The Little Engine That Could...

[Conal R Smith]

Just a quick reflection on the past week or so with respect the biweekly meetings with Wadia. At first, I was overwhelmed with the whole Perso-Arabic alphabet we started to learn. But slowly, after sitting down and slowly understanding how to memorize the alphabet and its sound, my initial fear has subsided. Furthermore, the combination of letters and how to put words together like a puzzle is becoming more clear. Though, one difficulty I have noticed is that we, as English speakers, place a much greater emphasis on the recognition of the vowels within words. While learning, I've had to adapt my ears to the stresses that Persian places upon the consonants and focus primarily upon how the consonant is pronounced and its place with in the word. This is definitely a key to fully understand, with respect to audio comprehension, what a word really is.