1a) An examples of Farsi's use of affixes is seen in verbs. The suffixes of verbs and adjectives agree with the pronoun.Man (I) Khoobam (good) asstam (it is) - "I am good"* - AM is used at the end of the verb asst (to be) and the adjective khoob (good).To contrast, to say "you are good" you would use the ending -ee to agree with the pronoun, Shoma.Shoma Khoobee assteeb) Aggluntative: helpful because I know to expect the words to be made of different morphemes (components of words - affixes, bases...etc). It also going to be good for me the see common patterns and make my learning easier.c). The symbols for the vowels aren't normally used in everyday Persian - they are much more of a teaching tool.2. The songs are great reinforcement tools. They help me listen for the words I know versus wordsI do not. Also, I'm able to enhance vocabulary. In addition to this, it makes my learning experience more fun.
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My main goal for the past week was to start getting used to using the subjunctive. I've started to get a handle on it to some extent, but I'm still having a hard time. There are certain situations when I know to use it and I think how to use it correctly, but I'm still not very confident on when and when not to use it. I found a list of common verbs that it is used with yesterday that I'm going to look over more closely to get it down better. I think I understand it well enough to guess when to use it, and at least people can understand what is meant when I don't use it or use it incorrectly. I haven't made much progress in listening comprehension, but that's not surprising. It still takes me too long to translate/understand something to be able to follow anything longer than a sentence or two. I'm going to keep focusing on this area because I realize that it is going to continue to be my weak point. I've learned a lot of prepositions for time, but I'm not always sure how to use them properly.This week:- memorize list of verbs and phrases that involve the subjunctive- learn vocab for emotions, adjectives describing people's personality- work on using prepositions correctly- learn cardinal and relative directions- keep working on listening comprehension
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English is an analytic language because it follows a verb-object pattern as do French and Spanish. Japanese is an agglutinative language because it follows a object-verb pattern as do 50% of other languages. Japanese, much like Turkish, arranges elements loosely together and is, therefore, agglutinative. Greek is synthetic because it relies heavily upon inflection.
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Objectives:Learn food (minus the fruit) but including 5 vegetables, 3 drinks, 3 meats and 3 grainsLearn 10 animalsLearn 3 more verbsLearn 5 adjectivesLearn comparative and superlative adjectivesEvaluation:Be able to describe what I am having for breakfast, lunch and dinnerBe able to ask what kind of pets people have and describe the animals I am learning by adjectives including colorsBe able to make sentences with verbs and animals- describe what the animals are doingBe able to describe what animals and foods I like better than others and ask my classmates the sameThis week I also have to do an artifact which will be me describing a picture of a fruit stand. I will describe the kinds of fruits there are, their colors and their relation to other fruits in the stand.
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Last week I felt like I reached my learning objectives, particularly with the vocabulary. I feel like the vocabulary is much easier to learn than the grammar and I am still working on making sure I know all of the grammatical things I have set out to learn. When learning the plurals I still have to take time to remember the rules and apply them properly whereas with the vocabulary I can usually remember it immediately. The same is true of the verbs. I am learning 3 new verbs every week but the frustrating thing is that its not as easy as just adding an ending onto the infinitive because the infinitive changes forms in the present tense. To try and remember them better I think I'm going to begin writing the verbs out in each of their 6 forms and then trying to form sentences with them. I'm hoping that with more practice and even more studying the grammar components will become more natural.Last week my first Farsi artifact was due and I feel pretty confident in my abilities to hold a brief conversation now. My artifact was a dialogue with Will where we said hello, asked each other how we were, names, age, where we were from, what day it was and the time before saying goodbye. When we wrote the conversation we didn't use any of our notes but only used them to check what we had written to make sure we had gotten it right. We also had Mona look over it for us to make sure we were saying everything properly. After listening to our recording, we definitely have american accents when we speak Farsi but I definitely think that we get the point across as to what we are saying. I have another farsi artifact due this upcoming week where I am going to describe a fruit stand. I am hoping that this artifact will work as smoothly as the last one did.
