General discussion

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alijsh
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Re: General discussion

Postby alijsh » 2010-09-21, 8:37

Oi. Por favor, escreva suas perguntas aqui.

- language = zabân (زبان)
- book = ketâb (کتاب)
- student = of university: dâneshju (دانشجو), of school: dâneshâmuz (دانش‌آموز)
- to study = khândan (خواندن)
- beautiful = zibâ (زیبا)
- culture = farhang (فرهنگ)
- music = musighi (موسیقی)
- love = eshgh (عشق)
- boyfriend/girlfriend = dustpesar (دوست‌پسر), dustdokhtar (دوست‌دختر)
- to travel = safar kardan (سفر کردن)
- country = keshvar (کشور)
- mountain = kuh (کوه)

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Shad
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Re: General discussion

Postby Shad » 2010-09-21, 16:10

Ah, desculpe! Sou tão burro.

kheyli mamnum!

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Re: General discussion

Postby alijsh » 2010-09-24, 17:20

Well-said. Contrary to what many orthodox Sunnis believe, Shi’ism is an integral part of Islam and not some deviant heresy.

Yes it can be really helpful but I forewarn you that after all, you must gauge احکام with your mind. Like any other religion, forged احکام have entered Islam. احکام that are not consistent with the mind, are not from God. This is a guideline that has clearly been stated by the Shia Imam's because even at their own time, there were people forging حدیث.

About a year and a half ago, I went through what would be considered a “spiritual crisis” and this experience led me to not only explore the Islam of the Shias, but also the Islam of the Salafis, Ismailis, Ahmadis, Mu'tazilites, reformists, progressives and modernists.

It is very good that one revise the beliefs being taught at childhood and study other sects and religions. This way you can gain in a robust and polished faith. I have also experienced it.

Not too long ago I read an essay by an American translator of Persian poetry. He talks about the difficulties Westerners face when translating Persian texts, one being how unfamiliar they are with the Shia references and themes that prevail in Persian literature from the Safavid era and onwards.

Persian literature is not generally translatable to culturally far languages like English. Apart from cultural words and expressions, they contain numerous literary arts that will be lost in translation. Persian can be best translated into Urdu and Turkish.

His research suggests that Shi'ism in Iran was shaped considerably by Zoroastrianism, most notably absorbing its dualistic worldview of the eternal battle between good and evil. You can read more about his research in this book review.

Not only Shia but Islam. Iranians have been mostly Sunni before Safavids, which is relatively recent. Don't forget that even «din» is a Zoroastrian word :wink: Hell and heaven (firdaws is also Zoroastrian), sarât bridge, savior are all found in Zoroastrianism (not to mention namâz and ruze). You know, God has sent prophets to humanity and not just the semitic people. I believe Zoroaster has been a prophet and that's why such deep similarities are found.

My avatar picture is the shrine of Hazrat Ali Hajveri, the patron saint of Lahore. Also known as Data Ganj Baksh, he was a Persian Sufi who migrated to Lahore in the 11th century and is widely regarded as one of the most important figures in the spread of Islam throughout the Subcontinent. His seminal work, Kashf ul-Mahjub, is a landmark in Sufi literature and the first Sufi treatise to be written in the Persian language.

We read some texts from this book in high school. I still remember some of the lessons. Very precious book.

Sorry for the long post and going off on so many tangents :oops:

I enjoyed. Thanks for taking the time to write.

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Re: General discussion

Postby camelkebab » 2010-09-25, 7:28

why do you guys think iranians abroad from iran integrate so quickly? iranians are known for this so there must be a reason

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Re: General discussion

Postby kalemiye » 2010-09-25, 14:43

camelkebab wrote:why do you guys think iranians abroad from iran integrate so quickly? iranians are known for this so there must be a reason


I think it is mainly because of two factors, one of them is that Iranians are very polite, they always treat people respectfully and in general they are very friendly and social, they want people to respect them and treat them in the same manner (and normally they make it), and also because Iranians are most of time somehow familiar with their host culture, they tend to emigrate to places they have a tie with: family, language...
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Re: General discussion

Postby camelkebab » 2010-09-26, 11:41

which aspects of language learning do you like the most, find most difficult and find easiest?

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Re: General discussion

Postby Meera » 2010-10-03, 20:49

camelkebab wrote:which aspects of language learning do you like the most, find most difficult and find easiest?


