Lycopersicon - Persian & Arabic

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Re: Lycopersicon - Persian, Arabic, Latin, Italian

Postby Lycopersicon » Mon Aug 09, 2021 7:54 am

So, I’ve reached page 180 of هاري بوتر وحجر الفلسوف !

I’ve slowed down a bit due to laziness and also because it’s summer and I really, really want to spend time outdoors. I’m fortunate enough to live in a place that is to some extent both urban and rural with stunning natural sights (among which pristine glacial troughs, bucolic wine-growing villages and dozens of volcanoes) at my doorstep so the temptation is irresistible. Incidentally, I’m seeing many more foreign and domestic tourists this year, which is really exciting as it looks like we are finally getting more recognition.

Anyway, all is going well and I have to say I’m really enjoying my experience with Arabic altogether.

Coming back to my study routine, I have to say that I’m more of an intensive reader in general. I usually find myself perusing carefully and jotting down all the new words I come across, which naturally slows down the whole process.

I’ve added up about a thousand words into Anki since I’ve started reading Harry Potter. Now, not all of those aren’t necessarily new words per se. Some of them are words I’d already learnt but somehow forgot, or transparent words which are also in use in Persian but which I wanted to “highlight” for some reason. What I’m going to do is just review those words for a while, probably for two to three weeks, and then delete the whole deck.

Still working on listening comprehension, I've been listening to several episodes of the بعد ‌أمس podcast on the al jazeera website.

I’ll try to finish Harry Potter 1 this week.
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Re: Lycopersicon - Persian, Arabic, Latin, Italian

Postby Lycopersicon » Thu Aug 26, 2021 7:22 pm

I have just finished volume 1 (out of 6) of the Shahnameh. The book ends with the story of king Qobad, the founder of the Kayani dynasty of Iran. I have to say I have fallen in love with the Shahnameh and I really like how much of it there is!

The story has a somewhat slow opening as in the first forty pages or so Ferdowsi recounts the creation of the world and the reign of the first civilizing kings. The narration then really kicks off with the fall of king Jamshid and the power grab of Zahak, a rich, ambitious heir that is manipulated into murdering his own father by Ahriman, the embodiment of evil and deception. From then on, the drama reaches epic proportion with Kaveh the blacksmith demanding justice before the throne of the tyrant, arousing the people to overthrow demonic oppression.

I absolutely recommend any student of the Persian language to try and read at least a few verses. Now, it goes without saying that the language is a bit antiquated, however more advanced learners aren't really at an advantage either because the only way to become familiar with the style of Ferdowsi is, well, to read the Shahnameh.

The grammar is nearly the same as modern Persian, I would say that the most salient feature of the language of the Shahnameh is the use of circumpositions. Interestingly, circumpositions are still common in other Iranian languages such as Kurdish and Pashto but they have become entirely obsolete in Persian. You really have to get used to them. Here's an example:

به‌جمشی‌بر تیره‌گون گشت روز

/ba-jamʃid-bar tiragun gaʃt roz/
'The day grew dark upon king Jamshid'

Here, the circumposition به... بر /ba...bar/ would be rendered as just ... بر /bar.../ in modern Persian. Note that good editions will usually insert a half-space (نیم‌فاصله) between a given circumposition and the noun it combines with, which is very helpful and usually lifts any ambiguity.

Other than that, it's mostly a question of learning archaic words. There is a fair amount of simple verbs in particular that one needs to pay attention to, such as آرستن , رشتن, یازیدن, هشتن... where modern Persian prefers compound verbs. Phrasal verbs are also more common and can be a source of confusion at times. The trickiest part is that there is a number of words that are still in use today but have undergone semantic change so you really need to pay attention to the meaning of those words otherwise you will end up misinterpreting a lot of the verses. For instance برگشته /bargaʃta/ means 'came back' in modern Persian but in the Shahnameh it usually means 'toppled' and often forms a collocation with بخت /baxt/ ('luck'), which gives the meaning of 'unfortunate' (بخت‌برگشته /baxt bargaʃta/). Another good example is خواسته /xasta/ which had the meaning of 'riches' and 'wealth' at the time of Ferdowsi while it just means 'desire' in modern Persian.