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This is the first week where I felt as if I were trying to put too much together too quickly. I have included an objective from week six and kept it on my objectives for week seven, as I don't feel comfortable in my competency to explain directions to someone. I felt as if there were too many filler words which I was not yet familiar with, despite my having learned how to say the third street on the left, I could not say phrases such as "then continue" or "as you are approaching".Other than this objective, I feel as if I am progressing. I am beginning to pick up more of the words and phrases while listening to the BBC Farsi, which makes the task far less frustrating. I was pleased with my artifact as one of my benchmarks, as it displays what I feel comfortable with up to this point. I have learned more vocabulary and tenses than I included, however, I do not know how they grammatically function in a sentences--which is why they are being left until later to be recorded.
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110 Farsi Week Seven Objectives.docxI will no longer be posting my teaching and learning sequences, as I am confident in my ability to properly execute my lessons and evaluations without having to write down step-by-step how the process will be accomplished.
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History of the Persian Language:The language is dated back to the 6th Century BCE. Since then it has been separated into three different overarching categories: Old Persian, Middle Persian and Modern Persian. Old Persian was written in a style of cuneiform. Persian was the most prominent language during the Achaemenid Era, the first Iranian Empire. This form of Persian is said to be exclusively inflective, with number and gender both existing within the language. It is believed the written and spoken Old Persian greatly differed from one another. Old Iranian is represented by Avestan, a scriptural language.The transition between Old Persian and Middle Persian is hard to determine. It can be dated as far back as the fall of the Achaemenid Empire to the middle of the Sassanid era (pre-Islamic Iranian Empire). The grammar of Middle Persian is far less complex than Old Persian. It’s use however, died out shortly after the Arab conquest in the 7th century.Modern Persian is a fusion of the older versions of Persian along with adopted words and saying from various other languages (such as Arabic and French). It developed during the 9th century and adopted a perso-arabic script (Arabic script with alterations—such as the inclusion of more letters). Its grammar is far simpler than either Old Persian or Middle Persian.Sources:http://www.history.com/encyclopedia.do?articleId=219007en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_language
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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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ObjectivesOccupationsOrdinal NumbersPlurals3 more verbs5 adjectivesEvaluationsBe able to ask classmates and language instructor what their parent's or sibling's occupations areBe able to ask what day is the first day of the month, the second, the third etc up to 7Be able to ask for multiple pieces of fruit in order to demonstrate that I know the pluralsBe able to incorporate the newly learned verbs and adjectives into a conversation with a student asking who they are and what they have done that day.
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Last week I felt like I accomplished all of my goals set forth and I am progressing at a good pace. I feel like at this point I could carry on a basic introductory conversation with people on the street and understand basic words and phrases used during a conversation or a news broadcast. However, I am realizing that while I'm learning a lot of vocabulary I also need to work more on the grammar, learning how to construct sentences and learning more verbs so I can carry on more conversations.Probably the best part of the past week was when Mona brought her mom to class because I learned a lot about what life was like in Iran along with culture and history, particularly about the Iranian Revolution. Mona's mother also asked us questions in Farsi or held simple dialogues with Mona, which made me realize how much Farsi I could actually understand even if I may not have been able to respond to everything in perfect Farsi. I really like how Mona brings in other Farsi speakers into class because its nice to hear the different ways (accent and and speed) they speak and write. It is also helpful for learning more about the culture and different people's views of what life is like in Iran. This week I have to do my first artifact so I am hoping that my dialogue conversation will flow smoothly and I can demonstrate how much I have learned.
