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Learning Persian without Arabic? | ||
Tags: Farsi/Persian | Arabic | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 7145 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes  Studies: Uzbek | Message 9 of 35 01 August 2010 at 7:05pm | IP Logged |
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Note that the Arabic elements in the text above (Persian composite verbs made up of Arabic words such as "naql kardan", broken plurals, adverbial forms like "mostaqellan" (in the Persian pronunciation), etc.) are still essentially lexical items that will be found in large Persian dictionaries, and the "serious" Persian grammars also devote considerable space to explaining such forms as appear in Persian.
Certainly knowing Arabic before taking up Persian will make such things familiar, and ease one's path considerably, and so knowledge of Arabic has to be counted as an enormous advantage for someone contemplating taking up Persian. But the question, as I see it, is whether one NEEDS to know Arabic before taking up Persian, and to that I would answer "no", as you can learn a great deal of Persian without any Arabic background whatsoever, and pick up what you need as you proceed in Persian. (Indeed, knowing the other language also works in the reverse direction: A knowledge of Persian, or to a somewhat lesser extent Turkish, makes Arabic easier as well, because you've already assimilated a fair amount of vocabulary.) In any event, for people interested in acquiring Persian without a previous acquaintance with Arabic, I recommend the Mace "Teach Yourself Modern Persian" as a very easy introduction to the language. Other more ambitious grammars could follow, such as "Introduction to Persian" by Wheeler Thackston. http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Persian-Revised-4th/dp/15 88140555/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1280681909&sr=1-1 For scholarly purposes, the following two books contain lengthy sections on the Arabic elements in Persian: "Persian Grammar" by Ann Lambton http://www.amazon.com/Persian-Grammar-Students-Ann-Lambton/d p/0521091241 "A Higher Persian Grammar", by D. C. Phillott, available for free download at: http://www.archive.org/details/higherpersiangra032060mbp To conclude, I have no quarrel with aldous that knowing Arabic makes Persian easier, and that eventually you have to learn at least some elements of Arabic grammar to read Persian texts, but I think it would be a shame for anyone with an interest in Persian to be dissuaded from doing so out of the idea that knowing Arabic is some sort of a prerequisite. 13 persons have voted this message useful | |
| pohaku Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5652 days ago 192 posts - 367 votes Speaks: English*, Persian Studies: Arabic (classical), French, German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 10 of 35 01 August 2010 at 8:06pm | IP Logged |
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I'm getting in on this thread rather late, and most of the main points have been well-covered. I learned Persian first and finally started learning Arabic last year. I'm glad I'm doing that, but don't worry, you'll be able to go a long way in Persian without studying Arabic.
The issue is, to my way of thinking, much like someone asking whether or not they need to know Latin or French to learn English. Of course not! But does it help? Sure. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| aldous Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5243 days ago 73 posts - 174 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 11 of 35 02 August 2010 at 6:11am | IP Logged |
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Let me explain a little more what I mean by the role of Arabic in Persian as I understand it.
Let's take an example from English. Many (I guess most) English nouns that end in -um form their plural by changing -um to -a. The plural of bacterium is bacteria. The word *bacteriums is incorrect. In many cases the -a ending is optional, and you can choose the regular -s ending instead (such as with memorandum and stadium). But there are exceptions. The plural of chrysanthemum is chrysanthemums, and can't be *chrysanthema. Then there's the word media that's grammatically plural. Now, there are two ways you can learn these exceptions and exceptions to exceptions. You can memorize them as irregular forms without understanding why they're like that, or you can learn what a neuter noun in Latin is and how it forms the nominative plural. I think the second way is easier, and will give you better insight into the workings of the English language. That's not the same as saying you have to learn Latin before you can study English. But whether you like it or not, you can't escape that little fragment of Latin grammatical code embedded in our language, unless you just avoid using those words, or wait for natural language evolution to erase it. This grammatical borrowing is far more extensive in Persian than in English. Arabic morphology is pervasive, particularly with plural forms but also in other ways. Yes, you can simply memorize all these "irregular" forms through brute force. But I would think it'd be easier, and far more insightful, to know the grammar underlying them. (But to reiterate what Daristani said, you can pick up what you need of Arabic grammar as you go along.) So I agree with Narguess Farzad (quoted in the original post) when he says, "in-depth study of the Persian literature and even understanding the subtleties of the common language will not be possible without some knowledge of Arabic". No one should be put off by this, thinking they can't hope to master Persian without also mastering Arabic. That isn't the case. It does mean, though, that Persian isn't going to be the massive cakewalk language enthusiasts and aspiring polyglots sometimes imagine it'll be. (No gender? No declension? It must be easy!) I've heard it said that Persian has a shallow learning curve early on that gets steeper as you progress further into it. I'm not sure, but I suspect the Arabic elements are largely responsible for that perception. One other thing: I don't think doing Persian first and then Arabic offers the same advantage as doing Arabic first and then Persian. The shared vocabulary helps equally whichever direction you go. But no irregular feature of Arabic can be explained with recourse to Persian grammar. The grammatical borrowing was all one way. [Edited for clarity.] Edited by aldous on 02 August 2010 at 6:31am 13 persons have voted this message useful | |
| ruskivyetr Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5482 days ago 769 posts - 962 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Modern Hebrew | Message 12 of 35 02 August 2010 at 6:33am | IP Logged |
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Regarding plurals: If you do not know the Arabic plural to a word, would it seem weird to use the Persian one?
