Persian uses a SOV or SPOV sentence structure:Mona had use write out some sentences to improve our understanding of this concept:I created a story with my momman dostam afareedam bad mahdar manShe is paying me for the tableoo man pool dosteh midan beeree meezwe want apples and orangesmaw seeb vov por-te-ghaul mi kha-im
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Week 5 Review – This past week I accomplished all of my goals. I learned basic clothes, present tense, possessives, and basic sentence structure. I also spent more time reviewing the alphabet and listening to BBC. We continued to plan the trip to Iran in May, and we already have found an American professor willing to take us there, and are now working out the prices, dates, etc.Resources - Resources - BBC Farsi, Farsi Textbook, Class notes, handouts, EasyPersian, language partner for speaking practice.Week 6 Goals – This week I would like to learn 5 more adjectives and 5 more verbs. I would then like to put those to use by attempting to construct simple sentences. I am also planning on continuing to listen and to practice writing Farsi script. Most importantly, I want to review the first five weeks of material, as I feel like we are going to fast without actually learning everything.Resources - Resources - BBC Farsi, Farsi Textbook, Class notes, handouts, EasyPersian, language partner for speaking practice.Week 6 Review – This week I think I did well accomplishing my objectives. I have realized that it is more important to go at a slower pace and really understand everything, rather than setting ambitious objectives that make one feel rushed and overwhelmed. I was able to learn 5 new adjectives and verbs, and constructed a few simple sentences.Resources - Resources - BBC Farsi, Farsi Textbook, Class notes, handouts, EasyPersian, language partner for speaking practice.Week 7 Objectives – My major goal for week 7 is to begin to look at past and future tenses. I would like to be able to construct sentences with adjectives and verbs I am already familiar with in the past, present, and future. I think this will give me a good understanding about how the different tenses work, and lay a foundation for delving further into the study of different tenses. I will continue to review weeks 1-6 as well.Resources - Resources - BBC Farsi, Farsi Textbook, Class notes, handouts, EasyPersian, language partner for speaking practice.Week 7 Review – This week went well, although it is certainly more challenging than I thought trying to figure out past and future. This is because the verb changes drastically depending on the tense – there is no simply way to think about it. However, I did manage to put together a few sentences and am beginning to understand how it works.Resources - Resources - BBC Farsi, Farsi Textbook, Class notes, handouts, EasyPersian, language partner for speaking practice.Week 8 objectives – This week I would like to learn 5 more verbs, but mainly focus on getting a better understanding and more practice with past and future tenses. I will also continue to focus on reviewing, something I believe I need to make more of a priority. One of the best lessons learned from studying Swahili was that it is essential to keep reviewing everything, otherwise as you learn more you end up forgetting the things you already learned.Resources - Resources - BBC Farsi, Farsi Textbook, Class notes, handouts, EasyPersian, language partner for speaking practice.Week 8 review – This week I definitely made progress on past and future tenses. However, my understanding is still limited and my array of verbs I can conjugate is small. I also found out that I got through the first round of a job interview process to work in Afghanistan. This has led me to the desire to switch my focus of study to Dari. I will be meeting with Muska, an Afghan student, for drill sessions now.Resources - Resources - BBC Farsi, Farsi Textbook, Class notes, handouts, EasyPersian, language partner for speaking practice.Week 9 goals – My goals for this week are simply to learn more about Dari, the differences between the two languages, and how best to go about the transition from studying Farsi to Dari. I will then adjust my lesson plans to go on from there.