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Posted by ReidSchluter on February 25, 2009 at 3:26pm
This past week I was working heavily with verbs & the perfect tense. I found when reading 'De Telegraaf' and similar sources, that the biggest inhibiting factor to my overall understanding was verb comprehension. As it was the point in my book that they were teaching perfect tense & past participles (which Jan says constitutes the majority of completed action statements in Dutch), I decided to use an auxiliary source for important Dutch verbs in order to boost my overall understanding. I learned about 40 verbs all together that will come up frequently. I also learned their stems, and how to conjugate them. My book hadn't really gone over verbs in much detail, so the benefits on my overall comprehension of Dutch has been very noticeable already.In terms of the questions from the reading:1. Something that is true for all natural languages i.e. all languages have nouns & verbs2. Verbs3. Since there is a lot of variation to the amount & usage of verbs across different languages4. Development of nasal vowels5. Infants fist sounds will be the most common sounds in their native language6. analytic - little inflection; synthetic - much inflection; agglutinative - elements arranged loosely together7. VO places verb before object, whereas OV places object before verb8. Because they link clauses9. They are placed in a contrasting arrangement10. The consistent ordering of words in a particular fashion11.12. Each language requires that the markers be place in a particular way in accordance with clause order13. VSO, OSV, & SVO14. They are effected by nominal modifiers15. In both, relative clauses are formed with implied relative pronouns16. The genitive typically appeared before the noun much more frequently17. They fall after the noun, unless they're being modified by an adverbial expression18. It's mainly noticeable in the structure of folk talesREVIEW PROBLEM #1This seems to be relatively in line with their respective language groupings. Being analytic, English has little inflection, and that is certainly visible in the formation of it's past participle in this example. Meanwhile, Greek is synthetic which means that it has much inflection. Again, this is evident in the forms that it takes in conjugation, which are generally much more complex than in the examples from English & Japanese. Finally, Japanese is agglutinative, which means elements loosely arranged together. This is viewable in the simple examples provided in the question, and my Japanese-speaking friends offered a few more examples to emphasize this point.
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Posted by Will Cragin on February 24, 2009 at 7:08pm
Week 4 Review - This past week I succeeded in reaching most of my goals. However, I did not learn numbers 20-100. I did however learn 5 new verbs, 5 new adjectives, fruits, and continued to review the alphabet. The highlight of the week was when Mona's mom came into class on Tuesday. She is a professor and was informative in answering our questions about Iran. She spoke at length about the Iranian revolution, what the anniversary means for Iranians, and how most Iranians view Americans and our policies to Iran. It was quite fascinating and gave me good insight into false notions of Iranian society that are widespread throughout American media.Resources - BBC Farsi, Farsi Textbook, Class notes, handouts, EasyPersian, language partner for speaking practice.Week 5 goals - This week I would like to continue to review the alphabet, learn basic clothes, weather, a few more verbs in present tense, possessives, and basic sentence structure. I am also going to be looking into a potential trip to Iran in May with our drill instructor, which hopefully will give me more motivation to study Farsi. I will also continue to listen to BBC Farsi and attempt to read sentences of articles to gauge my progress in reading Farsi script.Resources - BBC Farsi, Farsi Textbook, Class notes, handouts, EasyPersian, language partner for speaking practice.
