Roman Abdul Satar's Posts (22)
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The movie starts with a beautiful countryside, the shot is very wide after several seconds you notice a car driving through a winding road. I found this scene very funny and interesting the people inside the car were talking about their destination which is not revealed to the viewers. They are describing to the the village and arguing how to get there. As a viewer you get the feeling that these people are city people and they are fascinated by the beauty of this countryside. In the middle of the road they find the boy who was waiting for them to get show them the place they are staying at. This movie is very long and simple, it is not the kind of movie where actions happens fast and plot line movies very quickly. Wind will carry us is very slow going and simple but at the same time has many details. We don't find what the visitors are doing and what is the purpose of their trip. Slowly we learn that they came to document a death ritual of an old woman. They find the deathly ill woman has not died yet and so they settle in and wait. This movie is focused on one man who struggles in the understanding of the ways to live a life. In this movie you see the relationship between villagers and how each one of them are dependent on each other and the traveler is fascinated by how the villager take care of each other. This visit changes the main guy and he wants to live the life. At the end of the movie the old woman dies and the reporter and other villages were surprised by her death and the funeral was not what we were expecting them. This movie is basically about city people getting to know the villagers, their way of living and how the friendship is build up between the villagers and the city travelers.
i really liked this movie and will defiantly recommended "the Wins will carry us". Even though this movie is very long and slow moving but each detailed is captured and it is very beautiful.
In the MLC 105, I did not just learn and understand about the culture of the language that I was learning but also the two other languages that other students were studying. This was very fun and enjoyable of sharing different elements of cultures that each of us learned. The reading that we were assigned also made me think how much the world talks and discusses about the different subjects and issues of the various cultures.
At the end of this course, I am able to look at the different cultures, explore the unique tradition, national clothe or even their food and think how these factors shape the culture as a whole.
This course also helped me to see that I am able to do self direct studying and I can follow the daily practices, learning about new culture and get better in writing and reading Farsi. I am able to plan the different tasks and actually to go trough with them and finish them. I have had a great experience and learned many different ways of understanding the culture and learning its language.
The mosque named as Blue Mosque because blue tiles were used to cover the building, most of the these tiles have been deteched by earthquakes.
The words Chahar Shanber mean Wednesday and Suri means red. On the eve of last Wednesday bonfires are lit in public places which represents a hope toward enightenment and happiness throughout the coming year. Traditionally, it is believed that the spirits of the ancestors are visiting the living on the last day of the year. Many children run through the streets wrapped in shrouds banging on pots and pans with spoons, which is known as Gashog-Zani to beat out the last unlucky Wednesday of the year, while knocking on the door and asking for treats. It is very similar to American Halloween.
In this celebration there are gathering, with prayers, feasts and communal consumption of ritually blessed food.
Spring housecleaning and the dancing and welcoming souls over the bonfire is still carried out by today's Iranians. In Islamic tradition Wednesday represents a bad omen day with unpleasant consequences Therefore, the festival is celebrated on Tuesday night to make sure all bad spirits are chased away and Wednesday will pass happily.
Kiarostami was born in, the capital of Iran, Tehran. He stated his career by creating advertisements for Iranian television.His first production was a short film The Bread and Alley about school boys confronting an angry dog. After that many other films followed such as The Experience, The Traveler, Report and many more. Abbas Kiarostami has unique style , unlike many other directors who create extravagant scenes in the large scale production his movies are very simple but at the same time they are very complex too, and often they are mix of fiction and documentary elements. His explanation for this is that "We can never get close to the truth except through lying".
As a director he has received a worldwide acclaim for his work and has won at least seventy awards during his career. The Ben Gibson, the director of the London Film School described Abbas Kiarostami by saying this "Very few people have the creative and intellectual clarity to invent cinema from its most basic elements, from the ground up". I really enjoyed Wind will carry us and will exploring and watching his other works.
Iran has a very similar culture with Afghanistan and I always was interested in learning about the government of Iran. Therefore I learned this from the articles I read about Iran's political life.
Iran has a been going trough many changes in its government. In last twenty years of the government it went from being a "nominal constitutional monarchy" to a democratic theocracy. There is a president who is elected for a four year term and majles (unicameral legislature) of 270 members elected directly by the people. Suffrage is universal, and the voting age is sixteen. It is the president who selects other positions, the Council of Ministers and Expediency Council, the president is the head of the Council of National Security.
There is a supreme jurisprudent selected by an independent Assembly of Experts—a council of religious judges. Alongside the chief jurisprudent is a twelve-member Council of Guardians, six selected by the chief jurisprudent, and six by the Supreme Judicial Council ratified by the majles. The Council of Guardians rules on the Islamic suitability of both elected officials and the laws they pass.
The judiciary consists of a Supreme Judge and a Supreme Judicial Council. I found very strange that at this modern time Iran still discriminates people by their religion, since there is a law that all members must be Shi'a Muslim jurisprudents. Islamic Shari'a law is used as the main law in the court's decisions. Freedom of the press and assembly are constitutionally guaranteed so long as such activities do not contradict Islamic law.
There are several governmental units: the ostan (province), sharestan (county) and dehestan (township) .
