TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

[vijayjohn]

That's true, voron. Księżycowy has a list of languages he sticks to, except it's almost as big as my own list of languages I've been trying to study.

I was talking about you.

I know. I was agreeing with you.

But then I made a dig at you as well because how could I not??

[eskandar]

Seeing this group effort for Hokkien viewtopic.php?f=50&t=53853 made me want to start a group for Levantine Arabic, too. Is anyone interested?

I'm interested, of course! Don't know how much time I have for colloquial Arabic, and for Unilang in general, but when I find time to check in, I'd love to participate. I'm trying to learn Palestinian now. Maybe when you come back to Arabic we can get it going.

Another thing I would really love doing is creating lessons on my 3 main languages (Turkish, Kurmanji Kurdish, Syrian Arabic) for beginners, and combining them all together as if they were dialects of a single language -- which is kind of what I witness every day in Istanbul, with people switching between them all the time, and with so many common words between them; but I'm afraid it may create a mess in students' heads. Also, which subforum would I place the lessons to? And what would I name it: Middle-Eastern Koine?

WOW, this is too cool an idea to resist. Because I already know some Turkish and Arabic I feel like I'd be able to keep the three separate.

[voron]

WOW, this is too cool an idea to resist. Because I already know some Turkish and Arabic I feel like I'd be able to keep the three separate.

I've started it:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=53864

[vijayjohn]

Maybe I'll end up learning some Kurmandji or something this way

[voron]

I want to change my study cycles again.

Here is the new set-up:
Sunday-Monday - Kurdish
Tuesday-Wednesday - Turkish
Thursday-Friday - Arabic

Two days for each language means I will study on one or both of them depending on how I feel like. It's summer and I want to have some kick back days.

Here's what I want to do during the first couple of cycles:
Kurdish - Order books in Kurdish, read and make notes. I want to order from here:
http://pirtukakurdi.com

Turkish - Read books from my Kindle (it's probably going to be Yaşar Kemal books), and try this new routine of marking all unknown words and exporting them to Anki.

Arabic - Keep up with my Anki reviews (I haven't been doing them regularly for like 2 weeks). Next, as I am bored of GLOSS, start watching a series instead. And continue studying the Quran.

[voron]

Kurdish - Order books in Kurdish, read and make notes. I want to order from here:
http://pirtukakurdi.com

And I just ordered, besides a couple of Kurdish books, this comparative grammar of Kurmanji and Zazaki:
http://www.pirtukakurdi.com/Kurtce-Dilb ... Dilbilgisi

[Saim]

Kurdish - Order books in Kurdish, read and make notes. I want to order from here:
http://pirtukakurdi.com

And I just ordered, besides a couple of Kurdish books, this comparative grammar of Kurmanji and Zazaki:
http://www.pirtukakurdi.com/Kurtce-Dilb ... Dilbilgisi

Cool!

I couldn't help but notice that the site can be displayed in Kirmancî or Kirmanckî. What's the difference?

[vijayjohn]

Kurdish - Order books in Kurdish, read and make notes. I want to order from here:
http://pirtukakurdi.com

And I just ordered, besides a couple of Kurdish books, this comparative grammar of Kurmanji and Zazaki:
http://www.pirtukakurdi.com/Kurtce-Dilb ... Dilbilgisi

Cool!

I couldn't help but notice that the site can be displayed in Kirmancî or Kirmanckî. What's the difference?

Kirmanckî = Zazaki

[voron]

Haven't done anything for Kurdish as my new shiny Kurdish books haven't arrived yet (I am expecting them on Thursday).

I had applied for the Kurdish language course, next level of the one I attended 2 years ago, but then changed my mind and decided not to go. The course was closed down last year -- they then changed the organization's name and place and re-started it -- and if it happens again and my name gets onto the police's records, there is a real fear that my residence permit application may be denied. I better not risk.

Also, the person with whom I had arranged private lessons turned to be unreliable, so I cancelled the agreement with him. I have to go on on my own.

Arabic: Reviewed my Quran deck. Downloaded the 1st episode of the series "The Mangificent Century" in the Syrian dubbing, uploaded it to my youtube account and appended the English subtitles to it. Haven't remained happy with the result though as the subtitles while sync'ed well for the first half of the episode (20 mins), go off for the second half. Why is it always so hard to find well-matching subtitles.

