Watching the video again, I feel like I did a little better than I initially thought, but that's not saying much. I noticed several words that I butchered pretty badly, so I'm sure there were many more I didn't notice. I think I attribute that mostly to nerves, since I feel like if I focus enough I can say most things more or less correctly (minus a few specific sounds that I know I can't usually make well). I'm sure I have a terrible accent, but in the video there are definitely some words that I just flat out say wrong, as opposed to just with an accent. The main problem that I noticed both during the conversation and after was with grammar and specifically with syntax. I think this comes mostly from the fact that I would start to say something and then realize mid sentence that there was something else I wanted to add so I would have to thrown it in at the wrong place. If I have time to think through a whole sentence I'm pretty comfortable figuring out how it should be said, but when talking to someone you usually think on the fly so you don't necessarily know everything you are going to say before you start talking. I think this is one of the reasons my monologue is so slow and disjointed. I had noticed how many mistakes I had been making in the conversation so I tried to slow down and be more careful. I think it worked for the most part (along with the fact that it was rehearsed), but it made my delivery really awkward. This was made worse by the fact that there wasn't a clear progression to some of what I said. There were a few things I had wanted to say but forgot and then said later when I remembered, so there are some sentences that are out of place and don't seem to fit into any sort of logical train of thought. I tried to work in a couple less common tenses (like past imperfect) and I think I used them correctly for the most part, but I also wouldn't necessarily know if I didn't. Overall, I think I could have done a little better but I'm not surprised that I'm not at the level where I can really carry out a full conversation effectively yet.
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Here's Obama's Noruz message from a while ago along with my attempt to translate it. I wrote down the many, many words I had to look up and circled the ones I couldn't figure out. I feel like the first 1/3 or so of it I could get for the most part, but once I got past that it seemed like I had to look up almost every word unfortunately. This made it a little disappointing, but I'm still pretty happy that in the end I was able to more or less figure most of it out. It's good to know that given a text and the resources I have readily available I can pretty much figure out what something means, considering this is a relatively high level of the language compared with most of what I have dealt with.
Posted by Brian Mahoney on April 24, 2009 at 12:57pm
Recently I have been working a lot on conditional clauses and sentences. I feel like I have learned most of the tenses and types of things I would like to be able to say, but I still misuse them a lot. I have also been practicing using a lot of common expressions and interjections (like "sure", somewhat, the rest of, finally, etc.). I had tried to learn some of these types of things before but they're often hard to find in a dictionary or to learn from a book, so most of them I have come across during class meetings and written down. Since I was just writing them down as I came across them I hadn't really learned them, I could just recognize them and sometimes infer their meaning. I finally got organized and compiled them into one list, which has made learning them a lot easier and more efficient.Overall, I think I have made more progress than I expected to this semester. When I first started out it seemed like things were sort of too overwhelming to be able to really gain much understanding of the language. At some point, though, I feel like I crossed a threshold where I am now much more comfortable with the language. I feel confident enough with the language to try to sort of improvise ways to say things to get my point across. I can still really only speak correctly at a very basic level, but it seems like when I try to say things that I don't actually know how to say what I end up saying is usually wrong in a lot of ways, but usually understandable. I've never been very good at studying lists of things and memorization, so my vocabulary is still pretty terrible. A lot of the vocab that I wanted to learn I'm still not as familiar with as I would like to be, which is disappointing since I picked the things I wanted to know how to say. I've also realized that there are a lot of basic expressions that are usually the first thing someone learns when learning a language (like how to ask someone to repeat themselves, or talk slower, or what a word means...) that I only sort of know. I had skipped them because I thought it would be more useful to learn enough to be able to actually understand what they mean instead of just memorizing, but I never went back later on to learn them. Having realized this, that's one of the things I want to do now, especially considering how important they are in carrying out an actual conversation. In the end, I'm fairly pleased with the progress I've made. One of my main goals was to reach the point where I am familiar enough with sentence structure and inflection and such to be able to pick apart sentences that I don't understand. I think I've made a lot of progress in this area, which will make it a lot easier to continue to learn the language through reading, which will be the easiest type of medium to have access to in the future.
