Going through Narguess Farzad's "Teach Yourself Modern Persian" - my personal accountability thread

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Re: Going through Narguess Farzad's "Teach Yourself Modern Persian" - my personal accountability thread

Postby eskandar » 2017-08-12, 18:55

Talha wrote:Quick question: In Arabic the ideal is to write the و straight before the word following it so
الكتاب والقلم
rather than
الكتاب و القلم

Does the same apply in Persian?

No, there's typically a space after و in Persian, so کتاب و قلم and not کتاب وقلم . In older manuscripts, however, you may sometimes encounter the و written Arabic-style ie. without a space between it and the following word.

Ex 1.3 - ۲۳ is bist-o-se not bist-va-se. (NB: و is generally pronounced 'o' when it acts to connect things, like numbers for example). ۵۹۱ should be paansad navad-o-yek.
Ex 1.4 was too quiet for me to hear, sorry.

Ex 2.1 - all good

As for Bengali - you will find a great deal of other familiar words that have been borrowed from Persian into Bengali (or from Persian into Urdu and then from Urdu into Bengali). Here are some more.
Please correct my mistakes in any language.

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Re: Going through Narguess Farzad's "Teach Yourself Modern Persian" - my personal accountability thread

Postby Talha » 2017-08-13, 14:33

So what would you recommend for online Persian dictionaries?
Any guidance or elucidations for their usage? Like for Arabic: you need to know roots; some older dictionaries have their own idiosyncratic orders, etc.

In Arabic, it depends upon my need:
1. Reverso - for translation work; good for pasting whole combinations of pro forma wording
2. Almany - for detailed Arabic-Arabic explanations and minutiae
3. The online Hans Wehr and Lanes when the above two fail
4. Occasionally en.bab.la for usage examples

[To any new readers of thread: this is an amalgamation of scattered posts/content that Ustad eskandar has put in one place hence why the repeated background details in beginning]

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Re: Going through Narguess Farzad's "Teach Yourself Modern Persian" - my personal accountability thread

Postby Talha » 2017-08-13, 14:51

Also are Persian punctuation like in Arabic i.e. like English ones but the other way round e.g ؟

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Re: Going through Narguess Farzad's "Teach Yourself Modern Persian" - my personal accountability thread

Postby Talha » 2017-08-13, 15:27

Image

Right, some confusion here. Black is my attempt. I used the words from the same chapter or glossary. Blue are the official answers in the book that differ.

You can see sample pages how numbers and plurals are presented in the book above.

1. It says if an animate noun ends in ه then the plural ending should be گان

But look at the answer for "cat".

2. In the glossary two words are given for train. Difference?

3. Also the book says the plural ending for animate nouns is ان but look for "the young".

4. What are the differences in the two words for "wise"?

5. The book says you use a classifier between the number and noun (except for one and for units of time) the most common being تا but they are dropped in the official answers.

6. Difference between the two words for "bird".

I will record an audio once I'm confident on whats going on with the plurals above.

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Re: Going through Narguess Farzad's "Teach Yourself Modern Persian" - my personal accountability thread

Postby eskandar » 2017-08-13, 18:56

Talha wrote:So what would you recommend for online Persian dictionaries?

Hayyim - my preferred dictionary for Persian>English

Farsi123 - possibly the best out there online for English>Persian

واژه - pretty decent for both directions

When you are ready to use a Persian-Persian dictionary, واژه‌یاب is indispensable. It searches all the major monolingual Persian dictionaries at once. And given your academic interests, at some point Steingass which is a late 19th century dictionary of Indo-Persian might be useful for you.

Talha wrote:Also are Persian punctuation like in Arabic i.e. like English ones but the other way round e.g ؟

Yes, they're pretty much all the same, except Persian uses «French-style quotation marks» instead of "English-style marks".

Talha wrote:Right, some confusion here. ...

1. The گان plural suffix is archaic and only used with certain words in literary Persian. It's hardly used at all in spoken Persian. Furthermore when it is used, it's not always exclusive to animate nouns, so you have بچگان (kids) as a literary plural for بچه but also ستارگان (stars) as a literary plural for ستاره . The word گربگان exists but it's also very archaic so گربه‌ها would be more commonly used, even in writing.