Some of the verses of the Shahnameh are still not very clear anyway and debates on the correct interpretation of several passages have been going on for ages (see https://rpll.ui.ac.ir/article_22355.html for example), so this is not a work one should read expecting to understand everything. There's always an element of ambiguity, this is something that you have to accept.

For example here is a verse that left me particularly confused:

ز پیلی ژیان کَرده گوشی پَسَند
مَنِش پَست و بالا چو سَرو بُلَند


Those words are said by Salm as he blames his brother Tur for being content with a disappointing hereditament (Fereydun bequeathed the prestigious realm of Iran to his youngest son, Iraj leaving Central Asia to Tur and Rome to Salm).

I did read that line at least a dozen times but still couldn't really make any sense out of it. After consulting Jalal Khaleghi Motlagh's یادداشت‌های شاهنامه for reference (JKM's Notes on the Shahnameh are the go-to commentary that serious readers usually refer to), apparently the consensus is that it roughly means : "You could have the whole elephant for yourself but you are happy with a single ear!". :?

I'm definitely going to tackle volume 2 soon! Volume 2, 3, 4 and 5 deal with the heroic age which ends with Alexander's conquest of Iran. Volume 6 is a history of Alexander as well as the Arsacid and Sasanian dynasties up to Bahram V. I suppose the last 12 chapters will be included in a seventh volume :D

On another note, I also think it's time to work on listening comprehension a bit more... As I've mentioned before I'm sometimes not too comfortable with slangy, colloquial, spontaneous speech, especially when there are strong feelings (like when people are arguing) or speech impediments and weird accents involved. Understanding group conversations can also be a bit challenging at times. It looks like I've eventually found an Iranian series I can actually tolerate so I'll go with that one first (it's called دودکش... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWmrvM-paNY&list=PLcXjiSZtdnTdaKH5RQBMNrAEUCnqrMXqX). I can already understand a lot if not most of it, but I really really need to be able to get all the trickiest parts as well, I want to level up, if you will. That series will give me approximately 20 hours of listening in total. I guess aiming at 50 hours would be a nice goal for now. I know this is going to be extremely challenging because I really hate watching TV but I'm willing to give it a try!
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Re: Lycopersicon - Persian, Arabic, Latin, Italian

Postby Lycopersicon » Mon Oct 18, 2021 4:17 pm

Now that the season is slowly coming to a close, it might not be a bad idea to sit and reflect on the journey.

I remember I had set myself a fairly ambitious program back in January, and I think I can indeed say that I have learnt a lot and made tremendous if not unequal progress this year. In a way this is in itself a very heart-warming success. I have clearly not reached all of my objectives but this is not a huge deal for me at this point. There is still plenty of time left to work on some of them anyway.

One thing for sure is that my modest exploration of Persian literature has been transformational. The older works don’t intimidate me anymore and it looks like I have figured out a sensible way to read/study classical poetry quite comfortably. I’m definitely going to keep on doing that, albeit less intensively I would say.

I have decided to work on the Divan of Hafez next. It looks it should turn out to be a very appropriate option as I can read a poem or two whenever I feel like it, this is not narrative poetry like the Shahnameh. Interestingly enough, Hafez is an author I have been postponing forever, probably because I was overwhelmed by his mythical aura (beside the odd poem you're bound to come across occasionally as a learner of Persian, that is).

I’m terribly excited to finally tackle the Divan seriously, and I also really want to memorize as many of its verses as I can! (This might sound a bit over the top to learners whose experience is limited to Western European languages, but in Persian your cultural/linguistic proficiency can definitely be measured by your ability to quote Hafez or Saadi at the right time :lol: ).

Ok, so Arabic has been extremely challenging and I must confess I have had moments of dark hopelessness. Going through the first Harry Potter book in particular, the first hundred pages were quite testing and I think I was on the brink of burning out at some point (and of course, reading the Shahnameh at the same time didn’t help either). On the other hand, the intensity of the task really made a lot of things click language wise.

