|
 |
Persian, etc. (فارسی و غیره) | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| aldous Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5233 days ago 73 posts - 174 votes  Speaks: English*, French | Message 1 of 12 16 April 2011 at 8:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
Lately I've been thinking a lot about my language learning and what it is I want to accomplish with it. I've come to realize about myself that being a polyglot isn't important to me. But I do like to learn about languages and linguistics, and I like being able to use languages to pursue my interests.
Thinking about languages as means to an end rather than the end in itself has made me feel more relaxed about the language learning process, and it has also led me to reprioritize how I approach languages. Here is my list of languages as of Spring 2011, in order of priority, with my best guess as to my current level in the language. I will edit this list periodically as I slowly improve in the languages (إن شاء الله) and as my objectives change. Persian Current estimated level: Reading B2 Listening B1 Writing B1 Speaking A2 Current objectives: Improve comprehension of classical prose and improve listening comprehension I can read the news in Persian fairly well, but classical Persian is more difficult because one measure of a good author in the old days was how many fancy words he could use. Consequently you have to have a very large passive vocabulary to read classical Persian comfortably. So my main task is to expand my vocabulary. I will also try to devote some time every day to watching or listening to Persian programming online. Currently I can understand chunks of verbiage, but I can't stay on top of the stream and absorb the words as they come. I'm still in the stage where two or three sentences roll by as I mentally translate a word. Reading news articles should help with that, too, to increase my news vocabulary. By the end of 2011 I'd like to reach 95% comprehension of classical texts. Materials: Historical texts, modern books, online TV programming French Current estimated level: Reading: C1 Listening: B2 Writing: B2 Speaking: A2 Current objectives: Expand vocabulary and improve writing Materials: Native books, online TV programming German Current estimated level: Reading: B1/B2 Other skills: negligible Current objective: Expand vocabulary Materials: Student readers, native books, online TV programming Other There are some languages that I'd like to pursue but are on the back burner for now, like Arabic and Latin. Still, I work on them from time to time in a casual way. There are other languages that I dabble in for a little while to see how they work. These mainly serve my interest in linguistics, and I typically have no intention of investing the hundreds of hours needed to turn the language into a skill. NOTE: Whenever I write in a target language in this log, please correct me. I know I am bad at them and I will be grateful for any help in improving. لطفا کتابت و شیوه فارسی من را تصحیح کنید Les corrections de mon français sont très bienvenues Die Verbesserungen meines Deutsches sind herzlich eingeladen 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6940 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 2 of 12 17 April 2011 at 4:44am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Hi, aldous! I was immediately drawn to your log because I've recently started studying
Persian casually, and there are not too many on this forum who are studying it. I think that's awesome that you seem so comfortable with the writing system and are starting to catch some words in Persian programming. I really envy you! I've got to work harder to catch up :) At the moment I'm just using scattered online resources and am still reading at a snail's pace... do you have any programs that you've found particularly useful? By the way, that's quite a big goal you've set for yourself for Persian this year. I'll be cheering you on, and for German and French too! Best of luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| aldous Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5233 days ago 73 posts - 174 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 3 of 12 19 April 2011 at 1:13am | IP Logged | |||||
مرسی لاکی چارمز جان How casual are you about Persian? If you're reading at all, you must have made some progress so far. Have you used any books or just online stuff? I started Persian in a classroom and we used Persian Language Teaching by Yadollah Samareh. That's a good textbook, but I don't know how easy it is to find. I would probably recommend John Mace's Modern Persian in the Teach Yourself series to someone starting out. It's one of the few TY books that hasn't been "modernized", so it's quite good. Persian can be hard to get started in because of the quirks in the writing system. I don't know where you are in your studies, but I'd be happy to help you with pronunciation or writing via Skype if that'll help get you over the beginner's hump.
Thank you for your encouragement. It's a huge goal. I'll have to learn a ton of new words to pull it off. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| aldous Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5233 days ago 73 posts - 174 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 4 of 12 19 April 2011 at 3:03am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Here's what I've done the past few days.