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Posted by ReidSchluter on March 31, 2009 at 1:00pm
This week I finished the unit on pronouns & possessives. I had already worked with personal pronouns & possessives last week, and this week I went through demonstratives & independent possessives.Demonstratives are fairly difficult because using them properly requires that you also know the gender of the corresponding noun. If the noun is common gender or plural, the word for 'that/those' is 'die', whereas if it is neuter gender or something you are pointing towards (advice courtesy of Jan) it is 'dat'. Only 15% of nouns in Dutch are neuter gender and there is no definitive pattern, so applying demonstratives requires that you memorize noun gender on a case-by case basis. The same rule applies for 'this/these', which is 'deze' for common gender & plural, whereas it is 'dit' for neuter gender or something in the room. Therefore, 'this house' would be 'dit huis', whereas 'those books' is 'die boeken'.Meanwhile, independent possessives require you to add a 'van' (of, from) in front of a normal possessive (i.e. mij, jou. etc..) to indicate possession. Therefore if pointing at something, you would say 'dit is van mij'. Saying 'Hoe groot is dat van jou?' means 'How big is yours?'. Independent possessives are the appropriate means to say simple statements like 'this is mine' or 'that is yours', and are therefore very useful to know.Over the course of the next week, I'm going to try to learn some useful adjectives that Jan will give to me tomorrow. The next unit in the book addresses ending an '-e' ending to adjectives whether they occur before or after the noun--& the resultant spelling changes that follow the same patterns as when you conjugate verbs. It will be useful to focus on adjectives heavily, as they have yet to be directly addressed in the book. There are also small sections on the use of apostrophe's in Dutch as well as family vocabulary (i.e. mother, father, etc...), which will obviously be very useful to know.
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Week 8This week I will be working mostly on my artifacts and getting started on my cultural project. My language partner recommended me to keep studying my flash cards and making my recordings.
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Verbs in Persian are an interesting concept for me because I am very used to just changing the ending of the verb as opposed to dealing with both suffixes and prefixes.To Create: afareedanpast: man afareedam (i created)to create the past is the most simple, add the correct pronoun and then add the proper ending:pronoun - suffixI amyou eehe/she/it -we imyou idthey andPresent: man mi afaram (I create)to create the present, remove the -d- and add mi and the proper suffixGerund: man doram mi afaram (I am creating)to create the gerund, use the proper pronoun, then add the and conjugate dostan (to have) and then mi and the conjugated verb
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Week 7 and 9 combination-I have been remembering my vocabulary much more these few weeks most likely because of my flash cards. I have also listed which words are used in the Kabuli accent and which ones in the Khandari accent so that I don’t mix and match them in my oral usage.-I think I am improving on the “ka” syllable that I had a lot of trouble a few weeks ago but I still feel very conscious about it whenever I use it and I just need to keep practicing with it until it becomes natural and I don’t even think about it.- This week I wanted to use Becky Walkers “Time, Dates, and Festivals” Diigo link to practice on lessening my Khandari accent because time and calendar related words are one of the most contrasting subjects between Kabuli and Khandari accents. Some of the Iranian-based Farsi phrases I had to disregard thou.Diigo Link: http://books.google.com/books?id=M38LSAYmqacC&pg=PA167&lpg=PA167&dq=telling+time+in+farsi&source=bl&ots=InwsSmkfuV&sig=uV8fmAlmT7vRyO7Ek7I4Nki3ofQ&hl=en&ei=OrKISY3gK5W6twei5pCYBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA169,M1Differences:Friday - Instead of Jom-e, its Jum-a, Summer is Tawesten instead of TabestenAdverbs, ie, never, here, there, 100 percent the same in Khandari and Kabuli and even in Iranian FarsiContinued….Dar-am instead of Dar-ad (I have)Auto-mo-bil can be used, but Khandari prefers to use Mo-tar (car)I am doing a great job identifying liaisons, or linkages, (the ways that words and parts of words are linked together) but for some reason I’m still struggling in the intonation element of Farsi, I don’t think I’m sensing what my language instructor calls “the rhythm”.My language partner recommended a BBC series for me to listen to everyday for an hour to help me with this. I’ve been recording myself copying the people speaking and Muska and I work on the troubleshoot areas or areas I am doing good and we try to understand why those areas are working for me whereas other areas are not. For example, I show up at every session with at least 5 different recordings of me mimicking a dialogue and then the language partner and I critique those recordings.The main hurdle on working on my pronunciation/accent were areas that affected comprehensibility, that is, areas of my accents that basically made it hard for my language instructor to understand me at all and luckily for me the only area that this entailed was comedy/jokes which is one of my learning objectives for the semester.Nasal vowels are extremely easy for me, but I still practice themI am however having a hard time when I go back and fourth between difference scenarios, whether its from very structured exercises to extemporaneous speech, I sometimes cannot keep up and just follow one type of pattern which I’m trying to fix.But the great thing from my 6 years of experience with Spanish is that I’m not wasting time getting frustrated and just sulking when I feel stuck or lost, my patience is really one of the driving forces that’s lessening my accent and I can already feel a small difference from when I stared 2 months ago.
