Dari vs Farsi

General discussion about learning languages
silvance
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Dari vs Farsi

Postby silvance » Sun Aug 06, 2017 10:00 am

I'm a DLI trained Pashto speaker and am deploying to Afghanistan soon. I would like to learn Dari since it would increase my effectiveness immensely while in the country, however I'm not entirely sure how to go about learning it. My major issue is the lack of Dari resources, and this brings me to my main question: Should I learn Farsi first, due to the much greater amount of resources, and then pick up Dari afterwards, as the languages are very close, or should I just tough it out and learn Dari first using the few resources that are in Dari, such as Pimsleur? I've seen Pashto linguists learn Dari in 6-8 weeks due to the similarities in vocab, but those were in government run facilities and taught by native speakers and I dunno if Farsi would be as easy to learn for a Pashto linguist. Any help would be appreciated.
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DangerDave2010
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Re: Dari vs Farsi

Postby DangerDave2010 » Sun Aug 06, 2017 11:52 am

I feel that Dari and Farsi are just different accents for the same language. I suggest you work first with all the Dari resources you can get, so when you read the written word, you read it the Dari way. Then you can proceed and use Iranian Persian resources too, but use Dari pronunciation when you read.
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ilmari
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Re: Dari vs Farsi

Postby ilmari » Sun Aug 06, 2017 2:15 pm

The resource is in French, so you may misss it:
Manuel de persan parlé en Afghanistan, by Mohammad Ali Raonaq, published by L'Asiathèque (2003 ed.)
http://www.asiatheque.com/fr/book/manuel-de-persan-parle-en-afghanistan
The book is in latin characters but accompanied by an mp3 cd. It seems to be a systematic and thorough introduction to spoken Dari: 24 lessons to study in order, each building on the previous one.

Addendum:
Interestingly enough, the book's title is Persian Spoken in Afghanistan.
Last edited by ilmari on Tue Aug 08, 2017 10:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Speakeasy
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Re: Dari vs Farsi

Postby Speakeasy » Mon Aug 07, 2017 11:19 pm

First, please note that I have not studied Farsi or Dari, nor do I have any intention of doing so. Nevertheless, I conducted a quick search of the internet and came up with a collection of posts on the website QUORA. There is a list of "Related Questions" to the right of the article below.

What is the difference between Farsi, Tajik and Dari? Are they mutually intelligible?
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-Farsi-Tajik-and-Dari-Are-they-mutually-intelligible

While there seems to be a dearth of resources for learning Farsi, as the OP has observed, the situation is even more dire when it comes to Dari. So then, in the hopes of helping anyone in a similar situation, I have listed a few resources that have not already been mentioned (sorry about the lack of order in the materials listed below):

FSI Spoken Persian
https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/languages/FSI/fsi-persian.html

DLI Persian Farsi
https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/languages/DLI/DLI-Persian-Farsi.html

DLI Dari
https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/languages/DLI/DLI-Dari.html

Peace Corps Dari
https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/languages/PeaceCorps/Dari.html

Assimil Le Persan
https://www.amazon.fr/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?__mk_fr_FR=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Assimil+le+persan

Assimil Persan: Opinions?
https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&p=19610#p19610

Contemporary Spoken Persian, et cetera
http://multilingualbooks.com/persian.html

Modern Persian (Gernot Windfuhr)
You can still find the textbooks on Amazon and elsewhere. The University of Michigan, Foreign Language Products Sales Office used to sell the accompanying CDs, but ceased doing so about 2 years ago and, in place of sales, they launched a project to render their archived audio recordings as mp3 downloads freely-available to the public. If you're interested, please contact them directly.

Routledge Colloquial Persian
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Routledge+colloquial+persian

National Middle East Language Resource Center
Be sure to follow the links to other websites! http://nmelrc.org/Persian

University of Texas: Persian of Iran Today
http://www.laits.utexas.edu/persian_teaching_resources/

Easy Persian/Farsi
http://www.easypersian.com/#start

Living Language Spoken World Farsi
The approach is identical to the one adopted for the Living Language Ultimate series. In this case, it seems that the course book and CDs are sold separately:
https://www.amazon.com/Spoken-World-Farsi-Living-Language/dp/1400023475/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502147098&sr=8-1&keywords=Spoken+World+Farsi
https://www.amazon.com/Farsi-Spoken-World-Living-Language/dp/B00POFQOHE/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1502147098&sr=8-7&keywords=Spoken+World+Farsi

Spoken Language Services Spoken Persian
Although Spoken Language Services has ceased operations, it is sometimes possible to locate copies of their courses on the internet:
https://www.amazon.com/Spoken-Persian-Language-Ser/dp/0879502959/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1502147098&sr=8-6&keywords=Spoken+World+Farsi