Still, I think I’m not going to commit to longer books like that for a while as I need to rejuvenate myself, which is the reason why I’ve been looking at the shorter works of Kamil Kilani, the father of Arabic young adult fiction.

https://www.hindawi.org/contributors/82737073/

I have already read أسرة السناجيب. Despite the babyish title, the content is roughly on the same level as the Harry Potter translations, which is perfect for me. Kilani’s books actually have a pedagogical element to them too as the texts are fully vocalized and the difficult terms are glossed (some of the books even include comprehension questions! that's terrific). They’re also very idiomatic, which is, of course, excellent! And most important of all, the books are fairly short (between 20 and 100 pages usually, it seems), so I won't get bored with the stories.

(By the way, I've given up on the FSI reader after realizing I don't want to read 1000 pages of diplomatic cables :lol: ).

Anyway, reading hasn’t exactly beend my priority lately. Indeed, my efforts have been mostly directed at listening comprehension and I’m thrilled to announce that all the hard work is finally starting to pay!

Let’s not forget that Arabic essentially sounded like unfathomable gibberish until midsummer. I then spent most summer trying to hear syllables and word chunks but only really managed to reach a disappointing level by late August when I realized I could laboriously catch a few phrases and glorified blocks of meanings here and there.

However, to my surprise things started to make sense more consistently a couple weeks ago. How exciting! I can now understand full paragraphs and follow arguments. I still miss words here and there, of course! that goes without saying, but I can actually turn on Al Jazeera and watch the news and understand a lot of what is being said. Listening to Arabic still requires a lot concentration from my part (otherwise there are times when I lose track of everything), so it’s still an exhausting exercise. I have to improve my overall endurance, which I suppose means I have to put in the hours, really!

So, needless to say, I try to tuck in as many hours listening to Arabic every day as I can! News anchors and street reporters are definitely easier to understand for me at this point. And then with everyone else it’s hit or miss :D

Anyway, my immediate goal is to get to a point where I’m able to understand the news and most interviews with ease. I’ll work on TV series like Harun al Rashid later.
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Re: Lycopersicon - Persian, Arabic, Latin, Italian

Postby Lycopersicon » Sun Nov 28, 2021 5:17 pm

Arabic grammar

I have dedicated some time to grammar studies in the past weeks. My go-to reference is currently A New Arabic Grammar of The Written Language (Nahmad & Haywood).

Interestingly, the grammar point that seems to constantly trip me up is subject - verb agreement. If it can be of any consolation, that and word final hamza seem to be the pet peeves of Arabic students all over the world (at least that’s what I’ve inferred when I was shifting through El Mustapha Lahali’s book How to Write in Arabic, which includes an illuminating section on common mistakes).

Apart from that, I’ve been doing quite ok with the translation exercises in general but I still need plenty of practice. I have reached lesson 17 on the imperative.

What I also like is that the authors don’t shy away from introducing some archaic grammatical structures like the energetic form quite early on. This is required knowledge for anyone that wants to read the Quran, for example (and if we’re being real, a lot of people that study MSA would probably like to read those older texts eventually), so props to them for not watering down their presentation of the language.

As expected, excellent textbook, I highly recommend it.

Listening comprehension

Listening comprehension is my top priority and it is bound to remain so for a least a full month. I don’t really have a clear goal in mind, but I would really like to get to a couple hundred hours of listening by the end of the year, which is a real challenge!

Now that I have about 85 hours under my belt, I can definitely see some improvement (you could even say it’s quite spectacular considering Arabic was still mostly gibberish back in September). I had a little breakthrough after 70 hours, which came very abruptly while I was watching episode #26 of a dubbed Turkish series (more on that below).

As a rule of thumb, I try and resort to a myriad of sources to expose myself to a broad spectrum of accents and voices. Deutsche Welle turned out to be enormously handy as the channel broadcasts documentaries about varied topics nearly all day long, which is a breath of fresh air because I can’t realistically watch the news for four hours every day. Deutsche Welle also has a program called بتوقيت برلين which I think is very well done and high quality, it’s a pleasure to watch relaxed, thorough discussions as opposed to the heated, hackneyed arguments we viewers are served on a bidaily basis on some other media.

