14am | IP Logged |
Week 3
As compared to Korean, I've been a little lazy with Persian this week. I did lessons 9 and 10 of Chai & Conversation and lessons 8-12 of Assimil. I still haven't started to learn any verbs systematically, but I don't yet feel a pressing need to do so either, so I don't think it matters.
Once again, I got a lot of listening practice. Sometimes I understand the topic Reza talks about when he's on the phone, which is great. I think the Chai & Conversation podcasts help a lot with that. I'm impressed with their approach - they really teach natural, useful bits of the language.
I also made a couple of sentences with new words or expressions I learned. I like how natural language learning suddenly becomes when it's the language of your partner. We held a small party this weekend with two Armenians and an Iranian and I also got the chance to hear and speak a bit of Persian there. We had some great Persian food: خورشت بامیه (khoreshte-baamieh; Okra stew - first picture). It's one of my favourites, along with the heavenly eggplant-whey dip that is کشک بادمجان (kashke-baademjaan - second picture). I get hungry just thinking of these things...
Edited by druckfehler on 20 January 2014 at 1:18am
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tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4039 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch
| Message 28 of 55 25 January 2014 at 12:31am | IP Logged |
wow, they seem delicious! :)
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druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4860 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian
| Message 29 of 55 26 January 2014 at 2:43am | IP Logged |
Week 4
Wow, we're already a month into the challenge! I feel like I haven't accomplished much yet, but my Persian is a little better than it was at the beginning of January and that's all that counts.
This week I went through Assimil 13-19 and Chai & Conversation 11 and 12. The Assimil lessons are very quick, but the podcasts take quite a bit of time to get through. Usually I listen once, then listen again while cutting out sentences with Audacity for my audio cards. Next I find out how to write these sentences in Persian (mostly using google translate to check my spelling) and make Anki cards. By the time the cards are done I've learned most of the material and then I leave the rest to SRS.
Looking back at my plan for step 1 of the learning process, I've only really kept up 3 of the 5 things I originally planned to do. I don't feel like systematically learning verb forms yet, as for now I'm satisfied with what I pick up by exposure. book2 unfortunately has proven unbearable. I listened to a couple of their audio lessons, but the speech they use sounds horribly unnatural (a speech software, I guess). While it could be valuable material considering everything it covers, I can't stand listening to it for more than 5 minutes at a time and thus it defeats its purpose.
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druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4860 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian
| Message 30 of 55 02 February 2014 at 12:47pm | IP Logged |
Week 5: January Summary
January is over. I went through lessons 1-19 of Assimil and 7-15 of Chai & Conversation. I didn't fully complete Step 1 of my study plan, but it doesn't matter much. It seems like doing about two Chai & Conversation podcasts per week works well for me. More not so much. This week I did podcasts number 13-15, but I feel like I retained a little less than usual. Once again I think it doesn't matter how quickly I learn Persian. As long as I continually study a little I'm satisfied.
I've thought about writing something at the end of each month to practice spontaneous expression and to see how many things I can express. Here's a short self-introduction for January, corrected by Reza. I made surprisingly few mistakes - typing up the Chai & Conversation lessons for my Anki cards is great spelling practice and most sentences are modeled closely on what I learned from my study materials.
اسم من رناته هست. اهل آلمان هستم
esme-man renaateh hast. ahle-aalmaani hastam.
My name is Renate. I'm from Germany.
من با مادر و مادر بزرگم در شهر ماینز زندگی میکنم
man baa maadar va maadar bozorgam dar shahre-maainz zendegi mikonam.
I live with my mother and grandmother in the city of Mainz.
یک برادر دارم، اسمش متیاس است
yek baraadar daaram, esmesh matiaas ast.
I have a brother, his name is Mathias.
دوست پسر من ایرانی هست و من یک کمی فارسی بلدم
dust pesare-man iraani hast va man yek kami faarsi baladam.
My boyfriend is Iranian and I know a little bit of Farsi.
فارسی خیلی سخت نیست
faarsi kheili sakht nist.
Farsi is not very difficult.