2. AFAIK they're synonymous, but قطار is more used.

3. See #1. The ان plural ending is more literary whereas ها is generally used in spoken Persian. It seems like the book you're using isn't always consistent in teaching one variant of the language or the other. In this case both جوانان and جوان‌ها are acceptable variants.

4. No real difference. عاقل as you can tell comes from Arabic and دانا is originally Persian. عاقل is probably slightly more common but they're used interchangeably.

5. In contemporary written Persian the classifiers are often dropped. سه تا خواهر would be spoken, but not written. In literary Persian you would either write سه خواهر or سه نفر خواهر .

6. پرنده is a general word for 'bird' whereas مرغ means 'chicken'. In older texts you may find مرغ as a general bird word, though.
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Re: Going through Narguess Farzad's "Teach Yourself Modern Persian" - my personal accountability thread

Postby Talha » 2017-08-15, 9:04

Image

The official answers for Unit 02 ex.3.2. In the audio I give the singular with the plural. I use the two words for train.

http://vocaroo.com/i/s1gpzkWHSIPq
:?

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Re: Going through Narguess Farzad's "Teach Yourself Modern Persian" - my personal accountability thread

Postby Talha » 2017-08-15, 9:33

Image
https://www.speakpipe.com/voice-recorde ... etkh1igcll

Question:
1. Am I correct in hearing a shadda on the ك of متشكرم?
2. Also what is the common colloquial "good bye"? I understand that there is a register for respectful formal address and one for informal.

Side note: for some reason Vocaroo flash set-up no longer recognises my laptop microphone nor my headset :| . I liked Vocaroo's online voice recorder :( . Now I have to use SpeakPipe or I record to Windows Voice Recorder and upload to Vocaroo. Using the headset makes the recording clearer :whistle: . My headset is the Jabra UC Voice 550 MS. It was the recommendation of the thewirecutter.com. All very useful tools and services for language learning.

Side question: is there any way to embed the above audios so you don't need to open a new tab or window apart from uploading to Soundcloud?

This is the embed code <iframe frameborder="0" style="width: 420px; height: 130px;" src="https://www.speakpipe.com/voice-recorder/embed/msg/ipy2d2etkh1igcll"></iframe>
:hmm:

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Re: Going through Narguess Farzad's "Teach Yourself Modern Persian" - my personal accountability thread

Postby Talha » 2017-08-15, 9:58

The Unit 04 conversation introducing us to the verb "to be" and its idiosyncratic vagaries in the Persian language:
Image
Image
How "everyday" are the words and structure of this conversation (notwithstanding it is formulated for a beginner learner) or is it like those contrived college MSA dialogues that don't really exist in real life among natives? :roll:

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Re: Going through Narguess Farzad's "Teach Yourself Modern Persian" - my personal accountability thread

Postby Talha » 2017-08-15, 10:01

Image

So far, so good?

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Re: Going through Narguess Farzad's "Teach Yourself Modern Persian" - my personal accountability thread

Postby Talha » 2017-08-15, 10:41

Image

Question: Now is there a specific order you would recommend drilling these to memory?

You can see here what I do for Arabic personal pronouns to aid subsequent mapping of verb tables: viewtopic.php?f=25&t=51767
Last edited by Talha on 2017-08-15, 11:05, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Going through Narguess Farzad's "Teach Yourself Modern Persian" - my personal accountability thread

Postby Talha » 2017-08-15, 10:46

The rest of the chapter:
Image
Image
Image

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Re: Going through Narguess Farzad's "Teach Yourself Modern Persian" - my personal accountability thread

Postby Talha » 2017-08-15, 11:38

Image

Q: Am not clear how words underlined in red are supposed to be pronounced. Are we using diphthongs for the variants for "Iranian"? And it's not clear which letters are carrying a vowel for "cheerful"?

I think today was overload with posts. Not fair for your already very generous feedback. I will try to limit enquiries for a chapter to one post.

30 days until zero hour and 17 chapters left :doggy:

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Re: Going through Narguess Farzad's "Teach Yourself Modern Persian" - my personal accountability thread

Postby eskandar » 2017-08-16, 13:07

As work is picking up for me I won't be able to spend much time on here, but you should post as much as you want - hopefully someone else will be able to help you, and I'll get to your questions when I can. I can't go through the audio right now but in response to your other questions:

Talha wrote:1. Am I correct in hearing a shadda on the ك of متشكرم?
2. Also what is the common colloquial "good bye"? I understand that there is a register for respectful formal address and one for informal.