Ta'arof , literally "meeting together", is a big part of Iranian culture and in this event you can see how they show great respect and honor toward their guests . When invited as a guest a small present is appreciated, but as many Iranians are they are often receive the gift with a show of embarrassment. When Iranians give a gift it will usually not be unwrapped in front of the giver. It is always expected that a person returning from a trip will bring presents for family and friends. Do not give overly lavish gift, mostly something from your home are generally appreciated.
Do know that most of the meals are served on the floor, do not sit until you were told where to and do not use you left hand. As drinks most common will be water and alcohol beverages are illegal under most circumstances.
In Iranian culture they value and respect their guests greatly, this shows that their culture is for friendliness and peacefulness among different people.
In Persian there is not a well-defined rule for grammar.
In simple past tense almost all verbs are regular. For example the word to go رفتن (raftan) and to go the simple past tense we just need to drop the letter n, we will have رفت (raft). So in all verbs ending is N, by just deleting that letter we get simple past tense verb.
What I knew before this course
1. Unlike western languages, Persian is written and read from right to left.
2. Persian consists of 32 letters. Some of the letters have small and big form and others have only one form.
3. There non letter characters that are used to make up vowels.
The next step was to be able to recognize the letter from alphabet that I knew.The first exercise that I needed to do before starting reading was to understand how each letter gets combined with the next one. After that I was able to recognize those letter in a word and by combining the sounds of each letter I was able to make up the word. Then to become really good at it I was writing words myself combining them and creating a word.
Having been able to read slowly, Sofia started the reading exercises which were reading children stories. At the beginning it was very hard, not knowing some Persian words made even more harder to make up that word. The important factor for improving my reading was to read over and over again, so I will be able to understand why that words spelled like that, understand the meaning of the story and become faster in my reading.
By following these strategies I have read four stories and improved my reading speed and it made reading itself much more easier and less frustrating.
The Subjective Pronouns:
Singular:
I = من pronounces as man
You= تو pronounces as to (torture)
He and She= او pronounces as u (moon) By saying oo you will not distinguish if it's a woman or a man.
It=آن pronounces as an
Plural:
We= ما pronounces as ma
You=شما pronounces as shoma
They=آنها pronounces as a:nha
After learning each pronoun I was then instructed to use them in a sentence.
After reading a story on مورچه (ant) that wants to eat some عسل (honey) but is to up high and he is not able to reach it, we started reading second story about two کبوترهای doves who are neighbours.
Each story that I have read so far starts the same way as in English stories (i.e. Once there was). The story starts when one dove, Arza says that she will join the other one to go to journey. But the other dove male Namabr says no because he need to go stright to work. As the story progresses you can see how the feminine dove is proud and wants to be equale with male kabootar.
Besides reading the story Sofia also told me to rewrite them and circle words that I don't understand.
People in Middle East, Central Asia and other parts of the world gear up to celebrate Nowruz, which means New Day, as the year of 1388 comes to end in the Iranian calendar. Nowruz is on March 21 this year like it has been for about three millenniums. Nowruz indicates the first day of spring and the beginning of the year.
The modern western calender is dated from the time of Christ, which is about 2010 years, however the modern Iranian calendar is dated 1389 year from the time of Mohammad. Years are counted since the Hijrah, which is when Prophet Muhammad migrated from Mecca to Madina.
Modern Iranians celebrate the New Year for 13 days. It is expected for all to bath and clean themselves before Nowruz. New clothes are worn to emphasize freshness. The houses get cleaned, since Nowruz is "a feast of hope and renewal.
Families wait at home for the New Year to be announced. Once it is announced younger members of the family will visit the older members to pay respect and wish the a happy New Year. Relatives kiss and hug and presents are exchanged. Candies are offered to symbolically sweeten their lives for the rest of the year. New Year festivities continue until the 13th day. The 13th day is mostly spent outdoors. People leave their homes to go to the parks for festive picnics.
This celebration reveals many aspects about Persian people. Nowrus is a very old tradition and it still is celebrated by many people t shows that they have been following their ancestors. This event tells that Persian people value their religion and family the most.
The grammar part was to find nouns and verbs in this exercise, by circling the words. After reading the story and understanding the meaning of each word was much easier to find the verb and the noun in each sentence. The next step for me is to write down all those verbs and nouns, translate and use them in a sentence.
Slowly, slowly I am able to read the story without any help but there are still some moments where I can not combine the letter to make up a word that means something, I guess more practice and hopefully I will be able to speed up my reading.
The first time that I met with Sofia, we discussed my goals and my knowledge of the language. I wanted to practice my reading and writing skills, which we focused on. Sofia asked me to write a number of words that uses each letter in the beginning, middle, and the end of the words. The purpose for this exercise was for me to learn how to combine the letters and make a word. I continued using every letter of the alphabet by writing it in the end, middle and the beginning of the word. The most difficult part of this exercise for me was to find the words that have those letter in the middle or the end. When I was not able to come up with the word that uses certain letter, as Sofia recommended, I went on to the web and trying to read words and see if they have the letter that I need. At the end of this exercise I have written many words and couple of them were new for me. This was my first exercise and by doing this some of the staff that I have learned before was coming back to me, my eye was getting used to the alphabet and it was easier to recognize the letters.