Incidentally, the Al Jazeera and France 24 news reports are getting clearer by the day it seems, although it’s quite possible I’m merely getting used to the current issues whose relevant vocabulary tends to get constantly repeated.

And apart from that, what is really, really exciting is that I’ve discovered that the Turkish series Diriliş: Ertuğrul was dubbed into MSA rather than the usual Syrian Arabic (which, in retrospect, makes sense since it’s a historical show). This is truly amazing! The dubbing is (as always with Turkish productions) very clear and high quality which makes it ideal for intermediate learners that still find themselves flummoxed by faster, more idiomatic native Arab shows.

Only the first two seasons seem to be available on YouTube so far, but that is still tantamount to more than 130 hours of content, which is nothing short of massive.

Anyway, TV series will constitute the meat of my listening practice from now on. I plan to watch سمرقند and هارون الرشيد after I’m done with أرطغرل.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6I2-0t ... 74myv2aYnW

And here are links for سمرقند andهارون الرشير should someone be interested :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NRVFol ... iwWgs8OlRT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqzNeZa ... vn&index=1

On another note, all the auditory input has seriously demystified a lot of grammar points that I had trouble getting to grips with before. Turns out listening practice is unexpectedly complementing my grammar studies, which is nice!

Another precious ressource is the AJ+ channel on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEg4_m ... xWwzL_uh-w

It contains a lot of interesting videos featuring poet Tamim Al-Barghouti, but be warned that it’s quite advanced: the content is difficult. Most videos have subtitles though, so it’s a great learning material and you also get to engage with the culture and the literature.

Egyptian Arabic

While I did mention I started studying Egyptian Arabic a few months ago, I haven’t really written any substantial update so far. Well, I think this deserves a few explanations.

I finished the first volume of the Kallimni Arabi series (which supposedly roughly covers the A1 level) a few weeks ago and intend to get started with volume 2 by mid-December.

That might sound counter intuitive to a lot of language learners, but coming from MSA what is most challenging about the Arabic dialects is the beginner and low intermediate stages. This can be explained by the fact that as you get to a more advanced level, the language naturally shifts to a register that is nearly identical to MSA (minor several phonological adjustments, that goes without saying).

So, the real difficulty lies in acquiring the basic structures and vocabulary of the colloquial register (which are fortunately easily absorbed through sheer repetition) and getting to grips with the complex phonology of what is essentially an evolving living language (and that’s the real stumbling block, if you ask me).

I really don’t think that the grammar or the vocabulary can be considered true obstacles to even a moderately motivated student, and written Egyptian is quite readable if you know MSA. The pronunciation, though, is another matter onto itself. Egyptian is spoken much faster than MSA to begin with (which is understandable as MSA is a more deliberate register of the language).

Kalila and Dimna and Arabic literature

Another textbook I’ve been working through is Kalila wa Dimna For Students of Arabic, by Munther Younes.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the stories, some of which were getting quite sophisticated by the final chapters where the original text was seemingly less heavily adapted. Reading them has definitely reignited my interest in the book, which I have partly read in Persian (Nasrallah Monshi’s sublime translation, which is possibly one of the toughest piece of Persian prose out there by the way).

In passing, this was also a great book to gain familiarity with rare animal names, as you are taught words like ‘male turtle’ (غَيلَم) or ‘lioness’ (لَبوة), as well as a rarer term for cat (سِنّور as opposed to the more common قط) and two synonyms for jackal (ابن آوى and شَبغَر).

Speaking of which, Arabic reputedly has dozens of words for camels, besides the generic term جَمَل (which in reality designates a male dromedary, if I'm not mistaken). Some other words I know are إبل (camels as a general entity, such as camels within a herd), بَعير (a camel regardless of its gender), طِبز (a Bactrian camel), and دُهامِج (another name of the Bactrian camel). Of course, as you already know, Bactrian camels are endowed with two humps (سَنامان).

