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TAC14 - More French than Arabic | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Cetacea Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States booh.com Joined 5322 days ago 80 posts - 163 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Arabic (Yemeni), Arabic (Written) Studies: French | Message 17 of 31 18 January 2011 at 10:16am | IP Logged | |||||
I was sad to leave Yemen, but had to because my Mom was about to have a heart attack every time she heard Yemen mentioned in the news. I picked the Millenium series because they were available on eBay and I really liked the story. I'm not so sure if they are the best choice as L-R material for beginners, but I just have to settle with what I have. Trust me finding all three components for L-R is not as easy as you think. I can't stand Harry Potter books, so they are out of the question. Ideally I would like to read a modern French novel translated into English with the audio and book versions available on eBay or Amazon.
Hi Élan, is it difficult to read because the print quality was poor or it was written in Arabic script? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cetacea Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States booh.com Joined 5322 days ago 80 posts - 163 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Arabic (Yemeni), Arabic (Written) Studies: French | Message 18 of 31 18 January 2011 at 10:32am | IP Logged | |||||
This post is all about Persian. Here is a picture of Bam (أرگ بم) I took on December 26, 2002, a year to the day before the devastating earthquake completely destroyed the 2500-year-old citadel.
As I mentioned last time, my local college offers an intermediate Persian class mainly for Iranian students to get an easy A. The students discuss a wide variety of issues in English twice a week, but there is no language taught in the class despite the course title. I was about to drop the class when the instructor offered to give me some private tutoring after each class. First I wasn’t sure if I was going to learn Persian this way, but decided to give it a shot. It turned out great. My instructor Dariush Gilani is the author of this English Persian dictionary: 
When it comes to dissecting the language and presenting it in an organized way, he really knows his stuff. After two short sessions with him, I learned the following: 1. Persian is an SOV language. It’s a new concept to me as all the languages I know so far are SVO or VSO. 2. Persian pronunciation is much easier than Arabic. Kh is the only sound that does not exist in English. 3. Persian has no gender. He, she, and it use the same verb form. 4. A lot of verbs have written and colloquial variations, but I’m sticking to the written form for now until I get the basics. Present Tense Conjugation Simplified: To conjugate a present tense verb, you need to know three things: the present tense prefix “mi”, the verb stem, and the correct ending for the pronoun. Take Khordan (eating) for example: the prefix for present tense is always “mi”. The present tense stem is the gerund form minus “dan”, so khordan becomes khor. The ending for “I” is “am”. Now we put three parts together and we get: mi-khor-am (ميخورم) To negate a present tense verb just add ni before mi. nimikhoram (نميخورم) means I don’t eat. Here are the present tense verb endings: I man mi + verb stem+ am (mikhoram) You to mi + verb stem + I (mikhori) He/she/it u mi + verb stem + ad (mikhorad) We ma mi + verb stem + im (mikhorim) You(p) shoma mi + verb stem + id (mikhorid) They anha mi + verb stem + and (mikhorand) Here are some common verbs with their stems: Amadan آمدن -a(y)- come Budan بودن -hast- / -bash- be Dadan دادن -dah- give danestan دانستن -dan- know Dashtan داشتن -dar- have Kardan كردن -kon- do/make Khastan خواستن -khah- want Raftan رفتن -rav- go Shodan شدن -shav- get/become Zadan زدن -zan- hit/strike With the above information and a lot of words I already know from Arabic, I was able to make hundreds of sentences after two hours of study. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Élan Senior Member United States Joined 5442 days ago 165 posts - 211 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Persian | Message 19 of 31 19 January 2011 at 4:09am | IP Logged | |||||
It's only difficult because of the print quality. It looks like a piece of paper that has been copied too many times and then scanned into a computer. I just thought that since you have spent a lot of time reading Arabic, maybe you would find it easier to read the blurry text. :) It takes me too long to recognize the letters when they are unclear. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6140 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 20 of 31 19 January 2011 at 4:18am | IP Logged | |||||
How funny -- that's the dictionary I use! I have it sitting on my desk next to me right now. How are you liking Persian so far? I also really like the mixed Arabic and Indo-European elements in it, which will probably make it a lot easier for you (even Swahili is helping for me because it also borrowed many of the same words from Arabic). It sounds like you're making a lot of progress in it already. !خدا حافظ Edited by ellasevia on 20 January 2011 at 9:15am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cetacea Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States booh.com Joined 5322 days ago 80 posts - 163 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Arabic (Yemeni), Arabic (Written) Studies: French | Message 21 of 31 29 January 2011 at 12:04am | IP Logged | |||||
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@Élan
Thanks for the heads up regarding the DLI course. I think I'll skip it for now. My instructor is keeping me busy with handouts from his courses at another university and said that there is no usable Persian textbook on the market right now. Ouch! @ellasevia Learning Persian after Arabic is like a breath of fresh air. No odd pronunciation, no gender, no dual, no broken plural, no complicated number system, etc. After 5 hours of class time with my instructor, I was making sentences like "Maryam doesn't tell Iranian jokes because Mohammad gets upset." or "I told you a hundred times that I don't like you to smoke in front of me, you don't listen." Yes, my instructor does have a sense of humor. I'm doing grammar exercises from Persian 4 (second year intermediate), but my vocabulary is all over the map. I can understand "election result", but can't count past ten. I'm viewing my rapid initial progress in Farsi with guarded optimism. There is no doubt that knowing Arabic gave me a huge advantage, but once that levels off, I'm expecting some hard work ahead. Farsi can't possibly be so easy, right? I've found Netflix instant stream an excellent source for Farsi, French, and German movies. French I have started L-R with the first of the Millenium books. I know I'm supposed to do it for 5-6 hours per day, but I simply don't have that much time. So far I managed to listen for 1 or 2 hours per day. The hardest part is to force myself to concentrate when I can understand very little. Arabic I'm not actively studying it, but I've been watching Al Jazeera Arabic news due to what's happening in Egypt. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| strikingstar Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5171 days ago 292 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Cantonese, Swahili Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written) | Message 22 of 31 29 January 2011 at 6:06am | IP Logged | |||||
My Arabic is in a similar situation (due to Swahili). I can understand "government policy" but up till a few days ago, I didn't even know the meaning of ناس.
هل تفكر أن الحكومة المصرية ستسقط؟ لي صديقة مقيمة في القاهرة وكنت لم أسمع منها. أرجو أن هي سالمة. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cetacea Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States booh.com Joined 5322 days ago 80 posts - 163 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Arabic (Yemeni), Arabic (Written) Studies: French | Message 23 of 31 29 January 2011 at 6:36am | IP Logged | |||||
نعم. أتمى وأتوقع سقوط الحكومة المصرية ورحيل رئيسها خلال أيام قريبة ولم أستطع أيضاً التواصل مع أصدقائي في مصر منذ أمس 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kinan Diglot Senior Member Syrian Arab Republic Joined 5564 days ago 234 posts - 279 votes Speaks: Arabic (Written)*, English Studies: Russian, Spanish | Message 24 of 31 29 January 2011 at 7:50am | IP Logged | |||||
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هل تفكر أن الحكومة المصرية ستسقط؟ لي صديقة مقيمة في القاهرة وكنت لم أسمع منها. أرجو أن هي سالمة.
------------- هل تعتقدين أن الحكومة المصرية ستسقط؟ لي صديقة مقيمة في القاهرة و لم اسمع منها منذ حين, أرجو انها سالمة 1 person has voted this message useful |
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