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Posted by ReidSchluter on March 24, 2009 at 4:00pm
This week I focused heavily on the first half of the pronoun/possessive unit. This portion entailed the basic forms of personal pronouns & possessives. Like last week, these are very useful tools in terms of my overall comprehension of Dutch. Obviously pronouns form an integral part of many sentences, while knowledge of possessives is also vital to my overall understanding of Dutch.In English, pronouns are me, you, him, her, etc.... In Dutch, the only complication is that there is an unemphatic form for most of the pronouns. This is a common theme in Dutch. For example, you would write 'mij' to represent 'me', but in reality you would say 'me' in conversation. The same is true of 'you' which is written 'jij', but pronounced 'je'.In addition to these basic pronouns, I also learned possessives during this week. These words are very similar to the pronouns, but instead reflect possession of an object. The breakdown is as follows: mijn, jouw, zijn, ons/onze, jullie, & hun. Therefore, one would say 'my mother' as 'mijn moeder' or 'his dog' as 'zijn hond' etc.... Obviously, these two groups of words are incredibly useful & occur very frequently through the Dutch language--or indeed any other.Next week, I will work with the second half of this unit, which includes demonstratives (this, that, these, those) & independent possessives (van mij). Presumably, these sets of words will round out my knowledge of this in tegral portion of the language.
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Mona had us all listen to a popular Persian song, Man Ageh Nabasham.It was really interesting to listen to the song and hear words that I was actually able to understand.It was even better, once I was able to find lyrics that had both the Persian words as well as the english translation:Man Age Nabasham lyricsman nabasham ki tou royaif im not there who will in ur dreamsmohato naz mikonehdear your hairki ba balaye shekasstehwho will with broken wingsba to parvaz mikonehfly with yourasst begutell me the thruthman ke nabashamif im not thereakhamye pishounitoline on ur fore headki miad douneh dounehwill one by oneba hoseleh baz mikonehopen themman nabashamif im not thereki miad nazeh negato mikharehwho will die for your eyeski miad donbale toro be khorshid bebarewho will, bring u to the sunki mige haga hamishe ba toewho says thats ur always rightvasseye khatereh tobecause of youki mireh poshteh panjerehwho will go for youman age nabashamif im not thereki vase hamishewho will forevertoro miparastebeleive in youki barat mimirewho will die for youki nemishe khastewho will never be tiredki toro mizarewho will put youroye dota cheshmash?on both of their eyeski age nabashi migireh nafassashif ur not there who's breath will be taken awayman age nabashamif im not thereman nabasha ki tahamolif im not there who will toleratemikoneh kareh toroall u doba ragib raftano aziato azareh torogoing and getting hurt from the enemieski e kie javaba nadeh talkhie raftareh torowho will never say anything to your attitudesman nabasham ki barat gesseh mige ta bekhabiif im not there who will tell u stories until u go to sleepki miad sorageh royat to shab hayeh mahtabiwho wil come in ur dreams at nightki bidareh ta to khabet bebarehwho is awake until u fall asleepki gayem mishe to abra ke rahat betabiwho will hide in the clouds until ur confortambleaftab nashi beri zireh abradont become the sun and go under the treesmorvarid nashi beri tahe daryadont become a pearl and go under the searoudkhouneh nashi beri to seyladont become the river and go with flow of the wateragar injouri behsheh vaveyla vaveylaif it become like that oh god god ( va veyla is an expression)parizadeh nashi gomshi nari azizeh mardomdont become a fairy , dont go and become someone's sweetheartnari safar azam dour shidont go on a trip and get far from fromnari ba doshmanam jour shidont become friends with my enemiesyevaqt basteyi najourshidont cause me any problemnari parvaneh shi parvaz konidont become a butterfly and fly awayvasse man bi mehri avaz konidont leave me without a message / good reasondelam az dasteh to bicharehmy heart is becomig poor /crazy because of youakhe to key to mikhay naz koniuntil when do you want to do this ( naz kardan is another expression means like being shy and lovely (they say it to girls)vaveyla vaveylaoh god , oh god !!(http://www.moron.nl/lyrics.php?artist=Kamran+and+Hooman&id=119022)Music has been a great way for me to expand my cultural knowledge and vocabulary.It was also a way to learn about colloquial phrases and cultural undertones:for example, "Who will bring you the sun" is actually a much more significant phrase in Persian culture than the english translation gives it credit for.