Anyway, I’m going to keep studying from intermediate/advanced readers because it’s just so much more convenient having all the difficult vocabulary glossed and explained… and needless to say, I also hope that this will make the transition to authentic, unadapt literature as smooth as possible. There are plenty of such textbooks, so might as well reap the fruit of the scholarly craze that has surrounded Arabic in the last two decades.

My next learning companion will be Stories from One Thousand and One Nights, by Ghada Buluan. It’s entirely in Arabic and what’s really cool about it is that contains a lot of discussion material about the excerpts (which are adapted but not censored…). I’m not sure if I will do the writing assignments though… it’s quite tempting but I shouldn’t lose sight of my other priorities.

Well, that was a huge update! But then, I’m sort of treating my Arabic studies like a full-time job these days. See you in a month or two :D
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Re: Lycopersicon - Persian, Arabic, Latin, Italian

Postby Lycopersicon » Thu Dec 09, 2021 2:28 pm

While I was reading In Search of the Lost Orient last night, I came across an amusing instance of undiagnosed polyitis, which came as a glaring illustration of Professor Arguelles’ latest intervention. So, here is what Olivier Roy, the author of the book, says about his experience with foreign languages:

Actually, I had been preparing this trip for two years. In the summer of 1968, after one year of hypokhâgne at Louis-le-Grand, I had hitchhiked to Turkey, and as soon as I got back I had made up my mind to prepare “the grand tour,” a longer hitchhiking journey the following spring to Afghanistan. While preparing for the competitive exam to get into Normale sup’ and for the “revolution” (keep in mind May ’68 had just happened), I bought myself a copy of Teach Yourself Persian (it was a Penguin book—there was no French equivalent) and in the evening in my dorm room after eleven p.m., I studied Persian without the slightest idea of the pronunciation because the book didn’t come with records, and besides I didn’t have a turntable and cassettes didn’t exist yet. The Persian spoken in Afghanistan is the same Persian that’s spoken in Iran with few differences like those that separate Québec French from French in France. Even though I’ve never spoken any language very well, I’ve always been fascinated by all languages. In fact, I used to jump at any opportunity to begin a new language, even though I’d usually drop it once it started getting too complicated. With every language, I got stuck on one particular thing—in Kurdish and Pashto it was ergative constructions, in Turkish it was deverbal nouns, and in Italian the conditional tense!


He’s being modest, though. I’m pretty sure he speaks Persian very well.

And here is another remark of the same author which I found was particularly thought-provoking. Roy alludes to something that is oftentimes overlooked by language learners: body language, as in gestures, attitudes, posture, and all the subtle ways in which you present yourself in your physical environment.

Interestingly enough, Roy was already relatively proficient in Persian at the time of the anecdote. The point he makes is that Persian being a lingua franca that is shared by a variety of peoples scattered across middle Eurasia, native speakers aren’t usually suspicious of odd-sounding accents. Rather, what really betrays outsiders, according to Roy, is body language. I think this is a truly fascinating observation.

Oliver Roy was trying to leave war-torn Afghanistan and cross the Pakistani border with his former wife Chantal. The Mujahideen that escorted them offered to forge an identity certificate for him while his partner was to travel under the cover of a burqa.

Yes, and we faced a new problem then: how to get across the border, especially with Chantal. They proposed that she put on a burka and that I present myself as an Afghan refugee. They made fake papers for me—Madame didn’t need any. I was given a mujahideen card that turned me into an Afghan refugee: Daoud Safdar. As a Sunni joke, I was declared a Shiite. We crossed the border and the customs and police checkpoints with a group of Afghan refugees—Chantal in her burka and me as an Afghan, with instructions to not speak any French. In short, we had completely gone through the looking glass. We weren’t just supposed to pretend; we had to interiorize the rules of behavior, attitudes, a way of looking, walking, bending over, remaining impassive, eyes on the ground. The route back was complicated. We were treated very well, but we needed bribes for the slightly corrupt Pakistani police, which was nothing new, in fact. We traveled in crowded trucks and slept at inns. But for Chantal in her burka, it wasn’t just a problem of toilets and keeping clean, but also a challenge at mealtime that required her to face a wall that allowed her to lift her burka. These were the ordinary things of life that one doesn’t understand until one is inside and that inscribe one in a world of codes and gestures that one ends up interiorizing.