دوست دارم زبان یاد بگیرم و غذای ایرانی هم دوست دارم
dust daaram zabaan yaad begiram va ghazaaye-iraani ham dust daaram.
I like learning languages and I also like Iranian food.
حالا زمستان است. هوا خیلی سرد است
haalaa zemestaan ast. havaa kheili sard ast.
Now it is winter. The weather is very cold.
در انتظار بهار هستم
dar entezaare bahaar hastam.
I am waiting for spring.
Edited by druckfehler on 01 March 2014 at 10:54pm
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druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4860 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian
| Message 31 of 55 10 February 2014 at 12:17am | IP Logged |
Week 6
I'm once again participating in the 6-Week-Challenge with Persian. When I first started learning the language, I did a hardcore month of daily 4-hour-study for the 6WC in November 2011. A long time ago... I can already see that the challenge motivates me to do more now as well, but fortunately not too much! It's more important that it inspires me to be more consistent and even a little more creative. I'll share the graphs for this week to demonstrate what I mean:
Time Spent Studying by Day
Time Spent Studying by Activity
My practice with Reza rarely actually feels like study. Mostly I just eavesdrop on his phone calls :D Lo and behold, this week I understood a very nice sentence I hadn't heard before in this form: مرسی به فکر منی (mersi beh fekre-mani; Thank you for thinking of me). Although it can be confusing at times, I appreciate the grammatical brevity of spoken Persian (basically the sentence reads something like "thanks for thought-me_your"). I also asked a few things and tried out new sentences, but Reza has a German test in May and until then I'm hesitant to make our conversations too Persian - not that it would be possible either at my current level :)
I changed things up a bit this week and studied two video lessons from University of Texas' Persian Online. I did lessons about greetings and introducing family members and I was surprised at how well I understood most of them, even at natural speed.
Of course, I still know next to no Persian. One field I want to pay more attention to is vocabulary acquisition. I recently noticed that I learned a lot of the words I know from songs. So I picked a song I like - Kamran and Hooman's To Be Man Neshoon Dadi(You Showed Me) - and started learning the lyrics. Here is a translation of the song. I got 20 new words I want to remember out of it. If I regularly do this kind of thing, I think I can pick up a lot of new words simply by having fun.
Edited by druckfehler on 10 February 2014 at 12:19am
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druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4860 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian
| Message 32 of 55 16 February 2014 at 3:43pm | IP Logged |
Week 7
It was a very good week for Persian!
I usually get Reza to teach my cheesy things in Persian, please bear with me :D This weekend I learned how to say "I would like to forget the time", because I should be preparing for my exams, but really spending time with my boyfriend is a lot more fun. So here goes: می خواهم زمان فراموش بکنم (mikhaaham zamaan faraamush bokonam). By the way, sentences we form with "when" in English are formed using وقتی (vaghti; the time of) in Persian. I'm fairly sure that "When I see you, I want to forget the time" would be translated into وقتی تو را ببینم می خواهم زمان فراموش بکنم. Okay, enough "Persian with druckfehler" for now.
This week I caught up on a couple of Chai and Conversation lessons (listened up to lesson 19, put sentences into Anki up to lesson 17). They are perfect at this time when I don't want to hit the books outside of my exam preparations. However, Reza does not agree with everything I learn from the podcasts and it puzzles me. Leyla, the teacher, says "deghe" for minute, for example, while Reza is adamant that it means something else and the correct word is "daghighe" (I already know that one). I wonder if US Persian is diverging in any way from Iranian Persian... Or maybe they are originally from different regions of Iran. Or Reza wants me to learn the correct version, while it's permissible to shorten the word... Who knows.
I also finally did Assimil lesson 20 & 21. Still all good and easy. Looks like it'll stay this way for at least the next seven lessons as well. Some of their sentences are a bit unnatural, but they are really doing a great job at slowly introducing Persian, I think (not taking into account any of the French parts, I don't know if the explanations are as good as the gradual introduction of new words).
Edited by druckfehler on 16 February 2014 at 3:45pm
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