So for example, let's say you have the word kitab (I think that's how you spell it) for BOOK in Persian. To form the Arabic plural it would be kotob. If I were speaking to a Persian would they see it as weird if I said kitabha? And are there any of Arabic's word root system in the verbal system of Persian? Edited by ruskivyetr on 02 August 2010 at 6:35am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| pohaku Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5652 days ago 192 posts - 367 votes Speaks: English*, Persian Studies: Arabic (classical), French, German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 13 of 35 02 August 2010 at 9:57am | IP Logged |
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Arabic elements, as Aldous said, are part of the reason for the Persian learning curve that gets steeper as you go deeper. However, in my experience, the greater reason for that steepening curve is the tendency for the classical Persian writers to bend and twist every expectation, exploit every ambiguity, and tap dance all around those "simple" Persian grammatical rules that seem so beneficial at first. And then there are the problems with the writing system, such as the normally unwritten ezafeh. Think Shakespeare. He's not just difficult because of his huge vocabulary, but because he is constantly saying things in uncommon ways. The "simplicity" of Persian grammar give Persian authors the freedom to play similar games with the language. Persian is not just difficult because it basically has at its disposal the entire vocabularies of two great languages, Persian and Arabic, but because its authors delight in weaving their words in novel and ever-more-intricate patterns.
The Arabic elements (aside from chunks of straight, often quoted Arabic that one needs to know Arabic to read) are usually not a problem because they are not ambiguous. You just look them up in a good dictionary and the meaning is pretty clear. The same is not true of Persian elements, which can often represent any number of meanings or parts of speech. Ruskivyetr--I believe most Arabic words are used with Persian plural markers most of the time. However, bear in mind that plurals are often not marked in writing at all even when the context requires a plural meaning. Arabic words are usually used as verbs by combining the Arabic element (which may not be a verb itself) with a Persian verb such as "kardan," "to do." 9 persons have voted this message useful | |
| aldous Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5243 days ago 73 posts - 174 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 14 of 35 02 August 2010 at 5:24pm | IP Logged |
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Pohaku is right about the convoluted style of classical Persian literature. That has been, and continues to be, a steep learning curve for me.
In my understanding, in everyday conversation you can pretty much get away with tacking -hā on the end of anything to make it plural. Even -ān seems a little formal. There's a wide gap between the spoken and written registers. I pretty much never speak Persian or hear it spoken conversationally, so I don't have a good feel for how it works on that level, but I think you can easily get away with letting the Arabic plurals live just in your passive vocabulary. I'm not positive about that though so you better get a second opinion. The plural of kitāb: I've only ever seen and heard it as kitābhā. I just looked up the section on plurals in Phillott's Higher Persian Grammar (Calcutta, 1919) and it says both kitābhā and kotob are correct. But the latter must be purely literary. I haven't figured out the rule for when they prefer the Persian over the Arabic plural, but it isn't as intuitive as Arabic plurals for Arabic loanwords and Persian plurals for everything else. Many Arabic words take the Persian plural ending. The Arabic root system doesn't occur in Persian at all in any productive way. If you know how to recognize an Arabic root, that will help see relationships between words, but that's something you can figure out over time. Something else that just occurred to me: Persian hasn't just received loanwords from Arabic. Arabic is by far the largest donor, but Persian's lexicon also has a lot of loans from Turkic languages, a little bit from South Indian languages, and more recently from French and English. But as far as I know, only Arabic has influenced Persian's grammar. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6317 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 15 of 35 06 August 2010 at 1:35pm | IP Logged |
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Just wanted to voice a quick word of thanks, particularly to Aldous and Daristani for their extremely informative posts! It's still going to be a tough decision, but it might be interesting going for Persian first. In any case, I have a few years to mull it over...
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| hoss Tetraglot Newbie United States Joined 4961 days ago 11 posts - 14 votes Speaks: English*, German, Arabic (Written), Mandarin Studies: Hindi, Persian, Bengali | Message 16 of 35 28 April 2011 at 1:57pm | IP Logged |
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At the risk of oversimplifying, consider the fact that there are many native
Persian speakers who have gained a deep literary understanding of their language and do not speak or read Arabic. It would be interesting to know whether Iranian students nowadays have to take Arabic grammar in primary school, and really to what extent an average speaker knows the rules of the Arabic features like the triliteral root, participles, etc. It may be misleading to approach Persian with the assumption that Arabic is indispensable, especially if you are more interested in modern literature. 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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