Once again I became aware of the importance of body language. The problem wasn’t the regular language—there are so many different Persian accents that ours did not stand out. The foreigners were identifiable mostly from their body language.


Roy also recounts a real-life (if somewhat tragic) example of language acquisition through immersion:

In the Panjshir valley in 1985, I met an eighteen-year-old Soviet soldier, Leonid, who had been captured only weeks after being sent to Afghanistan. He was Moldavian and spoke French. He was dressed like an Afghan, circulated apparently at will throughout the valley, spoke with local people, and took meals with families. He had learned Persian and converted to Islam—and with total sincerity because he would remain Muslim even after his return home ten years later. He had become a sort of mascot in the valley, but he didn’t have the right to leave it.


Anyway, I’ve reached the 120 hours mark with Arabic. That’s a lot of listening and I have to say that it’s been testing to say the least. I’m getting impatient but I’m also extremely determined to keep ploughing through whatever happens. I’m not sure I’ll be able to reach my goal of 200 hours by the end of the year, although in theory I can still make it if I dedicate about 3 hours and 30 minutes each day to listening.

Coming back to Persian, I have heard about a very exciting zoom reading group about Jami’s Joseph and Zulaikha. I’d really love to participate! That would be an amazing opportunity really, because Jami’s major inspiration was Nezami’s Haft Peykar and I love Nezami.

https://cmrs.ucla.edu/event/from-mediev ... Fq9ooa2xsM

I’ve decided to read Nezami’s Leyli and Majnun to further prepare for the reading group, just in case my application is accepted. I’ll try to finish the book in a week, which means I should read about 40 pages a day.
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Re: Lycopersicon - Persian, Arabic, Latin, Italian

Postby Herodotean » Fri Dec 10, 2021 6:20 pm

Reading through your wonderfully engrossing log might have just inspired me to learn Persian . . .
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Re: Lycopersicon - Persian, Arabic, Latin, Italian

Postby Lycopersicon » Sat Jan 01, 2022 7:23 pm

So, I’ve reached the 160 hours mark with Arabic. Fell short of my initial objective of 200 hours of listening but it’s alright, I’ll be done by the end of January.

I haven’t done much studying these last two weeks to tell the truth, so I haven’t finished the Layla and Majnun book and the Divan of Hafez yet.

Anyway, my parents offered me a copy of ‘With Our Own Hands’, which is a cookbook on the food culture of the Pamiri peoples of Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

It’s a fantastic book that contains dozens of authentic, traditional recipes, as well as a wealth of information about medicinal herbs, local agricultural practices, stories and testimonies. It conveys life in the Pamir as it has essentially been for hundreds of years in a very convincing and realistic manner. The photography is also stunning and informative.

The book is bilingual. It is written in both English and Persian, with the Persian text presented in both the Cyrillic and the Perso-Arabic alphabets. A lot of Shughni, Wakhi and Roshani words and expressions are also peppered throughout the text.

My immediate conclusion is that this book is mandatory reading for anyone learning Persian or any other neighboring language.

I am not saying this lightly, you really should have a look at it.

One has to experience that cultural depth.

And again, the Pamir is but a tiny part of the Persianate world, so you can only imagine the complexity of the living civilization that you are exposing yourself to when you study such a language.

Here is an interview of one of the authors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xp-2hIHtl14.

My program for the next few weeks will be to keep on focusing on Arabic listening and go through the Dari and Tajiki parts of the cookbook.

I will definitely try and prepare some of the recipes, starting with guzkharvo / گوزخروا / ғӯзхарво, literally walnut potage (in Shughni, I believe).

You simply crush a cup of walnuts into a paste which you then boil in a liter of water until the soup becomes milky. Before serving, add in a flour slurry, approximately a half cup (don’t forget to let the flour cook for a few minutes, though). Of course, the quality of the ingredients is of paramount importance. Pamiri cooks typically favour heirloom grain and fruit varieties that are specific to their valleys if not villages, which explains why the recipes can only be roughly approximated abroad.

