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Persian, Arabic, and FSI Ratings | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 4858 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes  Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 9 of 16 04 April 2015 at 5:05am | IP Logged | |||||
As a Semitic language, Arabic inherited the consonantal root system where several related words share a sequence of consonants. The sequence k-t-b with different vowels means "he writes," "writer," "book," etc. As an Indo-European language, Persian words work roughly in a similar way as words in European languages such as English or French. They mostly are made up of roots that have both consonants and vowels, plus some prefixes and suffixes. Many of the words that have no obvious relation to English words can actually be traced back to the same set of words in the earlier stages of Indo-European, but have changed somewhat in both meaning and sound so they are no longer recognizable. Persian vocabulary makes heavy use of derivation by agglutination. That means that a suffix will be tacked on to a word to change its meaning in some way such as from a verb to a noun. English does this in words like red- ness, understand-able, and so on. Some Persian words are also borrowed from Arabic, similarly to how there are Greek words in English.
That is true, but nevertheless it is well established that if you take a group of Americans and try to teach some Chinese and others French, the Chinese group will reliably take longer and, on average, achieve less proficiency. The ratings are not decided a priori based on what FSI folks thought about the relationship of the languages to English. They have observed over many years of experience that it is difficult to make Americans proficient in Chinese without allocating more time to training. For every Anglophone who finds Chinese easier because of the simplicity in grammar, there are a great many more who find it more difficult because of the lack of cognates, characters, tones, difference in discourse style, and cultural differences. Edited by robarb on 04 April 2015 at 5:05am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4089 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 10 of 16 04 April 2015 at 5:20am | IP Logged | |||||
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I thought that I was weird because I found MAndarin easier than French, but at least
there are others that find it this way. I keep hearing about how hard Mandarin is, but the grammar is fairly simple. The harder idiomatic stuff that comes after high- intermediate that has little resemblance to IE-languages is still not as bad if one is used to the patterns already formed in the years that led up to the level to even have to worry about such structures. I still think that tones and characters are overrated. Characters are more than just plain memorising, although one can use a brute force memorisation learning strategy. The radicals at least can be broken down into groups, and I remember that when I took Mandarin, we had character tests, write sentences using the new characters learnt. You cannot memorise a good deal, you fail the test, simple, so it is just studying for something else that has to be memorised. To me it is nothing different than a biologist who must memorise a bunch of anatomy, or those who learn calculus who need to remember those trigonometric integration formulæ. Also in our Mandarin programme, we learnt both simplified and traditional characters, as well as the corresponding pinyin. It seems that programmes either choose one or the other (usually with pinyin for their character choice as well), but even learning both simplified and traditional it was not the brainbusting type of labour that its reputation has, at least it was not particularly more difficult that some other subject that I was learning at the time. There was also a brute force type of testing that we had, we had dictation in Mandarin. You read a whole passage in front of the class, or to the teacher one by one as a test. Each wrong tone is a point or several points off, so if you get it wrong, you do badly. You end up practising until you get it right otherwise you fail. To me this seems nothing more different than any other subject in school. If you are in year 4 or 5 of Mandarin and are already writing essays about stuff like water policy, and are good enough to give speeches in a Chinatown cultural centre to natives, whatever was learnt has become second nature, just like any other language. No cognates are needed if you think in the language, which I assume that after years would one be able to do. I love French, but it has a "je ne sais quoi" about it that always made it the hardest Romance language for me. I took Mandarin and French at the same time in classes, both formally until age 17, and I progressed much more slowly in French. Going to a Chinese restaurant and reading the menu (both the written one and the chalkboard with the specials) was at least slightly easier than when I went to France or Montréal and had to read menus in their restaurants. Edited by 1e4e6 on 04 April 2015 at 5:59am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4506 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 11 of 16 04 April 2015 at 5:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't think characters are overrated, but tones certainly are.
2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 5860 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 12 of 16 04 April 2015 at 1:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes. I was not comparing the two. I'm sure Persian must be easier, although I only have experience with Arabic. Vowel-dropping is not as important as people think. For the most part, it takes care of itself, after some time. I learned Arabic with the diacritics. After a while, I stopped using them in the consonants preceding long vowels. Then, in most recurring words (prepositions, pronouns, and other particles). In the end, thanks to the root system, a few other words. In many cases, you know what to expect. Therein lies one of the most important advantages of a good teacher (or, in its absence, a good method): you must not tackle every obstacle at once. A good teacher will, every now and then, give you an advanced text. He'll take you through it and tell you to bypass certain bits, which he will explain. I've seen it done in German, Arabic and Sanskrit. The only time it went wrong was during the German class: there were too many people present and the purpose of the exercise was not sufficiently explained. As for the texts: a poem by a Swiss author, a tale from the Arabian Nights and a short story by Kalidasa. Not bad, wouldn't you say? I will however concede that, if one doesn't yet know the difference between مِن and مَن, then learning enough Arabic for haggling in markets during your next summer in Cairo may prove a bit difficult.
I'm sure this was a lapsus: Afghanistan has a Tajik minority. In Tajikistan, Tajiks are (as would be expected) a majority of the population. Edited by Luso on 05 April 2015 at 3:06am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4506 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 13 of 16 05 April 2015 at 5:57am | IP Logged | |||||
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Yeah, that's what I meant.
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| Silvance Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5293 days ago 57 posts - 81 votes Speaks: English*, Pashto Studies: Dari | Message 14 of 16 16 April 2015 at 12:18am | IP Logged | |||||
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Yeah, as said previously, Persian is vastly different from Arabic. You'll see words used
in Persian that come from Arabic, but oftentimes they have a completely different definition. Take "دفتر" for example. In Arabic it means "notebook," but in Persian and Pashto it means "office." This is not uncommon. That said, it's often easy to pick out the Arabic words that are in Persian because of the root system, which is fairly intuitive once you get the hang of it. As for location, Persian is primarily spoken in Iran (Farsi), Tajikistan (Tajik) and northern Afghanistan (Dari.) Southern Afghanistan is mostly Pashto, which only shares a similar vocabulary with Persian, it is not a dialect of Persian, and the occasional Balochi speaker. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gallo1801 Diglot Senior Member Spain Joined 4701 days ago 164 posts - 248 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), Croatian, German, French | Message 15 of 16 24 April 2015 at 3:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Your دفتر example reminds me of why Portuguese is not as easy as it would seem for
hispanophones: el escritorio - desk in Spanish, but o escritório = office in Portuguese. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 5860 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 16 of 16 25 April 2015 at 2:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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PT <-> ES
Secretária <-> escritorio Escritório <-> oficina Oficina <-> taller Talher(es) <-> cubierto(s) Although there are a few other classical examples, you'd be hard pressed to fill a few pages with such oddities. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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