As Turkish goes, I have had a change of heart—not about Turkish, but the methods by which I should study it.
Upon my first meeting with Hazal, I was disappointed to learn that she was going to use the Istanbul Turkçe series. All my previous Turkish-language professors had used it, and I thought it was boring and a bit confusing. In the past, with those professors, I had done my best to rush through homework, seeing it as book-work or even busy-work—as if there were a certain amount of hours of homework they were supposed to assign to make the class warrant the title “intensive.” It is also worth noting that these classes met five times a week, four hours each day. It is perhaps the length and thoroughness of these past courses that made the homework seem less important, and thus dull. It also may have had to do with my low level of understanding of the language and a desire to familiarize myself with its bounds, to discover all aspects of the language, and being frustrated with the tediousness of the assignments from the book.
This class seems to have presented me with changed circumstances. Although we meet for more time that is necessary, the sum of the hours wee meet weekly is roughly one day of the five in which my former classes met. If I consider language learning 1/3 memorization, 1/3 emulation, and 1/3 creativity, then this book helps to compensate for that which I cannot do in class meetings, rote memorization and emulation. It is easy to be creative by one’s self, and this has been my focus this semester. I think I want to change this, to make a balance between these three elements of language learning. This book will help me with memorization and emulation.
One thing it does very well is to introduce topics. This past chapter was called “Yeni Bir Hayat,” a new life. In it two women were talking about aspects of life such as rent, heating, transportation—the fundamentals of living in a city. The vocabulary of the chapter even tought me how to say my pipes burst. “Borularımızın patlamış, maalesef. Ne yapacağız? Nereye veya kime arabiliriz?” “The pipes burst, unfortunately. What will we do? Who or where should we call? I even learned the word for plumber. That the vocabulary follows a theme makes it easier to memorize than those words that I hear or those that I read from a book, which are often varied and inconsistent in topic.
For this reason, I have begun to use Quizlet again for vocabulary. I entered all the words from the list into a set and have drilled myself while I am getting up in the morning, in the gaps of my day, and at night. To do this, I have removed distracting apps such as YouTube from my phone, telling myself that I, as a student, have no real use for information about current events or at least less use for current events than Turkish vocabulary.
Also, Hazal is going to be proctoring an evaluation exam for me this coming week for a grant to which I am applying.
In regard to Persian, I have been working on greetings, verbs, and simple sentences. The greetings are simple and easy to remember. Here is how I would greet someone:
Hello
Selâm سلام
Selâmسلام
Where have you been? (Not generally a question that is actually answered, just repeated back)
(Very informal) Kojâstî? کجاستی
(Informal) Kocâ hastî?/ Tû kocâ hastî? کجا هستی/ تو کجا هستی
(Formal) Shomâ kocâ hastîd? شما کجا هستی
How are you?
(informal) chetûrî?/ tû chetûrî? چطودی/ تو چطودی
(Formal) shomâ chetûr hastîd? شماچطودی
I am good, how are you?
(Informal) Xobam, chetûrî?/ Xob hastam, tû chetûrî?خوب هستم چطودی/خوبم تو چطودی
(Formal) Xob hastam, shomâ chetûr hastîd? خوب هستم شماچطودی
On a side note, many Afghans use the phrase “bė âmâne xodâ” به امان خدا. It means something like “godspeed,” a term English mostly reserves for astronauts, but Afghans use regularly. Perhaps this is what my history professor meant when she said Dari was a more courtly language than Farsi.
This was one of my goals, to be able to say hello and greet someone. I know other aspects of introductions as well. It is interesting that there are different registers of formality. However, they are easy to understand. The only problem I have is keeping the same register over time. As with Turkish, I tend for sloppily switch between formal and informal. Perhaps it is an Anglophone thing to do to make a formal/ informal sandwich, beginning and ending with formalities, but having a majority of the content in a less formal register.
Habib has been giving me short lists of words to memorize, between 10 and 20 a session. He has been in charge of which words those should be, but I think it may be time to take a more thematic approach to vocabulary, such as I am doing with Hazal. I think at our next session I will ask him about words for relationships.
Generally speaking, I have found Persian grammar to come easily. The syntax is very predictable for simple sentences. Even in terms of orthography, the language is predictable (unlike Arabic or Ottoman) in that the sounds equate almost exactly to the spelling. If I hear the word I can write it. The problem is saying the word which I have only seen written. My learner’s dictionary helps because it uses transliterations to show the short vowels, which are never written in texts.
I think the best way to move forward in my Persian acquisition is to put even more emphasis on vocabulary, one that follows themes, and begin to speak to Habib in Persian, as well as writing and reading sample sentences.
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