The aspects I like of Persian the most is how meloduios it is, I love hearing people speak in Persian and I think Persian people are very nice. I also do like the fact that it is easy to find people to practice with and they dont mind practicing with you. The most difficult part for me is getting the Persian words to sink in. Its very hard for me remembering Persian words. I find adjectives very difficult in Persian as the -e- is never marked and i can never tell what is being described. The prounication is not difficult and the verb stems are very easy. I also love the fact that Persian is very regular. :mrgreen:
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Re: General discussion

Postby alijsh » 2010-10-04, 14:20

Kordan's story causing a new term in English? Is this really true? :lol:

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Re: General discussion

Postby Meera » 2010-10-05, 18:40

alijsh wrote:Kordan's story causing a new term in English? Is this really true? :lol:


Wow! Thats awesome!

!چه خوب
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Re: General discussion

Postby Élan » 2010-10-06, 17:48

alijsh wrote:Kordan's story causing a new term in English? Is this really true? :lol:


Haha, I'm going to start using it. :lol:


To answer camelkebab's question about Persian learning...
Personally, I feel like listening to the language is the most enjoyable part. I love listening to music and watching movies because it sounds so lovely. I think spelling and pronunciation are easy. Of course there are some exceptions, but compared to English spelling and pronunciation, Persian seems much better.

One of the most difficult parts for me is formal versus colloquial. I'll be able to write a grammatically perfect sentence, but then my partner will say "that's perfect, but we wouldn't say that!" It makes me want to stick to writing emails instead of speaking. :P I also find speaking Persian a bit difficult because I feel like I can't quite replicate the natural "rhythm" it seems to have.

The other thing I find difficult are verb conjugations and endings! The only other languages I've dabbled in don't have tenses like this, so I've been lucky. :P

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Re: General discussion

Postby camelkebab » 2010-10-06, 19:21

Élan wrote: "that's perfect, but we wouldn't say that!" It makes me want to stick to writing emails instead of speaking. :P


haha
just a quick reply before i go to sleep, learning persian is like learning many languages in one
1. formal
2. colloquial
3. poetic
4. kooche baazaari (they call it something like this)

i think we can never master all of this, as long as they understand i am happy :)

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Re: General discussion

Postby Meera » 2010-10-08, 17:41

camelkebab wrote:

just a quick reply before i go to sleep, learning persian is like learning many languages in one
1. formal
2. colloquial
3. poetic
4. kooche baazaari (they call it something like this)




This is exactly why I don't think I will ever be able to be fluent in Persian :cry: :cry: It makes me soo sad.
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Re: General discussion

Postby alijsh » 2010-10-09, 3:16

Meera wrote:
camelkebab wrote:

just a quick reply before i go to sleep, learning persian is like learning many languages in one
1. formal
2. colloquial
3. poetic
4. kooche baazaari (they call it something like this)




This is exactly why I don't think I will ever be able to be fluent in Persian :cry: :cry: It makes me soo sad.

Although the degree differs but what Camelkebab said applies to virtually every language. For instance, I know formal English well yet I don't understand colloquial English much, let alone the slang (street English). Ditto for French, Spanish, … It is not a peculiarity of Persian.

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Re: General discussion

Postby Meera » 2010-10-09, 4:36

alijsh wrote:
Meera wrote:
camelkebab wrote:

just a quick reply before i go to sleep, learning persian is like learning many languages in one
1. formal
2. colloquial
3. poetic
4. kooche baazaari (they call it something like this)




This is exactly why I don't think I will ever be able to be fluent in Persian :cry: :cry: It makes me soo sad.

Although the degree differs but what Camelkebab said applies to virtually every language. For instance, I know formal English well yet I don't understand colloquial English much, let alone the slang (street English). Ditto for French, Spanish, … It is not a peculiarity of Persian.


:D That makes me feel a little better :D
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Re: General discussion

Postby entrentity » 2010-12-04, 18:37

سلام
Having put Turkish on hold, I started learning Persian about two months ago. I was expecting to find some vocabulary similarities via Arabic, which I did, but I was also surprised to find grammatical similarities. There are suffixes to mark possession in both languages (kitabım/ketâbam, for example) and suffixes that fulfil the function of the verb 'to be'. Both languages have lots of compound verbs and the word order seems to be very similar too. Is there a reason for this? These grammatical features don't come from Arabic, do they?

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Re: General discussion

Postby eskandar » 2010-12-04, 22:31

No, most of the grammatical similarities do not come from Arabic, although Arabic shares some of them (ie. possessive suffixes: Arabic -ī corresponds to Turkish -(I)m and Persian -am, as in kitâbī 'my book').

There are many grammatical similarities like the ones you mentioned (and others) shared not only between Persian, Arabic, and Turkish, but often other neighboring languages as well (Armenian, Hindi/Urdu, etc.) Some degree of this must be due to mere coincidence, which must be considered as a likely factor in any such similarities. At the same time, these languages exerted a considerable amount of mutual influence over one another. I'm inclined to think that the possessive suffixes are partially coincidental in some of these languages like Arabic (because it's a common Semitic, and often even Afro-Asiatic, feature) and Turkish (because it's also a common Turkic feature even found in Chuvash, etc.), but it may be a case of influence in other languages such as Armenian, which expresses possession differently (ie. im X 'my X') but also has a possessive suffix which may have developed under Persian/Turkish influence (ie. X-@s 'my X').