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Posted by Brian Mahoney on February 24, 2009 at 2:34pm
This past week I feel like I made a lot of progress in understanding the way the Persian language works. I've started to get a much better handle on how to say more complicated sentences with multiple verbs and phrases. There are some similarities to Spanish (like the use of que vs. keh, which conveniently both sound and are used almost the same) that have helped a lot. This has helped a lot as I now feel that I am much more able to explain things that I would want to say in normal conversation. It has been hard to find much information about a lot of this in the resources I have been using, though there is some. Because of this, I have been having to do a lot of experimentation and trying to determine the way certain types of sentences are constructed from things that I read. I've found that I often make mistakes, but that I am at least able to say things in a way that would be understood even though it is wrong.One thing I've noticed is that a lot of the things I try to say should be said in the subjunctive mood instead of the way I would usually say them. I remember learning the subjunctive in Spanish, but I don't remember how it is really used. I think it is similar to Farsi, so I'm planning to review it's use in Spanish hoping that it will help me learn it's proper usage in Farsi. Overall I think I made a lot of progress in what I'm able to say, even though a lot of it is not exactly the correct way to say it. Having made significant progress in what I'm able to say, I want to work on listening comprehension a lot more. It still takes me too long to think sentence structure too to be able to follow much when listening, so I need to continue to focus on this.This week's goals:1. Try to learn when the subjunctive should be used- review Spanish subjunctive to hopefully remember when it is used and try to relate it to Farsi- try to identify it's use in things that I read to determine in what circumstances it should be used- practice using it in contexts where I know it should be used2. Learn vocab relating to government and politics- I've learned some from reading news, but I usually look it up but don't necessarily remember it- read news articles and try to pick out vocabulary for government positions, offices, titles, etc.- make a list of vocab encountered and study it3. Work on prepositions relating timing/order of events (i.e. during, then, after, sometimes, etc.)- practice using them to relate events to become more familiar and comfortable with their usage- describe events that happen during the day and future plans- try to incorporate them into the artifact I am working on writing a description of my family and life4. Improve listening comprehension- use Rosetta Stone more at the higher levels to reduce the time delay between hearing something and figuring out what it means- try to find a relatively short interview to listen to extensively; this has been somewhat tedious and frustrating, so I have usually just been listening and picking up on as much as possible but it would be more productive to pause and repeat each sentence to try to understand as much as I can
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Posted by Brian Mahoney on February 24, 2009 at 12:28pm
Problems for Review:The fact that English uses 3 words to express "I have seen" indicates that it is an analytic language. The only inflection used is the -n added to see. Greek seems to repeat the root of the verb to indicate the perfect tense and use a suffix to indicate the subject in both dedorka and bebeka. Japanese doesn't seem to differentiate between the simple past tense and the present perfect, with mimashita meaning both have seen and saw (like in question #4). There also seems to be no indication of the subject, like in English, so it is not as synthetic as Greek is.Think about the languages you know and the language you are studying in MLC 110 and answer the following: (a) How would these languages, particularly the language your are studying, be described in linguistic terms? (b) What characteristics of the language you are studying are the most important for you to know about? (c) What characteristics of the language will you focus on to meet your own goals?(a) Morphologically, Persian is a very synthetic language. It is also a SOV language. I have read that in colloquial spoken Persian it is not uncommon for word order to be rearranged and sentences to take a SVO form. Adjectives follow nouns while it seems to use prepositions rather than adpositions, which is uncommon for OV languages. Spanish is much more similar to English, but it also has some similarities to Persian in noun-adjective relationships and the ways that phrases are linked together.(b) Syntax is probably the most important aspect of Persian for me to learn about. I've gotten much better at it, but I am still pretty slow at discerning the meaning of a spoken sentence even if I know all the words in it. Suffixes are also a really important part of the language. Words can often have multiple suffixes attached to them, which makes it important to understand both their meaning and to recognize their presence to identify the root word.(c) I am going to focus a lot on the way that compound sentences and verbs are structured and linked together. I've found that their are a lot of similarities to Spanish, and also English, in this regard but I still haven't learned most of the little nuances.
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I finished my first artifact and have proofed it. I am going to finish my second artifact which is weather report in Farsi. I will be recording myself giving a weekly weather report. This artifact will address the spoken section of my learning plan.
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Posted by Becky Walker on February 23, 2009 at 3:29pm
The incorporation of the Modern Persian CDs has been useful, as I get to select the content as opposed to only guessing at the BBC content through the few English sounding words. The CDs are also in shorter segments, which allows me to repeat them as I wish--sometimes aiming for understanding, while others attempting to recreate the sentence on my own while properly pronouncing it.Though I learned how to form the present progressive, I still have to figure out when it is used. It seems that it can be used in lieu of the future tense on occasion, while replacing the present in others. This is something that I need to further investigate.Reviewing the first few weeks was also helpful, as it reminded me that I am building on what I already know, as opposed to moving past it. I am now trying to include a review in all of my future objectives.Overall, this week I didn't try to tackle all too much material, as I was focusing on fully understanding everything that I had learned while finding ways to combine them--I now practice using the numbers by counting off my exercises in farsi while I am at the gym.
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