Persian Several hours' worth of reading, mainly from some 16th-century chronicles, but I'm also working my way through a storybook aimed at kids in the 10- to 12-year-old range, about a legendary figure from history named Hātem al-Ṭā'ī. I like the kids' book because it uses different vocabulary from what the old historians used, and repeats words a lot. I look up a lot of the unknown words and make paper flash cards while I read. I've read that language students shouldn't do this, but I'm eager to expand my vocabulary as rapidly as possible so I do it anyway. Last week I set a goal for myself of making 100 new flash cards a day, but I've found that to be crazy unrealistic. In the past three days I've only made about three dozen. I'm not satisfied with that, so I might shoot for 20 per day. I also watched two or three hours' worth of Persian TV online. In the Hātem al-Ṭā'ī book I learned two new words for boat, zūraq and qāyiq. The second one is a borrowing from Turkic (in modern Turkish it's kayık) and bears a striking resemblance to the English word kayak, which was borrowed from an Eskimo language. So I wondered if there had been contact between the Turks and Eskimos to result in one borrowing the term from the other. It turns out I'm not the first one to wonder this. I found an academic article online, entitled "Urban Legends: Turkish Kayık 'Boat' and "Eskimo" Qayaq 'Kayak'". It showed that there's no relationship. The uncanny resemblance is purely random. French I'm currently reading a book called Brève histoire du Québec, and entering words I don't know in Anki. This is my first time trying Anki out. I think I prefer paper flash cards for most things, but Anki works for the way I'm approaching French. Arabic I've started doing the scriptorium technique, copying verses of the Qur'an. I only spend about 15 minutes or so per day. Latin I've also started a scriptorium for Latin, copying from the Vulgate. I'm picking up a lot of Latin this way, relatively painlessly. Other Spent about an hour watching Spanish-language TV online. Did some browsing of a couple books on Croatian and memorized some vocabulary. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6133 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 5 of 12 19 April 2011 at 4:05am | IP Logged | |||||
|
aldous شب بخير
How long have you been studying Persian? I've only been studying it since this past August, so I'm obviously nowhere near your level yet. Why did you decide to learn it? !موفق باشى Edited by ellasevia on 19 April 2011 at 4:07am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| pfn123 Senior Member Australia Joined 5074 days ago 171 posts - 291 votes Speaks: English* | Message 6 of 12 20 April 2011 at 2:06am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Hi. I'm not learning Persian... yet! It's on my list (so many languages, so little time). But I had a question about resources. Have you looked at Living Language Spoken World Persian? I borrowed a Spoken World Book and Cds from the library, but for another language. I was so impressed (they keep impressing me, the folks at Living Language), that I went online and bought Spoken World for several languages, including Persian. Have you used this resource, or heard about it? If so, what are your thoughts? Edited by pfn123 on 20 April 2011 at 2:06am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| aldous Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5233 days ago 73 posts - 174 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 7 of 12 23 April 2011 at 11:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
Persian
Lots of TV watching, and some reading, though not as much as I would have liked, and consequently new flash card production has been meagre. New flash cards created: 26 Old flash cards retired: 14 I ordered a new bilingual dictionary, and it arrived this week. It's a large-format green model called The Combined New Persian-English and English-Persian Dictionary, edited by Kashani. Very promising. My other two dictionaries (Steingass and Hayyim) only go Persian -> English, and I've been feeling the need for the other direction. This new dictionary (new to me; it was published in 1986) will probably fill a serious gap in my library. I mostly use Steingass for classical stuff (since it's based on the literary and official idiom as used in 19th-century India). Hayyim has the advantage over Steingass of being more recent and in a much smaller, more convenient format. But Hayyim doesn't show the short vowels. Kashani does. It even includes Persian synonyms. Very cool. It'll be fun trying this new dictionary out. It's already proved helpful with some words heard on TV. French Lots of reading and TV watching. I've been more in the mood for extensive reading lately, rather than looking up lots of words. Skipped on Anki, too. Other Did a little bit of Arabic and Latin scriptorium. Studied some more Croatian grammar and vocabulary. Thought about doing the current six-week challenge with Serbo-croatian. Decided against it.
علاقه به فرهنگ های غیر غربی دارم و بنابر این ، زبان ها که این علاقه ها را می آیزند مرا جذب می کنند. و شما چرا فارسی را درس می خوانید؟ I like history and literature, and I also like learning about non-Western cultures. So I'm most attracted to languages that combine those interests. Why are you learning it?
No, I haven't used it, but I'll be very interested to hear what you think of it. I've heard good things about the Living Language series in general, but I've never used it myself. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| pfn123 Senior Member Australia Joined 5074 days ago 171 posts - 291 votes Speaks: English* | Message 8 of 12 24 April 2011 at 12:21am | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, Living Language is very good. It'll be quite sometime before I use it. I'll let people know what it's like when I do. Good luck with your studies. All the best! 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
