Guyome's log

[guyome]

Persian
- Assimil lessons 43-51
- DLI lessons 1-4.

After shifting from two Assimil lessons a day to only one, I felt I needed something to fill the empty slot. The trick was to find something that would give me more practice with things I already know but wouldn't burden me with too many new vocabulary items. In the end, I went for the DLI course because it fits the bill and that's what I was planning on using after Assimil anyway. I'm not rushing throught it though, even if the material is very easy. Assimil remains my main course and DLI is there to offer more practice on the days I feel like it. There's also the fact that DLI makes me work with the informal pronunciation, which is sort of new to me, so no need to hurry.

Before that, I had looked into other courses (FSI, Persian of Iran Today,...) but DLI seems to be best suited to my preferences.

Pros
- short lessons
- not too much vocab at once
- plenty of repetition
- audio (20 min/lesson)
- comprehensive (100 lessons + a Reader)
- informal pronunciation (but one section uses formal, so the student gets both)

Cons
- no active drills
- no audio for lessons 1-18
- quality of the scans and audio is ok but not great
- small Persian font
- only one voice (even for Q&A) so it may be a bit monotonous.

I'm not too bothered by the last three items of the list. In the same way, the lack of audio for lessons 1-18 is not too much of a problem since there is a companion volume with phonetic transcription for lessons 1-38. So, it seems that the pros largely outweigh the cons and that, on paper, DLI has exactly what I look for in a course (small steps, plenty of repetition). It remains to be seen how well these endearing qualities will translate into actual learning.

A typical lesson (19-...) is made of the following sections:
1) Perception Drill (introduces new grammar through sentences)
2) Dialogue and its translation (10 Q&A)
3) Grammar explanations
4) Grammar Drills (70 sentences)
5) Reading & Questions (8/10 lines followed by 10 questions)
6) Homework
7) Vocabulary (15/25 words)

The Dialogue, Grammar drills, and Vocabulary are recorded in the informal pronunciation; the Reading is recorded in the formal pronunciation.

Lessons 1-18 are organised differently: Dialogue, Recombination, Drill Blocks, Questions. I guess they were conceived as a gentle introduction to the language, with a lot of time dedicated to pronunciation matters. There is no Grammar section, probably because there is very little grammar taught in these lessons (present tense, pronouns, possession,...). If the sentences are not enough to figure things out, there are short explanations in the companion volume.

So far so good. DLI is giving me some extra practice when I want it and there's only a couple of words I don't know in each lesson. I have 12 Assimil lessons left to reach what I chose as my last lesson (63), so the "plan" is to be done with them and DLI 1-18 around the same time. This way, DLI lessons with audio will replace Assimil in my schedule.


As far as I can see, the DLI books are not available for download at Yojik or Livelingua but they can be found at archive.org (here).

[cjareck]

Thanks for the review of the DLI course! All the pros refer also to the MSA course that I am currently using. There is also one voice for Arabic (and for French that I checked) but that is not the big problem. You can always enhance the. quality of audio by using Audacity (open-source software).

[guyome]

Thanks! It's good to know that you didn't get bored by the fact that there's only one voice. Gives me hope

I listened to several lessons around #20 and #30 before choosing DLI and the audio was always good enough. That may have been because I already knew most of the words though...Maybe later, in lessons with more new words, will I find it useful to improve the quality of the recordings.

[guyome]

Ladino
A short story from Monastir (nowadays Bitola in North Macedonia). It illustrates how those who suffer a lot are not always the ones who complain and that no good can come from voicing your grievances aloud.

Il kamdžik i il kavayu
Une tardi serke la ore sinku, un arabadži si turnó in kaze di su lavoru pizĝadu. Il kavayu lu intró a la haraná a [=i?] il kamdžik lu inkulgó in un klaviku di la haraná. Al ladu d'il kavayu si tupave un piñasku ondi il patrón kurtave leñe. Il piñasku s'impisó akišar al kavayu i al kamdžik komu sta yivandu une vide neĝre, diké insime d'el si parti tante leñe. In estu saltó il kamdžik dizyendu ki el es il ki yeve la mas neĝre vide, diké interu il diye kun il patrón inkarĝe i diskarĝe ansine ki no tyeni ripozu. Il kavayu lus miró a todus lus dos, si riyó un poku dibašu il mušu i no dišu nade. El es sihiludu i ya savi ki solu in boke sirade no entre moške, i ken muču favle muču yeve, aun ki tenge razón.

