September
Preface: Mahsa Amini protests
The first full month of SDLAP has passed, and I feel like I was making great progress until about halfway through the month. Last week, on the 16th of September, the Mahsa Amini protests started. Before this point, I was meeting with my language partner almost every morning (ranging 5-7 times a week). This past week, we were able to meet twice. I don't know how the frequency of my lessons will affect my learning for the rest of the semester. We were still able to talk because my language partner is finding ways to circumvent the internet blockage with a VPN; that being said, however, this only works at certain points in the day, so the normal time we were meeting had to change, and it conflicts with the classes I take.
Neither of us thinks it will last that long, maybe a few weeks. Protests not too dissimilar from this happened due to the increased gas prices in Iran (2019), and the internet blockage was only a week. I am a little apprehensive, though, because last time my dad (who is my language partner) was still able to use a VPN and avoid the blockage. This time it seems much more intense, but that is my opinion based on my past experience, not an article.
I do want to note, for anyone that reads this, that a lot of the negative media about Iran is unrightfully generalized to include Iranians -- not just the government. So, although this has been a setback, I do not wish to reinforce any negative stereotypes about the country, or at least about the people that live in it. I just think this is an important aspect to appreciate about modern-day culture/politics in Iran, that there is a definite split between administrative affairs and then the actual opinions/beliefs of 'everyday' Iranians.
PLO Lessons & Progress
In my last post, I had made it up to Elementary Lesson 23 (please see August post for an explanation of PLO). Before the protests, we were averaging about 3-4 lessons a week, as some days we would do a new lesson, and others we would either continue the previous day's lesson or practice conversational speaking (using the topics of the previous lesson for some structure. By September 16th, we were planning to start E31, but had to postpone the session for a few days due to the political situation. Later last week, we finished E31, but that is as far as I have reviewed, considering the circumstances.
Learning about articulatory phonetics in SDLC 105 is helping me contextualize/articulate some of the unique characteristics of Farsi. I am really excited to get more into points of articulation, as I think it might help with a few of the phones that trouble me. Nevertheless, I think my pronunciation in Farsi is one of my stronger sides, as I have grown up hearing the language.
I think my favorite lesson was E27, which was about the New Year. The lesson talked about Nowruz in Iran, the Spring Festival in China, and then the American New Year. It is a funny coincidence that I take Chinese at UR, so it was a sort of collision of worlds. I think I am getting a better grasp of the sentence structure, as the more lessons I learn/review, the more examples I have of different types of verbs.
For my concluding thoughts, I am just a little frustrated, as before the protests I finally felt like I was starting to return to the place I was at before the summer, only to have another setback. I hope everything cools down soon.
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