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Here are some of the bands I came across for my project (the ones I thought were decent, at least):O-Hum: http://www.myspace.com/ohumThey're the best rock band I found. They mostly use Hafez's poems for lyrics which is probably why they were the first ones allowed to perform a concert abroad. You also can actually buy their CDs.Salome: http://www.myspace.com/salomerapA female rapper. I don't really like rap but I think she's really good. She speaks really clearly too so I can actually understand some of it.Hichkas: http://www.myspace.com/hichkas021Another rapper. I think he might be the most popular one in Iran as far as I can tell.Khashayar: Khashayar-Doostam_(www.Bia2.com).mp3Yas: http://www.myspace.com/yaspersian2
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A friend of my dad's and his wife who both grew up in Iran came over my house over spring break to talk to my about Iran and practice my Farsi. I wrote a thank you letter to them for visiting and the tea and map they gave me in Farsi so I figured I might as well post it.
I've been getting much better at listening comprehension over the past few weeks. I still struggle a lot with it, but I am much more able to follow conversations and things I hear. I think this is going to continue to be an area of focus for a while. I've made more progress than I expected to so I am encouraged to keep working on it more since it is so important. In addition to my cultural project, I have plans to complete at least two more artifacts in the next few weeks. I am currently writing a thank you letter in Farsi to a couple who were born and raised in Iran who came to my house over spring break to talk to me about Iran. Once I finish it I'm going to have Mona look it over then I'll post a copy of it and send it. I also printed out a transcript of Pres. Obama's Noruz message to Iran that I'm going to translate. I've heard the speech in English so I know generally what he said, but I'm going to try to translate it without listening to or reading the English version again.
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My main goal for the past week was to start getting used to using the subjunctive. I've started to get a handle on it to some extent, but I'm still having a hard time. There are certain situations when I know to use it and I think how to use it correctly, but I'm still not very confident on when and when not to use it. I found a list of common verbs that it is used with yesterday that I'm going to look over more closely to get it down better. I think I understand it well enough to guess when to use it, and at least people can understand what is meant when I don't use it or use it incorrectly. I haven't made much progress in listening comprehension, but that's not surprising. It still takes me too long to translate/understand something to be able to follow anything longer than a sentence or two. I'm going to keep focusing on this area because I realize that it is going to continue to be my weak point. I've learned a lot of prepositions for time, but I'm not always sure how to use them properly.This week:- memorize list of verbs and phrases that involve the subjunctive- learn vocab for emotions, adjectives describing people's personality- work on using prepositions correctly- learn cardinal and relative directions- keep working on listening comprehension
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Posted by Brian Mahoney on February 24, 2009 at 2:34pm
This past week I feel like I made a lot of progress in understanding the way the Persian language works. I've started to get a much better handle on how to say more complicated sentences with multiple verbs and phrases. There are some similarities to Spanish (like the use of que vs. keh, which conveniently both sound and are used almost the same) that have helped a lot. This has helped a lot as I now feel that I am much more able to explain things that I would want to say in normal conversation. It has been hard to find much information about a lot of this in the resources I have been using, though there is some. Because of this, I have been having to do a lot of experimentation and trying to determine the way certain types of sentences are constructed from things that I read. I've found that I often make mistakes, but that I am at least able to say things in a way that would be understood even though it is wrong.One thing I've noticed is that a lot of the things I try to say should be said in the subjunctive mood instead of the way I would usually say them. I remember learning the subjunctive in Spanish, but I don't remember how it is really used. I think it is similar to Farsi, so I'm planning to review it's use in Spanish hoping that it will help me learn it's proper usage in Farsi. Overall I think I made a lot of progress in what I'm able to say, even though a lot of it is not exactly the correct way to say it. Having made significant progress in what I'm able to say, I want to work on listening comprehension a lot more. It still takes me too long to think sentence structure too to be able to follow much when listening, so I need to continue to focus on this.This week's goals:1. Try to learn when the subjunctive should be used- review Spanish subjunctive to hopefully remember when it is used and try to relate it to Farsi- try to identify it's use in things that I read to determine in what circumstances it should be used- practice using it in contexts where I know it should be used2. Learn vocab relating to government and politics- I've learned some from reading news, but I usually look it up but don't necessarily remember it- read news articles and try to pick out vocabulary for government positions, offices, titles, etc.