The interesting thing about the compound verbs is that, at least in Persian, they did not come from Arabic but were still influenced by it. Persian had compound verbs long before any contact with Arabic, but simple verbs were more productive and therefore generally more frequent. However, under Arab rule Persian began to acquire a massive amount of Arabic loans. Since their respective grammars are so different, Arabic verbs were borrowed in the verbal-noun form and then coupled with Persian verbs to form Perso-Arabic compound verbs. For example, Arabic اعتراض 'resistance, opposition' + Persian کردن 'to do, to make' = new Persian اعتراض کردن 'to make resistance' = 'to protest' (cf. similarly-formed Turkish itiraz etmek, Urdu اعتراض کرنا, which developed under Persian influence). This came to be the dominant model for creating verbs in Persian, even replacing native simple verbs with compounds (ie. simple verb زنگیدن 'to ring, to call' mostly replaced with زنگ زدن 'idem').

All of that rambling is to say that some of it is coincidence, some of it influence, and the influence is not always unidirectional. Arabic exerted great influence over Persian and Turkish, but Persian and Turkish also influenced Arabic as well as one another.
Please correct my mistakes in any language.

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Re: General discussion

Postby kalemiye » 2010-12-06, 12:43

entrentity wrote:سلام
Having put Turkish on hold, I started learning Persian about two months ago. I was expecting to find some vocabulary similarities via Arabic, which I did, but I was also surprised to find grammatical similarities. There are suffixes to mark possession in both languages (kitabım/ketâbam, for example) and suffixes that fulfil the function of the verb 'to be'. Both languages have lots of compound verbs and the word order seems to be very similar too. Is there a reason for this? These grammatical features don't come from Arabic, do they?


Like you, I was learning Turkish when I started learning Persian, and I observed many similarities like the ones you have pointed out in your post. Nevertheless, the deeper you study both languages, the deeper the differences are. I would never say Persian resembles to Turkish or viceversa, while it is obvious that there has been a centuries long mutual influence.

In fact, as a native speaker of Spanish, I found the language to be more similar to my own that I had expected. I always perceived the Persian suffix markers to be similar to those of Spanish. For instance in Persian-m (as in Spanish "mi" or "mío") denotes first person, -t (as in Sp. "tu" or "tuyo") denotes third person, -sh (similar to "su" or "suyo" in Spanish) and so forth. For "nuestro" (-mân) and "vuestro" (-tân) the difference is obvious, yet still containing suffixes that would lead me to think of a first and second person anyways.

Some features of Persian verbs remind me vaguely of Latin verbs, for instance the "-d" ending of 3rd person singular happens to be like latin "-t", while the "-nd" ending of 3rd person plural is just like "-nt" ending of Latin verbs (which is obviously the origin of Spanish "-n" ending of 3rd person plural verbs). There is one particularly close similarity, which is Persian Present Tense 3rd Person singular "ast" ("he/she is") and Latin"est" (Spanish "es").

Also, Latin verbs used to be formed from a different root to express present or past, just like Persian does. And as far as for word order is concerned, I find it very very similar to Latin word order too, which was SOV.
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Re: General discussion

Postby entrentity » 2010-12-10, 18:09

Thanks for your replies. I find it interesting. There is another possibility beyond coincidence and influence, and that is the clustering phenomenon, which Greenberg called 'harmony' but which is understood today as the setting of universal parameters. For example, one parameter is supposed to specify whether the language is 'head-first' or 'head-last'. Turkish is a textbook case of head-last, since its verbs go at the end, adjectives precede the nouns they modify and it has postpositions (these are the features that 'cluster'), but Persian is mostly head-first, since adjectives go after nouns and it has prepositions, even though the verb is at the end.

Nevertheless, since both languages usually use suffixes rather than prefixes, they are, morphologically speaking, head-first. This makes more sense for Persian than for Turkish, since it's easier to see the parallel between "dooste man" and "doostam", as opposed to "arkadaşım" and "benim arkadaş" (I'm hoping I've got this right). The long and short of it, however, is that this probably isn't relevant to my original question after all.

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Re: General discussion

Postby Meera » 2011-01-18, 0:37

This is random but Im trying Persian again. 8-)
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Re: General discussion

Postby Shad » 2011-01-18, 22:43

Meera wrote:This is random but Im trying Persian again. 8-)


Me too! I missed it!
Could we start a "the person below me"? I think it's a useful game for beginners/intermediat-ers.
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