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Hendrek TAC 2013 log: Team Alef

 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
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Hendrek
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4642 days ago

152 posts - 210 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian
Studies: Persian

 
 Message 1 of 21
04 January 2013 at 8:37pm | IP Logged 
Salaam,

This will be the location of my 2013 logged efforts for improving my Persian level.
1 person has voted this message useful



druckfehler
Triglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 4628 days ago

1181 posts - 1912 votes 
Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean
Studies: Persian

 
 Message 2 of 21
04 January 2013 at 9:38pm | IP Logged 
Hendrek, it's great to see you join our small group of Persian learners! I'm looking forward to reading about your experiences with the language.
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Hendrek
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4642 days ago

152 posts - 210 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian
Studies: Persian

 
 Message 3 of 21
09 January 2013 at 1:43am | IP Logged 
سلام

Anyone know if there is anyway to type with right justification in this forum? Not that I can say a whole lot yet in Persian, but it could serve as some practice.

OK, so log entry number 1:

I'm usually not very good with keeping to a log schedule, but instead will post whenever I think about it, usually once every week or so (my goal anyway). As you can see below, I then typically get carried away and start writing too much :)

I focused on Italian for the 2012 TAC and am still working to maintain that, though almost exclusively with native materials at this point. With this TAC, my primary focus will be Persian. My profile still says Mandarin, but that is on hiatus until I "finish" Persian. By that I mean until I get to a comfortable level with it using mostly native materials, around B2 I think.

Persian is actually the first language that I really tried learning on my own. This was several years ago (influenced by a Persian girlfriend at the time), long before I discovered the world of DIY language learning through HTLAL, so I pretty much used only easypersian.com (all 130+ lessons), which despite being a great free site, didn't do the trick. Still, I certainly can't call myself a beginner, because a lot of it is coming back to me as I see it again. I have to assume that I'm somewhere in between an A1 and an A2 at this point. My goal is to be at or near a B2 by year's end.

I am using:
Assimil Le Persan (I don't speak French though Italian makes it nearly readable and thus usable): Lesson 48 at the moment
Chai and conversation podcast: just skimming leisurely, discovered it last week and have listened through episode 14. Might purchase the additional material and try it.
Pimsleur: completed
Mace: Got through lesson 15 methodically, but now I just flip through it and do a little here and there.
Thackston: did the first few lessons then dropped it... too dense at the time. Maybe later.
FSI/DLI materials: I have worked with some of it, but need to really dive in. My issue is the PDFs are hard to read and seem to be not in the same order as the audio recordings, so I think I need to do a lot of pre-work on the material... which I haven't gotten around to.
Full Persian news podcasts: I try to expose myself to full-speed stuff even if I can't keep up yet.

From Italian, I know that Michel Thomas was incredibly useful for me, so I'm still searching for the closest thing to that for Persian (advice welcome!). Also, reading is key to my learning style... specifically with a pop-up dictionary either online (lingro, Read The Web) or on my Kindle. Unfortunately, Kindle doesn't even support Arabic script yet, let alone a pop-up dictionary. Lingro doesn't support it either, but I discovered Franker through this site recently and will try using that now in app version, as it seems to be the only web pop-up that supports Persian that I've ever found (anyone know others?).

I will probably try to tackle The Little Prince once I get another 20-30 lessons into Assimil using Franker. The complete online text is available here: The Little Prince. I can't get the audio files to work though. Edit: you need RealPlayer, and then they work. This is actually a professionally recorded version, though the audio is a little grainy... but potentially good for LR-ing later. I will link it to the Team Alef thread too.

So, clearly my approach to Persian will have to be different as Persian just doesn't have a lot of good learning material compared to something like Italian. I'm hoping that this TAC group will help me keep going despite these difficulties.

I think that's it for now...