- make a list of vocab encountered and study it3. Work on prepositions relating timing/order of events (i.e. during, then, after, sometimes, etc.)- practice using them to relate events to become more familiar and comfortable with their usage- describe events that happen during the day and future plans- try to incorporate them into the artifact I am working on writing a description of my family and life4. Improve listening comprehension- use Rosetta Stone more at the higher levels to reduce the time delay between hearing something and figuring out what it means- try to find a relatively short interview to listen to extensively; this has been somewhat tedious and frustrating, so I have usually just been listening and picking up on as much as possible but it would be more productive to pause and repeat each sentence to try to understand as much as I can
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Posted by Brian Mahoney on February 24, 2009 at 12:28pm
Problems for Review:The fact that English uses 3 words to express "I have seen" indicates that it is an analytic language. The only inflection used is the -n added to see. Greek seems to repeat the root of the verb to indicate the perfect tense and use a suffix to indicate the subject in both dedorka and bebeka. Japanese doesn't seem to differentiate between the simple past tense and the present perfect, with mimashita meaning both have seen and saw (like in question #4). There also seems to be no indication of the subject, like in English, so it is not as synthetic as Greek is.Think about the languages you know and the language you are studying in MLC 110 and answer the following: (a) How would these languages, particularly the language your are studying, be described in linguistic terms? (b) What characteristics of the language you are studying are the most important for you to know about? (c) What characteristics of the language will you focus on to meet your own goals?(a) Morphologically, Persian is a very synthetic language. It is also a SOV language. I have read that in colloquial spoken Persian it is not uncommon for word order to be rearranged and sentences to take a SVO form. Adjectives follow nouns while it seems to use prepositions rather than adpositions, which is uncommon for OV languages. Spanish is much more similar to English, but it also has some similarities to Persian in noun-adjective relationships and the ways that phrases are linked together.(b) Syntax is probably the most important aspect of Persian for me to learn about. I've gotten much better at it, but I am still pretty slow at discerning the meaning of a spoken sentence even if I know all the words in it. Suffixes are also a really important part of the language. Words can often have multiple suffixes attached to them, which makes it important to understand both their meaning and to recognize their presence to identify the root word.(c) I am going to focus a lot on the way that compound sentences and verbs are structured and linked together. I've found that their are a lot of similarities to Spanish, and also English, in this regard but I still haven't learned most of the little nuances.
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Posted by Brian Mahoney on February 18, 2009 at 12:53pm
Last week I didn't end up getting to learn much new vocabulary. I have started to get a much better handle on the use of prepositions, but I still have a lot to learn. Instead I focused mostly on learning a few new tenses (present/past progressive, subjunctive, present perfect). Conjugation is surprisingly easy, but I still have a difficult time thinking of how to say most things quickly. While I have learned a considerable number of tenses, I am not yet very familiar with them. As a result I think this week I am going to focus primarily on practicing what I have already learned. Even some of the vocab that I've learned I know but still have to think about much to hard too recall in order for it to be very useful practically. One way that I am going to practice this is by writing up a summary of my family and my life as one of my artifacts. Talking about things that occurred at different times and in different situations should be a good way to practice getting used to using various tenses to describe events. Another thing I've started doing recently is practicing changing the sentence structure of things that I say in English throughout the day. I don't have the vocab or language skills to say many things yet, but I find that it is a good idea to think about the way the sentence would be structured in Farsi but using English words, since in most cases I still don't know enough to actually say what I want to. Even when I do know how to say something it takes me a little bit to think through the proper way to say it, so practicing syntax and grammar in this way should be a good way to get used to thinking in Farsi once I develop enough language skills to say more things in the actual language.
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Posted by Brian Mahoney on February 18, 2009 at 11:26am
The first artifact I'm going to make is a summary of my family, where I live, what I study, etc. I'll write it down and scan it and post it to my blog. I'll also record myself reading it using some program and post that also. The second artifact I'll create is a translation, as best as I am able, of a news article from the BBC, probably about the war in Afghanistan. I'm sure there will be a lot of things that I'll have to look up, so I'll indicate the things that I don't really know but was able to figure out in some way.