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Posted by ReidSchluter on March 17, 2009 at 2:30pm
During this week, I continued to master the perfect tense. As I said in my last post, there are a lot of verbs that become irregular in the past tense. In addition, many verbs also require the zijn 'to be' verb rather than the hebben 'to have' verb. This is very counter-intuitive as, for example, you must say 'Is (form of zijn) Pauline al thuisgekomen' to express the statement 'Has Pauline come home'. Also, I have continued to work with the modal auxiliary verbs such as 'to want to', 'to be able to', etc.... These verbs must appear with a separate infinitive verb in order to make sense, so it has required a concerted effort to fully understand their use.Also this week, I learned useful phrases for making/accepting apologies as well as what to say if you didn't understand someone. Both of these skills are obviously very helpful for everyday conversations. Things like 'Pardon' or 'Het spijt me dat...' are how you politely apologize, while you say 'Het geeft niet' or Het maakt niet uit' to accept an apology by saying 'It doesn't matter'. Meanwhile, 'Wat zeg je?' or "Wat betekent dat?' express 'What did you say?' & 'What does that mean?' respectively. Obviously, these conversational skills are vital to everyday life in a Dutch-speaking area.The next unit deals with pronouns, possessives, & demonstratives. These are all similar tools, and I will be working through them in the next week or two.
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Week 6I reviewed some more children jokes and riddles early on and I feel very comfortable understanding them and relaying them back to my language instructor. Therefore I wanted to start working on the mullah nasrudin jokes and the 30-60 seconds jokes.My language instructor basically told me that if I can get real comfortable with these jokes by the end of the semester, that’s the most realistic goal I can aspire to because the more advanced jokes really don’t make much since at all in English whereas the mullah nasrudin jokes do actually make sense and are funny somewhat in English as well.Mullah Nasrudin jokes are more than 700 years old and are still considered the backbone of Persian comedy. He is the pioneer and model for most comedians in the middle east including the Arabic and Turkish speaking parts of the world.Muska gave me some BBC links that had the so called “modern adoptions of the mullah” but the jokes were weaved into stories that were too complicated for me so therefore we settled on just working on the jokes without any type of additional background. We also decided to just work on his most simple jokes, ie, “why the mullah is dumb”.The main jokes that I am having problems finding the comedic element to:The mullah said this to a man sitting beside him in a tavern, “only one drink makes me drunk” the other man replied “really, only one?” the mullah replied “yes and its usually the sixth”This sounds equally confusing in both Farsi and English for me, and although I can see the punch line as being funny if its supposed to be a drunk remark by the mullah, my language instructor told me it’s the only reason.Jokes that I understand:Mullah Nasrudin’s friend said to him one day "my wife is very touch the least little thing can set her off." The mullah replied "you are lucky, mine is a self-starter”The punch line here makes sense in both English and Farsi, but in farsi the punch line doesn’t have as many interpretations when the mullah says “Self-starter”
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For my first artifact I wanted to illustrate the unique sense of Persian humor and how much it differs from the humor we are accustomed to in the West. Some of these might not seem very logical or let alone comical, but I believe Persian speakers will treasure its uniqueness:1. One day a Qazvini (person from the city of Qazvin) goes to a pharmacy in Tehran and requests two capoots, the supplier humbly replies, “no, no, no, all the names here have been changed, for example, a computer is now called ra'ya'neh,” The confused Qazvini responds, “then what is a capoot?” the seller smirks, “it is ga'ya'neh.”2. One day a Turk and his camel were walking in a desert when they meet a stranger. Stranger asks: Where are you going with this donkey? The