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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| minus273 Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5767 days ago 288 posts - 346 votes  Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan | Message 17 of 29 25 May 2009 at 1:57pm | IP Logged |
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Putain de merde, I clicked on quote for edit. Edited by minus273 on 25 May 2009 at 1:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| minus273 Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5767 days ago 288 posts - 346 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan | Message 18 of 29 25 May 2009 at 1:59pm | IP Logged |
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Delete this also, please. Edited by minus273 on 25 May 2009 at 2:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lexington1 Newbie United States Joined 5827 days ago 14 posts - 14 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Persian | Message 19 of 29 09 June 2009 at 1:39am | IP Logged |
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Just curious
If you learn Persian and then Hindi, does that combination also give you the ability to understand Urdu? And to what degree? Also, how much will knowledge of Persian by itself help you understand Urdu? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| pohaku Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5653 days ago 192 posts - 367 votes Speaks: English*, Persian Studies: Arabic (classical), French, German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 20 of 29 09 June 2009 at 2:13am | IP Logged |
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If you learn Persian and then Hindi, I doubt you'll "automatically" be able to understand Urdu. However, you'll be fluent in the Perso-Arabic alphabet and, depending on what you learn in Persian, you may be culturally aware of much that relates more to Urdu than to Hindi. You'll also recognize the significant (as I understand it) portion of Urdu vocabulary that comes from Persian and Arabic (bearing in mind that Persian vocabulary itself is 30-40% Arabic).
I went to a Bollywood movie for the first time last year. I couldn't understand more than a smattering of the dialog based on my Persian knowledge, but, because I could read the subtitles in English, I caught numerous references and figures of speech that come from Persian literature and language. If you study Sa'adi, Hafez, Nezami, and Rumi in Persian, plus the Quran, you'll be well fixed to comprehend a great deal about the sphere of greatest Persian cultural influence, meaning everywhere from the Caucasus to Baghdad to Central Asia to Delhi. However, that's a tall order, something like saying, If you study Shakespeare, the King James Bible, Dante, and Voltaire you'll know much about European culture. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lexington1 Newbie United States Joined 5827 days ago 14 posts - 14 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Persian | Message 21 of 29 09 June 2009 at 4:07am | IP Logged |
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My understanding from some of the posts on this forum, and from Wikipedia, was the Urdu is Hindi with the Perso-Arabic alphabet and a bunch of Persian vocabulary? But from what you are saying, it sounds like there's more to it-is there?
I must point out that at now this is more an academic question for me. Right now my hands are full with Arabic, though I've just started learning Persian from an old Teach Yourself book I found in the library (see how that goes-I don't know if I'll have the time to pursue it). Since you seem to know Persian, how did you learn it? The book I'm using is by a guy named John Mace-do you know it, and is it any good? I'm only a few lessons in-right now my feelings regarding its quality are mixed. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| pohaku Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5653 days ago 192 posts - 367 votes Speaks: English*, Persian Studies: Arabic (classical), French, German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 22 of 29 09 June 2009 at 4:48am | IP Logged |
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I'm not up-to-date on the latest Persian instructional materials. I learned initially 40 years ago at the university using Lambton's "Persian Grammar," though I vaguely remember Mace and must've used it at some point, maybe while I was in Iran. Assuming you know the alphabet and some useful vocabulary from Arabic, you'll be in good shape to get up to speed in Persian. Persian grammar is simple, at least initially. It's kind of like English in that it's easy to learn how to put simple sentences together, but that simplicity and flexibility plus the lack of precision in the writing system (and the way many texts are printed, without clear breaks between words, and very iffy punctuation) can lead to serious difficulties of understanding. If you're learning speaking and listening, dialects will become an issue at some point.
The key thing, from my point of view, is to know why you're learning Persian (or whatever). If you want to read texts, then one sort of study plan would work. If you want to travel and chat with folks in Iran or Afghanistan or Tajikistan, then you need another study plan. If you happen to be interested in classical (i.e., medieval) Persian poetry, then I could be more specific with my advice. I first learned Hafez's third ghazal (in many editions it's number 3), the one that starts, Agar an Turk-e Shirazi... It's the one that Sir William Jones introduced to the West well over two hundred years ago. It took me about 38 years to really learn something about it, though I took a 36 year break in there, which says more about me than about the difficulty of the language. A friend (who also knows Persian) and I are about to start Arabic (though he's already pretty good at it, from prior stays in Arabic-speaking countries). Our plan is to read through Alf Layla wa Layla (1,001 Nights). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lexington1 Newbie United States Joined 5827 days ago 14 posts - 14 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Persian | Message 23 of 29 09 June 2009 at 5:18am | IP Logged |
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Well, I actually have a lot of reasons for learning it-I would like to travel and talk to Iranians (I have a couple Iranian friends at my University, and Iran seems like an interesting country to visit). I also want to eventually make a career as a college professor in Middle Eastern or South Asian history, so it would be useful as a research language (I haven't decided whether I'm going to focus on modern history or medieval-I know it would impact the type of language I'd end up having to read). And I really like the small amount of Persian poetry I've read.
Since you mentioned dialects, how much difference is there between Tajik, Dari, and Farsi? Is it like British and American English, or are there real inteligebility problems? (I've considered the possibility that, if I decide to study Farsi in country, the country might have to be Tajikistan given all the problems the US and Iran have.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| pohaku Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5653 days ago 192 posts - 367 votes Speaks: English*, Persian Studies: Arabic (classical), French, German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 24 of 29 09 June 2009 at 5:44am | IP Logged |
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I'm not qualified to contrast Tajik, Dari, and Farsi. I was thinking simply of the differences within Iran. Tehran has a very distinctive dialect, for example. Nothing you won't be able to handle, though. Probably more like the differences among the dialects within England than those in America, which really aren't very diverse.
If you've only read Persian poetry in translation, you haven't really smelled the roses yet--or heard the song of the nightingale. There are countless pleasures, particularly if you enjoy the mystical (Rumi), the passionate (Hafez), the fantastic (Nezami), or the wise (Sa'adi), not that one adjective can begin to describe those four immortals. I doubt there are many cultures more addicted to poetry, and more familiar with their own thousand-year old poems. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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