As an agriculturist, I am very enthusiastic about the traditional way of life of the various Iranian peoples. The agricultural heritage of the Pamir is more relevant than ever today, and it is bound to nourish my own personal reflections on how we could cope with our changing times.

Oh and since we're talking about the Pamir, let me also suggest you listen to this beautiful Ismaili munojot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=-QTADWWOLfY. The poem in question is attributed to Rumi and sung in Tajiki.

نه من بیهوده گرد کوچه و بازار می گردم
نه من بیهوده گرد کوچه و بازار می گردم
مذاج عاشقی دارم پی دیدار میگردم
خدایا رحم کن بر من پریشان وار می گردم
خطاکارم گناهکارم به حال زار می گردم
شراب شوق می نوشم به گرد یار می گردم
سخن مستانه می گویم ولی هوشیار می گردم
گهی خندم گهی گریم گهی افتم گهی خیزم
مسیحا در دلم پیدا و من بیمار می گردم
بیا جانا عنایت کن تو مولانای رومی را
غلام شمس تبریزم قلندروار می گردم
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Re: Lycopersicon - Persian, Arabic, Latin, Italian

Postby Lycopersicon » Tue Jan 25, 2022 12:03 am

I reached my goal for listening practice last week. I have made so much progress in barely three months, it’s absolutely incredible what 200 hours of focused practice can do. I think I can say I have reached a point where I can follow most MSA media with relative ease. That was simply unthinkable back in October! MSA TV series are very comprehensible at this point too, but I still occasionally miss lines.

Most importantly, I have managed to overcome my apprehension with regards to native level spoken language in general, which I realize was something that had been holding me back for years.

I haven’t mentioned it yet, but a fair share of my progress should be attributed to Anki and the diligent review routine which I have been able to maintain in the last months. While I rage-uninstalled Anki last summer, I eventually came back to reason and decided to implement a new strategy.

The rationale was that I should try and maintain several smaller decks of a few hundred cards each so that the daily reviews feel more digestible. October still turned out apocalyptic though, because once again I went over the top and added too many cards at once. I think I did close to 1500 reviews a day for several weeks in a row. Somehow, I’ve still managed to plough through and it looks like the dust has finally settled. On average, I get about 200 daily reviews at this point, for a total of approximately 5500 cards.

Here are some of my plans for the coming months:

- Do 50 more hours of MSA listening practice (about 3 more series), because there’s still room for improvement!

Actually, I don’t think those MSA series are an ideal tool for students because they come with a very steep learning curve. The language can be somewhat archaic and most importantly, there are a lot of advanced cultural references, sometimes even direct quotes from the Quran, the Hadith literature and poetry lines (for example, there is a scene in المهلب بن أبي صفرة where poet Jarir ibn Atiyah recites a panegyric to caliph Abd al-Malik).

In a way, you really need to be at least passingly familiar with early Islamic history and civilization… which is a very ambitious program in and on itself as it supposes that you are able to catch Arabian tribe names on the fly or that you can comprehend Islamic terminology. Knowing the geography also definitely helps (where are Dibba, Taif and Kufa… ?).

I suppose it would be completely reasonable to just focus on regular TV shows like documentaries and other non-fiction programs if your priority is to prepare for a language exam, for example. An alternative strategy could be to focus on historical Turkish series because those are dubbed into a simpler, more contemporary MSA register.

- Finish A New Arabic Grammar and the One Thousand and One Nights reader.

- Work through Ernest T. Abd el Masih’s intermediate course for Egyptian Arabic, A Comprehensive Study of Egyptian Arabic.
o learn all of the 275 Egyptian idioms included in volume 2 of Abd el Masih’s course
o go through the thematic vocabulary lists in volume 4 of Abd el Masih’s course and pick up all the words that differ from MSA

I have also made an Anki deck for Egyptian Arabic. It contains approximately 400 terms and expressions which I selected based on my needs. The good news is that I can already more or less chit chat in the dialect and just use a watered down version of MSA to fill in the gaps of my knowledge. Nonetheless, watching Egyptian TV series is still very challenging.