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Posted by Brian Mahoney on February 18, 2009 at 11:15am
Interpretive- understand and follow introductions and basic formalities- be able to follow the main point in conversations about familiar topics- be able to infer the general meaning of things that I don't understand when repeated slowly given the context- understand texts about familiar subjects; be able to look up and learn words and sentence structures I don't understandInterpersonal- be comfortable asking people to repeat themselves slowly or to explain themselves in a different way- be able to respond appropriately to questions or in common interactive situationsPresentational- be able to explain myself in most situations after thinking through what I am trying to say- develop a sufficient accent to be understood when speaking without significant difficulty by the listener- be able to write using a variety of tenses about a variety of situationsLong Term- gain enough understanding of the language to easily continue to improve vocabulary and understanding- develop familiarity with tenses to the point that I don't have to put substantial thought into conjugation in various situations- eventually be able to find a way of expressing most things in normal conversation, even if it requires finding a different way of saying something roughly equivalent to what I actually mean
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Posted by Brian Mahoney on February 8, 2009 at 11:00pm
This past week I didn't make as much progress as I had hoped. Part of this is due to the fact that I've been really sick, but I also am finding that it is harder than I expected to figure out some of the things that I want to learn. I have come across many sources that point out how rapidly evolving the Persian language is, and I think this makes it considerably more difficult to learn what is appropriate in different contexts. The substantial differences between the written and spoken languages, in addition to formality and uses in different settings has led me to find that many things I've learned are no longer used in most everyday language. These subtleties are often hard to pick up on from a website or a book, so Mona has been very helpful in this regard, as even things such as the conjugation of some verbs differs between written and spoken contemporary Persian.I have been able to achieve most of my goals with regards to learning new vocabulary. I've also made some progress in my listening skills, but it is slow in coming. I find that even when I recognize everything within a sentence, I often still have to pause to think it through to determine what the sentence actually means. The Insta-Class recordings have proven fairly helpful with this. To be able to gain much from intensive listening, I've found that it is much more effective if I have access to the transcript of whatever is being said. I try to listen without the transcript, but it helps a lot to be able to pause it and check the transcript for things that I miss or words that I'm not familiar with.For this week:Goals- continue to work on improving oral comprehension- learn vocabulary associated with government and politics- learn present progressive tense for verbs I'm familiar with- get used to using prepositions to describe the order and timing of eventsMethods- listen to Insta-Class recordings intensively to try to understand as much as I can without the transcript, stopping to catch up and to read what I don't recognize- read news from BBC Persian to look for common terms used in politics to learn; listen to news broadcasts to try to pick up on vocab learned- write a story in the past tense about going to a restaurant to practice prepositions and review food related vocabEvaluation- ability to recognize subject of news stories read- how often it's necessary to stop and re-listen or read the transcript of Insta-Class recordings- ability to describe things that happen around me in present progressive without prior planning
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Posted by Brian Mahoney on January 27, 2009 at 4:19pm
I spent most of this week reviewing things that I have already learned in Farsi, but haven't looked at in a while. The most important things that I have been freshening up on are personal pronouns, possessive suffixes and conjugation in simple past tense. I have done a lot of writing simple sentences to practice these as well as getting used to sentence structure and syntax. As far as vocabulary goes, I've focused on re-learning colors, numbers and words for people and family members. I'm already familiar with a lot of common sayings and greetings, so I have been focusing on listening to them and trying to improve my pronunciation of them.Most of what I've learned so far has been from Easypersian.com. I think they do a really good job of introducing the language to someone who has no experience with it. They do a relatively good job with grammar and language basics, but a lot of the information is not as useful as it would otherwise be because it is not that well organized once you get past the earliest lessons. I have also been using Byki a lot. I had already learned most of the vocabulary and sayings they have, but it has proven especially useful in working on speaking and pronunciation. I have ordered a textbook from Amazon, but it hasn't arrived yet so I'm looking forward to getting that, which I think will help in a lot of ways.
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Posted by Brian Mahoney on January 23, 2009 at 1:03pm
The only real experience I have had in learning a language formally is with Spanish. Starting in seventh grade I took four years of Spanish before stopping after my sophomore year of high school. I was exempted from the language requirement at UR so I haven't taken any language courses here before now. At the time I was grateful that I didn't have to take a language, but I've since changed my mind and am now looking forward to the opportunity to learn a new language. I wasn't excellent at Spanish, but in general I was fairly successful in learning the language. Despite how long it has been since I've taken any Spanish, I have found that I have retained substantially more of what I learned than I would have expected.In general, I would say that I fall mostly within the insightful category of the FIRE model. I am much more able to learn and retain knowledge when I can apply some sort of rational system that it fits into. I think this is one of the reasons that I was relatively successful in Spanish. There are so many similarities and connections between English and Spanish that I had an easy time making connections between the two and fitting what I learned into an analogous framework. In order for me to learn a new language, therefore, one of the most important things for me to do is to get a good understanding of its grammar. I am much less successful when it comes to memorization and strict recollection then in other areas. I find that I lose almost all motivation when dealing with something that has to be approached through memorization. Because of this, I think activities such as reading the language is the best way for me to learn. My vocabulary will grow faster through exposure to new words through some sort of medium than by simply memorizing lists of words. It will also be important for me to listen to the language a lot, as I have found that oral comprehension is the area of language learning that I typically struggle the most with.
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