1. Yes. NB: The shadda is called تشدید tashdid in Persian.
2. There are two distinctions to be made in Persian: literary vs. colloquial (like MSA vs. colloquial/dialect in Arabic), and formal/respectful vs. informal/familiar. The word for "goodbye" only differs in colloquial, or in other words, using the colloquial form is not considered impolite. The literary خدا حافظ gets shortened to خدافظ khodaafez in colloquial.

Talha wrote:How "everyday" are the words and structure of this conversation (notwithstanding it is formulated for a beginner learner) or is it like those contrived college MSA dialogues that don't really exist in real life among natives? :roll:

For the most part it's actually very natural-sounding. The distinction between MSA and colloquial Arabic is much greater than the distinction between literary and colloquial Persian. The biggest difference in this dialogue has to do with the verb 'to be', incidentally the very verb being introduced here. For example:
مریم جان تنها هستی maryam jaan tanhaa hasti? would become مریم جان تنهایی maryam jaan tanhaa'i?
Don't worry too much about that yet. Maybe later the book will introduce the colloquial forms later. I would say ~90% of this dialogue would be the same if converted to colloquial Persian.

Talha wrote:Question: Now is there a specific order you would recommend drilling these to memory?

If it's just for your own purposes, I don't think it makes any difference, and you could learn them in the same order as you used in Arabic if you like. If you're planning to take Persian classes, the order the book shows is the order in which they're typically taught.

Talha wrote:Q: Am not clear how words underlined in red are supposed to be pronounced. Are we using diphthongs for the variants for "Iranian"? And it's not clear which letters are carrying a vowel for "cheerful"?

I am Iranian - man iraaniyam
he/she/it is Iranian - iraanist
you (pl) are Iranian - iraaniyid
they are Iranian - iraaniyand

I am cheerful - khoshruyam
you (sing) - khoshru'i [NB: it's written as khoshruyi but the first ya is silent. I've used an apostrophe to divide the vowels, since it's not a diphthong, but it's not a glottal stop either]
he/she/it - khoshrust
we - khoshru'im
you (pl) - khoshru'id
they - khoshruyand
Please correct my mistakes in any language.

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Re: Going through Narguess Farzad's "Teach Yourself Modern Persian" - my personal accountability thread

Postby Talha » 2017-08-17, 15:08

Here's my conjugation for the verb "to be" with the shortened forms in blue and the pronouns in green.
Image
Here is a 11 second audio of my saying them: https://www.speakpipe.com/voice-recorde ... ijp4yu2mi9
Ok?

The exercises I checked with the key. Just want help with translations not provided:
Image
This is an expensive rug.
That is not a very big room but it is clean.
They are inside the bus.
Those are not the singing daughters. (?)
Are you with Maryam's friend? (?)

So that's 05/20 done. 28 days until zero hour.

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Re: Going through Narguess Farzad's "Teach Yourself Modern Persian" - my personal accountability thread

Postby eskandar » 2017-08-17, 15:30

Corrections:

1. This rug is expensive.
2. That room is not very big but it is clean.
4. Those girls are not singers.
5. Are you friends with Maryam?
Please correct my mistakes in any language.

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Re: Going through Narguess Farzad's "Teach Yourself Modern Persian" - my personal accountability thread

Postby Talha » 2017-08-18, 16:29

1. Are these acceptable for written Persian?
Image

2. Is that a mistake in the red?
Image

3. Those contractions - they're for spoken use only, correct? Would it be correct to say that everyday spoken Persian has greater usage of the formal than Arabic. It would be seen as less odd than in everyday Arabic.

4. My goal at the end of reaching this work is to upload a YouTube video of myself giving a basic introduction of myself in Persian. It seems like a satisfying end for all this hard work and a way to boost my confidence.

I am developing greater empathy for all those I've tried to coach in beginner Arabic. Once you've learnt something and you can use it without thinking about it you forget what a struggle it was when it was all new: my house is big v. my big house.

It made me realise how important - even at an early stage - self-expression is for a learner. I think the teacher should drill basic of that lesson for it all to be consolidated in learner self-expression (within parametres to be guided by teacher).