Dilantri il kamdžik la boke no s'avri.

The whip and the horse
One evening, around five, a cartman came back home from his hard work. He put the horse in the stable [and?] he hung the whip on a small nail of the stable. Next to the horse, there was a big rock where the master used to cut firewood. The big rock started complaining to the horse and to the whip that his life was a hard one, because upon him so much firewood was cut. At this, the whip jumped in, saying that it was him who led the hardest life, because the whole day he was loading and unloading [the cart] with the master, so that he had no rest. The horse looked at them both, laughed a little to himself and said nothing. He is wise and knows how it's only in a mouth kept shut that no fly enters, and he who talks a lot suffers a lot, even if he's right.

In front of the whip, one keeps quiet.

The line ken muču favle muču yeve echoes the saying Ken muncho avla muncho se yerra "He who talks a lot is wrong a lot". I don't know if both are legit proverbs of if the story playfully adapts the proverb.


Persian
Assimil 52-56
DLI 5-6

My daily routine is now well established. In the morning, I work through one Assimil lesson, which means listening to the audio 2/3 times, reading the Persian text twice while referring to the translitteration if I can't remember the pronunciation, reading the translitteration with the notes, and doing the exercises. During the day, I use time spent walking around or in public transportation to listen to a few Assimil lessons (around 30 minutes) and some podcasts (15/30 minutes). At this point, I must have listened to each lesson more than 30 times. In the evening, I do one DLI lesson and/or reread Assimil. I also try to fit in some reading "in the wild" when I have a few minutes and I write down the text of a couple of lessons whenever I can.

A few questions, I've "collected" while working through Assimil:
- suffix -i and râ used together (outside of a relative sentence) in lesson 46, sentence 8. No explanation given and I don't see anything in the recap lessons or the grammar summary at the end of the book. I saw it several times when reading Persian texts (cf. the bird story above), so there must be a rather common nuance at work here
- lesson 47, Ex. 2, sentence 1 is "Madame Mahmoudi est invitée à (pour le) dîner" ("Mrs Mahmoudi is invited for dinner"). The book's answer is Khânom-e Mahmoudi barâ-ye shâm da'vat karde ast. This I find suprising because I'm under the impression that karde ast is an active verb form : da'vat karde ast "she has invited", not "she was/is invited". Assimil mentions earlier that X-kardan verbs are turned into passives by using shodan, so I would have translated the sentence as Khânom-e Mahmoudi barâ-ye shâm da'vat shod ("has been invited") or maybe Khânom-e Mahmoudi barâ-ye shâm da'vat mishavad ("is being invited")
- in lesson 55, I noticed the sentence agar u râ molâqât bekonam (« if I meet her,... »). So far, I think all instances of X-kardan verbs in the subjonctive made no use the be- prefix.

[guyome]

Persian
Assimil 57-61
DLI 7-11

Got some Iranian food for lunch today, which inspired me to pen this wonderful piece of literature. Corrections and suggestions welcome of course!

امروز هوا یک کمی سرد ولی خیلی خوب است. چون آفتاب بود بیرون رفتم. به ناهار می خواستم غذای ایرانی بخورم. به رستوران ایرانی که از خانهٔ من خیلی دور نیست (حدود پانزده دقیقه راه) رفتم. برای اینکه "لوکدون" است، نمی توانیم به رستورانها وارد بشویم و جلوی رستوران منتظر بودم. وقتی که جلوی رستوران بودم، یک مرد غذایش را هم منتظر بود. او ایرانی بود و با زن که غذا را درست می کند فارسی حرف می زد. من یک کمی متوجه می شدم اما با آنها حرف نزدم...غذا خیلی خوشمزه بود

[guyome]

Some reading in Yiddish, Latin and Ladino, some listening in Gascon, some dabbling in Maltese (and no Manchu at all): Persian remains all-dominant. I love every moment I spend studying this language. Sometimes, I'm feeling guilty about neglecting my other languages but I have failed at learning Persian twice in the past (with no good reasons), so I'm not letting it go away this time. Let's hope third time's the charm!

