Reflecting on my work in Persian
When I began Persian this semester, I was only familiar with the alphabet, which I had learned the semester earlier in Arabic. While I could pronounce these letters pretty well. I learned that Persians could not (joke). Their version, like that of Ottoman, was simplified and lacked the variety of T, S, and Z sounds found in Arabic.
Through repetition, I learned how to use and recognize ezafe, the “e” sound in Persian that connects two related words. For example, if I say my mother, I say mader-e men, مدرِ من. Although this sound is very noticeable when spoken it is not written and one just needs to know by context that it exists. Sometimes I read the whole sentence, then have to correct my reading once I understand that two words are related.
I also began to familiarize myself with Persian verb conjugation. There are two multiple stems for each verb, much like Latin. Persian has two stems, roughly corresponding to one past tense and one present tense. The great difficulty I have here, however, is that I must often memorize two stems that are often non clearly related in appearance. From these stems, I have learned the present tense, the past tense, the future tense, and the infinitive and imperative moods. I have picked these up by looking at the translations Habib has given for his sentences. For example, if he writes “I will do” I look at the verb of the sentence, notice how it differs from the other tenses I know, and understand that that verb is in future tense. Having seen several examples like this, can recognize different tenses. While I have a decent understanding of these tenses, I require a great degree of practice before I can employ verbs with confidence.
As we have been working mostly from vocab lists, sentences, and 4-6 sentence stories, the majority of our emphasis has been on reading, not writing or speaking. However, Habib has lately put emphasis on reading outload and answering questions. The vocab lists have been divided by theme. Examples are travel, time, women’s accessories, cooking, food, and tools, among several others. These have allowed me to thematically learn nouns and adjectives, which is useful due to the fact you can associate them with the other words in the set. Additionally, we have been working on sentences. These sentences have employed the vocabulary I had been given. As sentences are not simply nouns, I have been able to become accustomed to using other grammatical parts of speech such as conjunctions and verbs as well as personal and demonstrative pronouns. These sentences have also taught me the syntax that I know. The short stories have allowed me to better understand how pronouns work over the course of several sentences.
Generally speaking, I think Dari is a much simpler language than Turkish. Perhaps this is because of its grater proximity to English and Latin. Catching on to the grammar has been easy.
Reflecting on my work in Turkish
Working on Turkish this semester with Hazal has been a wonderful experience. It was my first time being able to take Turkish during the regular school year and for this reason will not feel behind once I begin my summer Turkish language studies. I believe I have progressed considerably. While only covering four chapters of our book, these chapters allowed us me to absorb hundreds of new words and several new grammatical concepts. Further, we also worked outside of the book, translating multiple articles, songs, and poems. Looking forward from here, if I continue my language studies in the same way, but in a more concentrated fashion over this summer, which I should be able to do without the pressure of additional classes, I believe I should be able to enter University of Chicago at the first rung of the advanced class. If this proves to be the case, I may be able to take Ottoman Turkish in the first year of my studies. With this head start on Ottoman I may be able to use the language for research purposes for my thesis.
Grammatically, I have learned “although”, “instead of, “by X-ing (I did Y),” “by X-ing [continuously] (I did Y),” “was [imperfect],” “my X-ing,” “X-ing,” “she said that you do X,” “should,” “must,” “for the sake of,” and “in order to.” Several of these have multiple ways of saying them, negatives, and their own particular subtleties. Much of this semester has thus been dedicated to verbal nouns and adjectives.
Additionally, I have worked on over 350 words about health, work, renting, and education, along with words from other sources and remedial material.
I feel pretty happy with my present state of development in relation to my goals. Recently, I had the opportunity to sit in for a class at UChicago for Turkish. There was a story that my friend who had arranged my sitting in told me was for homework. I was able to translate 95% of the words (the rest of which I looked up), an amount that seems greater than most of my normal passages in my course books this semester. When I reviewed it with Hazal, my translation was almost perfect and this was confirmed by the class itself. Not only was my translation accurate, but I was able to understand almost every word that was spoken. With this as a rough idea of what awaits me if I do not study, I go into this summer hoping to study as much as possible in order to speed up my language acquisition.
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It's great to hear that your Turkish has been steadily improving and that you can measure your progress through the class at UChicago. Studying this summer and keeping up with the self-study component will likely be made easier and more enjoyable knowing that the pay-off is pretty large in terms of class placement in the fall, which could accelerate the pace at which you can delve into the topics that interest you using your Turkish language skills. This was certainly the case for some of the research that I did when in Taiwan using Chinese.