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?
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