Persian
Assimil 62-63
DLI 12-13

Having reached lesson 63, I'll stop using Assimil (for now, at least). As I've mentioned earlier, the remaining lessons feature a much higher number of new words per lesson (around 35) and I don't think Assimil offers enough repetition to make that pleasant, even if one doesn't aim at learning all of these.

Over the next couple of days, I'll keep relistening to the last Assimil lessons (ca. 50-63) and will work through DLI lessons 14-18, the last ones with no audio available. After that, DLI will become my main course. For each lesson starting with #19, audio is 15/20 minutes long and there's around 150 sentences for 20 new vocab items. Since I know most of the grammar and many of the words taught in the first lessons, I'll try and work on one lesson a day but will have no qualms about adopting a more leisurely pace if (=when) need be.

Still listening to RFI podcasts daily but I have moved from تاریخ تازه‌ها, which is one host doing all the talking, to host-chats-with-guest podcasts. It's both easier and more difficult than تاریخ تازه‌ها. More difficult because a chat/interview can be harder than a scripted narrative to follow; easier because a chat is filled with short, easy, everyday sentences ("you're right", "that's true", "I think that...", etc).
I don't know how useful it is to do this but it's not something I'd like to get rid of. It gives me a feel for the rythm of natural spoken Persian, something textbook recordings can't really do, and it's also a great motivation boost to get more and more of what is said each day.

[guyome]

Persian
Working through one DLI lesson without audio doesn't take me that long so I have been spending some time reading short texts in the schoolbooks I posted about some weeks ago. The texts I tried to read in Farsi 1 (1st year of primary school) were very accessible (except one), which I find rather encouraging. The International Children's Digital Library has a large Persian collection, so I may be able to find more level appropriate texts in case the schoolbooks don't provide enough. Children books for native speakers are not always a good match for the vocab an adult generally ends up learning though, so I don't expect all of these to be as easy or as useful as I'd like them to be.

Some extracts from Farsi 1. The first part of the book is just pictures and isolated words; then you get pictures, words and some sentences (like lesson 11 below); the last third of the book has around 12 short texts like the one in lesson 16 below.

Dars-e 11: Ruz-e barfi
Barf mi bârad.
Âsemân âftâbi nist.
Farzâne va Fereshte âdam barfi dorost mi konand.
Âdam barfi mi guyad: kâsh man ham kif o
kafsh dâshtam va be madrese mi raftam.

Lesson 11: A snowy day
The snow is falling.
The sky is not sunny.
Farzâne and Fereshte are making a snowman.
The snowman says: I wish I too had a bag and
shoes and were going to school!

farsi1_60.jpg

Dars-e 16: Dar bâzâr
Diruz man o mâdaram be bâzâr raftim. Mâdaram dar râh, dokkân-hâ râ be man neshân
mi dâd va mi goft: in jâ nejjâri(?) ast; nejjar, panjere, dar o miz misâzad.
In ja nânvâi ast. Ân jâ keffâshi(?) ast.
Sepas be yek qennâdi(?) rasidim. Mâdaram az qennâdi shirini kharid. U az forushgah ham
pârche-ye goldâr-e qashangi kharid. Vaqti be khâne rasidim, mâdaram bâ ân pârche, châdor-e
namâz-e zibâi barâ-ye man dukht(?). Man az u kheyli tashakkor kardam.

Lesson 16: At the bazar
Yesterday, I and my mother went to the bazar. On the way, my mother was showing me the shops
and saying: this place is a joinery(?); a joiner(?) makes windows, doors and tables.
This place is a bread-shop. That place is a shoe-shop.
Then we arrived at a candy store. My mother bought sweets from the candy store. From a shop she also
bought a nice piece of fabric with a flower pattern. When we arrived home, my mother sewed(?) a beautiful
prayer chador for me. I thanked her a lot.

farsi1_8182.jpg

Not a huge fan of texts about veiling a 6-year old child (or anyone for that matter) but that's what you get for using materials put together in Iran.
Nejjâr(i) and dukht are words I don't know but context makes them rather transparent. Keffâshi and qennâdi I didn't know either but knowing kafsh "shoes" and qand "sugar" is enough to figure them out (and context, of course). Apart from these, kâsh, kafsh and namâz, I got thanks to DLI or other sources. The remainder was all introduced in Assimil.