Turk replies "Are you blind to see this is not a donkey ? Stranger quickly replies: Ba' to nistam. Ba' wotor hastam.3. One day a Khandari went to a doctor for a routine check-up, the doctor came back after he got the man’s test results and told the man, "I'm gonna have to be honest with you" the Khandari nervously replied "Is it serious?" the doctor replied "Yes, you got AIDS" the man starts sobbing and asks the doctor " Is there anything I can do?" the doctor says "Yes, eat 15 kilos plums, 10 kilos of nuts, 15 kilos of rice, 10 meals at an Indian restaurant, 25 meals at a Chinese restaurant, drink 10 pints of beer and eat 10 oranges" The man got really excited and asks "Will this cure it" the doctor replies "No, but it will give you an idea what a “koon” is for."“Jokestan.” Persian Jokes in English. 1996-2000. Jokestan.com. February 16, 2009. <<http://www.jokestan.com/>>
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Week 5Last week I worked on jokes, this week I will work on improving my accent while simultaneously improving and expanding my vocabulary.I have decided to make flashcards based on category similar to what I did while studying for the SAT’s in high school, and reviewing them for 20 minutes everyday because I feel like I'm forgetting some of the words I learned in weeks 2 and 3.My analysis of my accent: my pace and speed is perfectly fine, but I literally sound like a 5 or 6 year old with an extremely heavy voice. To make matters worse, it’s a combination of Kabuli and Khandari, the northern and southern parts of Afghanistan, because my dad is from Kabul and my mother is from Khandhar. Because my language instructor recommends me to gradually leave my khandari accent, she is herself speaks with a kabuli accent and the kabuli accent is regarded more as the educated variation it is the best one for me to work on.-Spanish has the rolling R’s that took me a long time to master, in Farsi the equivalent problem I am having is the “ka” sound at the end of many words ie zan-a-ka (women)-My language instructor is telling me that every noise in Farsi, at least if I think about it in terms of syllables, there’s a very similar or exact English sounding noise for it, but I’m trying not to think or start to use English as a reference at all and just fight it out in Farsi which is really frustrating but I know if I take the easy route my long-term development will be much more slower overall.
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Reflections Week 4After altering my learning objectives to target two main areas I can focus whole-heartedly in, comedy and accent/vocabulary, I’ve decided to go back and fourth every other week in these areas. Starting this week I will focus on very short jokes, ie. children jokes, riddles, etc and understanding them and hopefully gradually progressing to move longer and mature forms of comedy. Some of them will make sense and others will not due to translation and cultural reasons.- The main issue that I am having with these children jokes and riddles are that although I am gradually understanding them more and more, but because they are meant for children I don’t find them very interesting or funny. But I need to get a firm grasp of these easy starter jokes so that I can understand the mullah nashrudin jokes and beyond.-Surprisingly a lot of them deal with animals that are not found (even in zoos) in the middle east.-A lot of the jokes also aren’t meant to be funny but teach some type of moral, and some aren’t very clear morals at thatie. Why did it rain? (Cheera baran shooda?)-Because the clouds were sad (abra besar tangh shooda)An examples of a joke that I had difficulty understanding:- Why do fish need to live in salt water? (cheere mai zendege mekoni da awi namak?)-pepper makes the fish sneeze every time (moorch akash mekona mai ar daf)The problem I had with the above joke was trying to translate my answer in English to Farsi, when I did that it did not make any sense at all, I have to get rid of the transitory phrase of translating everything from English first in my head and just start and end in Farsi. Also I kept getting confused in saying “pepper” without the “black” because usually “pepper” is usually never said without a type, ie, black pepper, red pepper, spicy pepper, etc.
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