[voron]

Arabic: Screw the Magnificent Century series. It's dumb as hell. I better watch something without subtitles at all.

Or perhaps I can watch this one subtitled in Spanish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQEu1KNX424
I can kind of follow written Spanish thanks to my knowledge of Italian.

Reviewed my Songs deck in Anki. Now I only have the GLOSS deck to be reviewed to catch up with the reviews missed for the past 2 weeks.

Also, for a change I took a lesson from italki. It was very enjoyable and we talked in Arabic most of the time.

[aaakknu]

I had applied for the Kurdish language course, next level of the one I attended 2 years ago, but then changed my mind and decided not to go. The course was closed down last year -- they then changed the organization's name and place and re-started it -- and if it happens again and my name gets onto the police's records, there is a real fear that my residence permit application may be denied. I better not risk.

Your residence permit application may be denied just because you want to learn Kurdish?
I don't understand how that's possible.

[vijayjohn]

I had applied for the Kurdish language course, next level of the one I attended 2 years ago, but then changed my mind and decided not to go. The course was closed down last year -- they then changed the organization's name and place and re-started it -- and if it happens again and my name gets onto the police's records, there is a real fear that my residence permit application may be denied. I better not risk.

Your residence permit application may be denied just because you want to learn Kurdish?
I don't understand how that's possible.

Kurds traditionally live in the area where Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran all border each other and (some Kurds) have been trying for over a hundred years to found their own state (Kurdistan) in this area, independent of all of these countries (but made up of territory that is recognized as belonging to each of them). The independence movement is somewhat powerful (some of this territory is in fact under de facto Kurdish administration); not so surprisingly, the Turkish government has always been against it and associates Kurdish/Kurds in general with this movement. Once you associate a language with a security threat, I don't think it's too surprising that the government has made learning the language a crime.

[voron]

Your residence permit application may be denied just because you want to learn Kurdish?
I don't understand how that's possible.

See this for more insight into the situation: https://www.thenation.com/article/in-tu ... -in-sight/

This article is about the course I attended, and the person interviewed is one of our teachers.

[voron]

Some notes for Kurdish words I keep forgetting:

danîn - to put (dial.; the standard prefers xistin)

girtin (digirim) - to take; to close
girîn (digirim) - to cry
gerîn (digerim) - to walk; to search; to phone call

During the month of Ramadan, I asked someone: Tu rojî digerî? (meaning: are you fasting?), and they started laughing, because what I said was 'are you searching the fast'. I confused the words; I should have said: Tu rojî digirî? (present tense of the verb girtin).

I'm changing my study plan again.

Arabic
I can't watch series yet. I don't understand most of them, and following subtitles is frustrating and boring (and besides, I just don't like series in general). From my experience with Turkish, even when my vocabulary was substantially large, watching films and series was very difficult and took a lot of time to get used to (mostly by means of talking to natives daily). I'm going to apply the same plan for Arabic: continue expanding my vocabulary using GLOSS and songs (and perhaps buying a few children's books in Arabic -- in MSA of course), then talking to people, albeit in the lesson format on italki.

Kurdish
My books have arrived! I will start with reading the comparative grammar of Zazaki and Kurmanji, and since it's written in Turkish, I'll practice all the 3 languages.

Turkish
Same plan here: read.

[vijayjohn]

Okay, I may only be asking this because I'm nuts, but...

Would you like to join me for a study group for Kurmanji/Zazaki/Sorani/some other NW Iranian language variety/Iranian languages in general/some combination of the above?

[voron]

Would you like to join me for a study group for Kurmanji/Zazaki/Sorani/some other NW Iranian language variety/Iranian languages in general/some combination of the above?

Sure, it sounds like a nice idea.

Can we find a common resource though?
Zazaki -- for the moment, I don't want to do anything for it except for reading that grammar I mentioned above; and I don't want to do any other Iranian language except Kurmanji.

[księżycowy]

Just putting this out there for future reference: I'd join a study group for Sorani, Pashto and/or Persian at some point.

[Antea]

I’d also join for Persian or Pashto

[voron]

I’d also join for Persian or Pashto

Ok I can understand why Persian over Kurmanji (it's a mainstream language with much more cultural output), but why Pashto? Is it prettier or something?

[Antea]

It’s because I think that Pashto is more similar to Persian than Kurmanji, but maybe I’m wrong?