Persian For Beginners
http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/bashiri/Lessons/PfBindex.html

Movies and Videos
There are, undoubtedly, larger and more complete collections of DVDs in Farsi, but as I stumbled upon the following list, I thought that I might as well add it:
http://www.worldlanguage.com/Products/PersianFarsi/MoviesVideos/Page1.htm

Persian Language Foundation (Persian Online)
https://www.persianlanguageonline.com/
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ilmari
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Re: Dari vs Farsi

Postby ilmari » Tue Aug 08, 2017 10:08 am

A few more references:

Virtual Persian
New York University
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/mideast/virtualpersian/index.html

Learn Persian with Chai and Conversation
Podcast
http://www.chaiandconversation.com

Parler Persan
Persian course in French by radio Pars Today
http://parstoday.com/fr/radio/program--parler_persan

More links and materials here:
Persiska språket • زبان فارسی • zabán e fársi
http://persiskaspraket.blogspot.com.au
The site is in Swedish, but not most of the materials and links.
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mcthulhu
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Re: Dari vs Farsi

Postby mcthulhu » Tue Aug 08, 2017 8:51 pm

Silvance, as a government/military linguist you should have a JLU (jlu.wbtrain.com) account, or be able to get one. JLU has a number of self-paced Dari Language Survival Kit courses precisely for people in your situation, and they should be a good start. That site might have other Dari resources as well. You might be able to get access to the Rosetta Stone Farsi course, which is less directly relevant to you but pretty good, either through JLU or through a public library system - many of them seem to offer Rosetta Stone to library subscribers. That would be another good start. Among the lists already given for Farsi, the Easy Persian, University of Texas, FSI, and DLI resources are good.

See also the International Assistance Mission's Language and Culture Program site at https://www.iam-afghanistan.org/lcp/online-resources/. It has a learner's grammar for Dari, a Dari-English dictionary, flashcard sets, etc.

There should be no difference in ease of learning for you between Farsi and Dari, other than the availability of resources. The two are more or less mutually intelligible, and the written language should be very close. The differences, I think, are mostly minor ones - some pronunciation differences, and some differences in common vocabulary, the extent of which might be comparable to differences between U.S. and British English (the "truck" vs. "lorry" kind of thing; compare to Dari motar vs. Farsi khodro for car). Otherwise, any Farsi you learn should be directly transferable to Dari, so you shouldn't be reluctant to make use of Farsi resources, and adjust to Dari vocabulary differences etc. as you go. I'm not really sure whether the proportion of Arabic loanwords differs between the two - Farsi is about 40 percent Arabic, as you probably already know. In any case, those loanwords make it easier for someone who already knows Pashto.

Movies and TV might help with pronunciation. Do you do Netflix? Try "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night" (great vampire movie, if you're not burned out on vampires, and the dialogue is not too fast). Netflix has a lot of Persian-language movies. (I would avoid "Taste of Cherry" if you're easily depressed, though.) YouTube, of course, has a lot of Farsi movies as well, and I think there's an Afghan movie channel, though I'm not sure how much of it is Dari vs. Pashto.
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DangerDave2010
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Re: Dari vs Farsi

Postby DangerDave2010 » Wed Aug 09, 2017 11:25 am

Here you can find some content dubbed in Dari:
https://www.youtube.com/user/ArmanApp/

and here a native tv channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/TOLOTV
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NinjaSloth
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Re: Dari vs Farsi

Postby NinjaSloth » Thu Aug 10, 2017 3:06 am

silvance wrote:I'm a DLI trained Pashto speaker and am deploying to Afghanistan soon. I would like to learn Dari since it would increase my effectiveness immensely while in the country, however I'm not entirely sure how to go about learning it. My major issue is the lack of Dari resources, and this brings me to my main question: Should I learn Farsi first, due to the much greater amount of resources, and then pick up Dari afterwards, as the languages are very close, or should I just tough it out and learn Dari first using the few resources that are in Dari, such as Pimsleur? I've seen Pashto linguists learn Dari in 6-8 weeks due to the similarities in vocab, but those were in government run facilities and taught by native speakers and I dunno if Farsi would be as easy to learn for a Pashto linguist. Any help would be appreciated.


Hi there!

I'm new to Persian (and this forum) but what I gather from the limited information I've been able to find is that the main differences between Dari and Persian are accent/intonation and word choice. The differences aren't as great as between Moroccan Arabic and Levantine Arabic.

Routledge has a good intro course book - "The Routledge Introductory Persian Course," that I have just started. It has free audio that can be downloaded from https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge ... 0415561013

Perhaps use Dari Pimsleur and youtube videos for speaking and Persian resources for grammar? I'm really curious about this topic and I hope you let us know what you decide and your progress. Good luck and well wishes.
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