Journal Entry 12
The goals for this week were to learn about geography in Persian (and the past tense, but I want to write about geography). The cardinal directions in Persian come from Arabic originally, but when I was talking with Arya, she noted that the words for east and west in Dari were inverted to what I know from Arabic (šarq for east and garb for west in Arabic and Farsi; inverted for Dari). I was surprised at this and she called her parents to verify this. They noted that a slang term for Arab is “šarqi” (i.e. “easterner” in Farsi/Arabic, but westerner in Dari), which aligns well, geographically speaking. Mahshad contradicted this. I am curious if this is a universal facet of Dari or merely a feature unique to Arya and her family.
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