The other texts I read in the last third of the book were about:
- how great a book the Qoran is
- how a pupil loves Iran and the Iranian people, and how Iran is one
- how the younger brother of one student cannot write yet but can draw to show how beautiful his holiday was
- something about the sea and the fish in it (too many unknown words in this one).

[cmia11]

Oh that's so cool that you are going in Persian restaurants ! I have been to some of them in Paris (French here also) and I hope you like Persian food. Your text was really nice, I am probably around A2 so I can't correct you but I am happy to read some farsi and happy to read your progress as well.

[guyome]

Thanks for stopping by, cmia11!
Yes, I was lucky that the only Persian restaurant in my town was (barely!) in my 1km legal lockdown radius. I was able to get the food without breaking the law I went twice but didn't speak Persian with the cook. She seems to be very nice but I'm a bit self conscious about imposing my still very limited Persian on her. That, and the fact that there was a queue forming behind me each time I was there, so not exactly the right time to strike a chat. Maybe another time!

Are you studying Persian at the moment?

[guyome]

Yiddish
Still reading a chapter of Yoshe Kalb when I can find the time. At my current pace, it's going to take me weeks to finish the book...

In another thread, mention was made of Samuel Pisar (1929-2015), which made me go back and listen again to his 2008 interview with Max Kohn. These interviews played a important part at the beginning of my Yiddish studies and I've listened to the early ones many, many times. I remember the one with Shmuel Pisar even more vividly because his Yiddish was a bit rusty and he spoke more slowly than the other speakers. The sound quality was also better because it had been recorded in his flat rather than in the Espoir café.

I also remember that the name Shmuel Pisar wasn't unknown to me at the time because many years before, as a kid, I had read a short thing about him surviving the camps thanks to having pants instead of shorts as other teenagers would (i.e. looking older than he really was and surviving the selection despite being only 13).
Funny what our memory selects as worthy of being remembered. I must have read the short article about him in 1995 (it was published in a magazine celebrating the 50th anniversary of the end of WW2) and I immediately recognised his name in 2010/2011 when I listened to his interview. I still have the magazine after all these years, you can see a picture of Pisar's account below.

Latin
Reading a lot over the last couple of days. I'm going through Erasmus's Colloquia. I've read a few of these over the years but never the whole thing. They're witty and deal with serious matters at the same time, a nice combination.

Gascon
I have reintroduced Lo Gascon léu e plan into my schedule because I have all these Gascon books I want to read with more ease than I can now. This time, the goal is not to study the lessons in depth (I won't have the time/will for that) but rather to get a better passive knowledge of Gascon specificities. We'll see how it works out. If this proves to be too much, I'll stop.

Persian
- DLI 14-20
- Finished reading the texts in Farsi 1. Most of them were easy enough, especially after looking up one or two words in each. Still, there are things I didn't really understand. Plenty of room for improvement.

Lessons 19-20 were the first ones with audio available. There are also much longer than #1-18.
I have been doing one lesson a day so far because there is not much new to me at this point. My schedule consists of:
1) listening to the audio once the day before actually studying the lesson
On the next day:
2) listening to the audio once
3) reading all the material
4) listening to the audio and repeating everything (there is a blank after each sentence in the recordings)
5) listening to the audio and answering the questions instead of repeating them.
Step 5 is my attempt at using the course as drills even though there is no answers recorded on the tape.

All of this takes a lot of time though (90 minutes maybe?), so I'm not sure I'll be able to keep doing this over the next few weeks. Step 1 (and maybe 5) may have to go at some point. I could spread steps 2 to 5 over two days but that would mean very slow progress with the course and I'm pretty sure that would make me lose interest fast. So, yeah, I have to find a balance there between working through the course slowly enough for the material to sink in but also fast enough not to get bored.

Pisar1995.jpg