If you can say "I am from..." then all the learner has to get from the teacher is how his city is said in the target language (unless obviously there are overwhelming specific grammatical/ phonological complications which requires saving for later - but still even at an early stage it's nice to know how to say basic things like that even if you don't know the full grammar behind it).

So in light of that here is some improvisation based upon what I've learnt so far:
سلام. من طلحا هستم. من دانشجوي جوان بريتاني هستم در دانشگا لندن. پدر و مادر من از هندوستان. برادر من نقاش است و خواهر من دكتر است. خانه راحت ما در لندن است
If you could correct and translate so I can check my intended meaning has been communicated.

Just to be clear:
"Our big city" is
شهر برزگ ما
but "Our city is big" is
شهرما برزگ است
Is that correct?

6. همسر is spouse. What would boyfriend/ girlfriend be?

7.I'm starting to get an overview of the language. I will need to repeat the process of learning the language by going from beginning to end a number of times, each with greater details. Visually I am starting to process quickly from written Persian to English for the basics I'm studying now. Still stutter with vocalising results from English to Persian.

I remember when learning Arabic in Damascus using a set of graded text books for prep schools associated with Al-Azhar ad-duroos an-naHwiyya. The first book went from the classical presentation of the grammar from division of words ending with what makes words genitive in the most basic form then subsequent books has exactly the same framework but with greater details. Arabic and Persian are both languages of seminaries Sunni and Shia in places were neither language is primary so I imagine there must be such didactic textbooks out there. Such textbooks though good to grasp the language of classical theology and jurisprudence tend not to be helpful for everyday interactions. I want to be able to do both.

Many thanks for the help.

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Re: Going through Narguess Farzad's "Teach Yourself Modern Persian" - my personal accountability thread

Postby Talha » 2017-08-18, 16:31

So that's 06/20 reached and 27 days until zero hour.

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Re: Narguess Farzad's Teach Yourself Modern Persian audio links?

Postby eskandar » 2017-08-18, 18:34

1. I don't think so. I haven't seen those in written Persian.

2. Yes, good catch!

3. No, these contractions are used in written Persian. They are pronounced slightly differently in spoken Persian. In both spoken and written Persian you can use either the longer possessive construction or the contraction, often to different effect, for example برادرم خوب است 'my brother is good' vs. برادر من خوب نیست 'my brother is not good' (using the longer form here places emphasis on 'my').

4.
سلام. من طلحا هستم. من دانشجوي دانشجوی جوان بريتاني بریتانیایی هستم در دانشگا دانشگاه لندن. پدر و مادر من از هندوستان هستند. برادر من نقاش است و خواهر من دكتر است. خانه‌ی** راحت ما در لندن است
Hi. I am Talha*. I'm a young British student at the University of London. My father and mother are from India. My brother is a painter and my sister is a doctor. Our comfortable home is in London.

*In Persian it should be spelled طلحه (like Arabic طلحة) but then it will be pronounced Talhe. If you want to make sure people pronounce it as 'talhaa' with a long 'a' at the end, then the way you've spelled it will accomplish that.

**This ezaafe can be either be written as خانه‌ی or خانهٔ (the former with an unconnected ya following the ha, the latter with a hamza above the ha).

5. Your distinction between "our big city" and "our city is big" is correct.

6. دوستپسر (boyfriend) vs. دوستدختر (girlfriend). They are calqued from English but are widely used in Persian.

7. I assume such textbooks exist but don't know of any specifically that I could recommend.
Please correct my mistakes in any language.

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Re: Narguess Farzad's Teach Yourself Modern Persian audio links?

Postby Talha » 2017-08-18, 19:02

Thanks Ustad for above.

May I ask why you have moved the posts for my "Going through Narguess Farzad's "Teach Yourself Modern Persian" - my personal accountability thread" under the heading "Narguess Farzad's Teach Yourself Modern Persian audio links?"?

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Re: Going through Narguess Farzad's "Teach Yourself Modern Persian" - my personal accountability thread

Postby eskandar » 2017-08-18, 22:43

Cheers. As for the thread title, it must have happened automatically when I merged the threads. I've corrected the error.
Please correct my mistakes in any language.


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