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Criticism for Mid-Eastern Languages? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4669 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes  Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish | Message 25 of 43 28 November 2011 at 4:01am | IP Logged | ||
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They are bad asses... but literally. Before I've started Persian philology everyone (of course everyone, who knows Persian) was encouraging me to start learning Persian, because it's "sooo nice" and "sooo easy". And what? I've found the hard way that it's not all beer and skittles. Still, it's not Arabic, but at least in case of Arabic nobody has misled me.
P.S. Don't worry, I won't give up ;) But it's harder than I've thought and somehow is not as easy for me as most of the languages in the past were. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| P0nd3r Bilingual Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5014 days ago 30 posts - 35 votes Speaks: English*, Persian* Studies: Swedish, Japanese | Message 26 of 43 28 November 2011 at 6:10am | IP Logged | ||
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People says it's easy because most of the cases have been dropped from Old Persian. Also,
for instance we don't have gender, that already takes care of one problem. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fomalhaut Groupie United States Joined 4713 days ago 80 posts - 101 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 27 of 43 28 November 2011 at 9:30am | IP Logged | ||
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I find that misconception simply a result of a changing in the colloquial nomenclature of the Islamic Republic of Iran; Look at any map pre-90's and it was called Persia, or at least had (Persia) as an undercard.
The Persian culture has been continuing for literally thousands of years, unstopped, and has been called Persia, Parsi, Farsi, however, the whole time. What silliness and complete, deep, no, massive ignorance displayed by some to think otherwise. I was literally asked by my mother if I was a terrorist on finding out I studied Persian. I was aghast, do I really want to be associated with such hateful and ignorant human beings? Edited by fomalhaut on 28 November 2011 at 9:31am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Emiliana Diglot Groupie Germany Joined 4924 days ago 81 posts - 98 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Arabic (classical) | Message 28 of 43 28 November 2011 at 10:26am | IP Logged | ||
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I study Arabic and now as I think about it, I really get some weird reactions sometimes. For example "jokes" like if I am going to learn sentences like "the plane hit the building" etc. Mostly people are just very astonished how somebody could learn an exotic language like that. Which I don't understand, honestly, as Germany is not as far from Arabic countries, a lot of people travel to Egypt, Marroco and other countries for holidays. But when I "translate" people's names to the Arabic script everybody is admiring my skills and the beautiful script. Weird ;).
By the way, if I will be not too discouraged by Arabic (which is really not an easy language) I am thinking about studying Persian afterwards. I wonder what people are going to say then... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Mani Diglot Senior Member Germany imsprachendickicht.b Joined 4715 days ago 258 posts - 323 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Swedish, Portuguese, Latin, Welsh, Luxembourgish | Message 29 of 43 28 November 2011 at 10:45am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm studying Kurdish and I just didn't tell most people about it. Not because it's a Mid-Eastern language, simply because I can imagine their reactions when I tell them that I study yet another language. Like:
"Kurdish - what's that?" (Are you really that ignorant? I just told you that I learn a foreign language called Kurdish ...) "You should focus on French (and Luxembourgish) first." (No thanks. I like taking turns while learning something. When I try to focus on just one thing I easily get bored, so rotating tasks is one thing to keep me motivated.) "Shouldn't you learn something more useful - like Spanish?" (Nothing against Spanish, I took some beginner's classes while I was younger and really liked it, but it's just not on the top of my priority list at the moment.) (And my all time favourite:) "What are you going to do with that?" (Make an educated guess. Using it, I'd say.) Sorry that I sound so annoyed, but in fact that are some of the major questions I were asked while I was studying South Asian studies (including Sanskrit, Hindi, Bengali) at university. (For the first question replace Kurdish with Sanskrit, Hindi, Bengali and leave out the second one because back then I wasn't living here in Luxembourg. And yes - I got the "Hindi - isn't that a religion?" question a couple of times, too.) So this time I decided simply to keep quiet about my new language and only talk about it to people who don't think I'm an oddity only because I'm into languages. Works well for me so far, I could avoid all that dull questions. And following this forum is a great relief, too. Nerds united ... ;-) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Humdereel Octoglot Groupie United States Joined 4788 days ago 90 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English, Spanish*, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Written), Turkish, Persian, Urdu Studies: Russian | Message 30 of 43 29 November 2011 at 12:45am | IP Logged | ||
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Some interesting responses so far.
@prz_: Indeed, Persian isn't "easy", but it's highly rewarding. Also, it's cool to read that you were actually encouraged to learn Persian. Of course, the people were wrong about the "so easy" part, but I don't think anybody would've directly encouraged me, either because they were unaware that it existed or because they didn't realize how useful it could be; so it's cool that you were encouraged. @Emiliana: Yes, Arabic can go both ways. While many consider it to be beautiful and admire the script and its exoticness, it is often associated to some less-than-rosy things, even when people know better that that isn't all there is to the language. @Mani: Very cool to know you're learning Kurdish, as I've certainly met less people studying it when compared to Arabic, and even Persian and Turkish. May I ask, which variant of Kurdish are you focusing on? Kurmanji or Sorani? Or in general? From my understanding, Kurdish seems to work like a dialect continuum. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TalkativeHoopoe Tetraglot Newbie United States Joined 4557 days ago 11 posts - 13 votes Speaks: Spanish, Persian, Pashto*, English | Message 31 of 43 29 November 2011 at 3:16am | IP Logged | ||
Yes, Persian is probably not easy for those wo dont speak it natively, but I promise it'll be worth it in the end. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Venustus Pentaglot Newbie BrazilRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4612 days ago 14 posts - 21 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Italian, Spanish, Russian Studies: Polish | Message 32 of 43 29 November 2011 at 10:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Once I was criticised for studying Swedish. "Why? It's useless". Same in Russian, Latin
Greek, Japanese, Dutch and even German. "Why the hell do you want with Latin? It's a death language and useless. Portuguese is enough." And I just said "At least I am a student with willingness, whereas you cannot even speak portuguese correctly." The people were commentless. Yes, that's true, they said. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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