From not being able to read a single letter of Farsi (I used to joke with my parents that it all looked like squiggles) to being able to read very simple sentences, I feel like I have really come a far way in less than a semester. While I can't read Farsi with anywhere near the fluency I can in English, I feel like a kindergartener again, squinting over letters and piecing together sentences. I am no longer the preschooler who could only see shapes and not recognize letters at all. I have learned, at this point, to read words and sentences, and even a paragraph, although that takes a much longer amount of time. I am able to read the sentences my language partner writes, although slowly.
It is really difficult for me to quantify the number of words that I know. Growing up hearing Farsi but not actually understanding it, I learned many words by osmosis or learned to recognize the sounds of words, without knowing their meanings. Now I am going back and formally learning many of the words that are familiar to me from childhood. If I had to guess, I would say that I know around 200 words in Farsi, not including the cognates from English or French.
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