Edited by Hendrek on 09 January 2013 at 1:57am

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ellasevia
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2011
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5902 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 4 of 21
09 January 2013 at 1:35pm | IP Logged 
Hi Hendrek! Best of luck with the beautiful Persian language this year! I'm really glad to be on the same team as you -- you've already led me to some nice resources I wouldn't have found otherwise. Looking forward to seeing how you progress over the course of the year. :)

Edited by ellasevia on 09 January 2013 at 1:35pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Hendrek
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4642 days ago

152 posts - 210 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian
Studies: Persian

 
 Message 5 of 21
09 January 2013 at 4:01pm | IP Logged 
Thanks druckfehler and ellasevia. I just realized that the email notifications were being sent to my spam folder. It's fixed, so I should be checking up on everyone and reading logs. Hopefully I'll have more to add to the mix to help you all out.
1 person has voted this message useful



druckfehler
Triglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 4628 days ago

1181 posts - 1912 votes 
Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean
Studies: Persian

 
 Message 6 of 21
09 January 2013 at 9:59pm | IP Logged 
Wow, compared to your list my Persian resources are not very varied...

I also started with easypersian and while I think it's great for getting used to some of the grammar and making sentences, it's not exactly geared towards being able to hold a conversation... I'm at awe that you completed all lessons without getting fed up with the sometimes not so useful vocabulary.

As far as DLI materials go I like the G.L.O.S.S. lessons best. Have you tried them?
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Malek
Groupie
Christmas Island
Joined 4103 days ago

60 posts - 76 votes 

 
 Message 7 of 21
10 January 2013 at 1:05am | IP Logged 
Good luck with Persian. It's a language which I've looked at for a number years (while collecting resources) but have never quite had the time to delve into.
1 person has voted this message useful



Hendrek
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4642 days ago

152 posts - 210 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian
Studies: Persian

 
 Message 8 of 21
11 January 2013 at 6:01pm | IP Logged 
druckfehler, I have tried GLOSS before and do really like it. Once I get through a few
more learning material lessons (like Assimil) that's probably a good step into native
materials still in lesson form.

As far as easypersian, there was a thread on the level of systematic thinking that we
language learners often have, and I took the mentioned test and scored pretty high
(51)... evidently corresponding to an Aspergers tendency. I'm not in awe too much,
because I can go through something methodically like that usually without getting too
frustrated.

Log:

I am listening to epersianradio.com at the moment (another good resource) and am
noticing that I have an easier time of following the gist of the broadcast compared to
just a few weeks ago, which is encouraging. I think the Assimil listening has helped a
lot. Because Assimil audio is usually very slowly spoken, however, I have gone through
my Assimil recordings and sped them all up by 25% (using Hokusai app) which seems to
correspond pretty well with the speed that I'm hearing on the radio right now, so I
think this has been especially helpful.

As everyone studying Persian probably knows, there's a significant difference between
spoken and written Persian. At least, significant enough to impact casual listening
comprehension abilities because of all the contractions and vowel changes. Assimil
uses almost exclusively the formal (written) method of pronunciation, at least in the
first half. However, so do radio broadcasts often, making it useful for that, even if
not for the conversational side. Pimsleur and Chai & Conversation focus on the
informal speech, so hopefully the combination of the listening resources is helping to
ensure that I'm developing an ear for both forms.

Some interesting things I've thought about recently:

1. Coincidentally, "who is it" can be said nearly the same in both informal Persian and
Italian: "chi è" and "کی است", both pronounced "ki eh" (though "kist" in Persian too).
For me, it is relatively easy to use the informal "it is" form of "e", because I've
already trained my brain to immediately recognize the meaning of that sound through
Italian. Luckily, "it is" is one of the most common verb forms used in a language, so
this seems to not be just a minor advantage.

2. LR may be somewhat difficult in Persian compared to some other languages. It seems
that some texts which are written normally are sometimes read with the informal speech,
meaning that the text does not correspond exactly to the recording. I could be wrong,
but I thought I noticed it with The Little Prince recordings, but I only listened to a
minute or two.

Does anyone know if there are any books written in the script that represent the
informal speech?



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