- Start extensive reading, which I am incredibly excited about. Contemporary Arabic literature is just so vast!

I started reading Ahlam Mosteghanemi’s Memory of Flesh (ذاكرة الجسد) yesterday. I’m 120 pages in and whilst the author’s poetical style can get a bit confusing for a beginner like me at times, the vocabulary hasn’t been too overwhelming.

I’m also trying to get into the habit of listening to Andalusian muwashshah music more intently. It will hopefully prove to be a good introduction to classical Arabic. Actually, I followed the same strategy with Persian and listened to loads of classical Iranian and Afghan music and I have to say that it REALLY made a difference with the poetry, because you really need to internalize the rhythm of the language, as it were.
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Lycopersicon
Yellow Belt
Posts: 53
Joined: Sat Jan 16, 2021 8:17 am
Location: Issoire
Languages: French (N), English, Persian, Italian, Latin
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16534
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Re: Lycopersicon - Persian, Arabic, Latin, Italian

Postby Lycopersicon » Sun Feb 06, 2022 8:57 am

Just a quick post to evoke a topic that occasionally raises interest among Persian learners.

The Ferdowsi University of Mashhad has updated the web portal of its teaching center for Persian as a foreign language and lo and behold, there is an entire page dedicated to the famously obscure Standard Persian Language Proficiency Test / آزمون جامع زبان فارسی.

http://ctpl.um.ac.ir/index.php?option=c ... 18&lang=fa

It seems that the exam is primarily aimed at prospective students that want to enrol at an Iranian university, but they might actually accept private candidates too (I haven't mailed them).

The exam regulations state that 60 points out of a total of 80 are needed to pass (which I suppose corresponds to a high B2 or a low C1 level, I’m not exactly sure).

Anyway, the school has also uploaded a few mock exams, which I think could be a great resource for people who are looking to self-evaluate (unfortunately, they haven’t made the sound files for the listening comprehension tasks available).

http://ctpl.um.ac.ir/images/258/hamayesh/555.pdf

http://ctpl.um.ac.ir/images/258/1400/0000.pdf
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Lycopersicon
Yellow Belt
Posts: 53
Joined: Sat Jan 16, 2021 8:17 am
Location: Issoire
Languages: French (N), English, Persian, Italian, Latin
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16534
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Re: Lycopersicon - Persian, Arabic, Latin, Italian

Postby Lycopersicon » Mon Oct 03, 2022 4:28 pm

Whilst I’d planned to study Egyptian Arabic from Abdel-Massih, I have ended up using Kalaam Gamiil instead.

I can now say I have finally found my go-to learning resource for Egyptian. The lay-out is clear (the disastrous content organization was what had put me off Kallimni Arabi in the first place), and the grammar sections are clear and to-the-point, from what I’ve been able to see.

There’s the fact that Kalaam Gamiil was primarily designed for learners with previous knowledge of MSA, too, so it’s not as dumbed-down as Kallimni Arabi.

Once I’m done with it, I suppose I will just watch a lot of Egyptian TV. I’ve actually already started following a couple مسلسلات like عزمي و اشجان and الحالة ج, although not very extensively… (and I have to confess that I picked those very randomly on YouTube, so they might not be particularly interesting or suited to learners).

And since we’re talking about listening comprehension, I came across a fantastic channel a couple days ago: https://www.youtube.com/c/EgyRadio. They have hundreds of Egyptian and Standard Arabic radio dramas, including a very exciting 30 hours long One Thousand and One Nights series.

With all that said, however, I’m in no hurry with Egyptian Arabic. It’s still not a very high priority for me at the moment, despite my ever-increasing interest in the language and all its fascinating quirks.

Anyway, I have managed to maintain regular contact with MSA with the occasional news article / TV shows. I have also finally finished the Algerian novel I had started reading eons ago as well as the One Thousand Nights reader.

I have decided to ignore A New Arabic Grammar of the Written Language, for the most part, as I didn’t feel like working on those finicky grammar points, quite honestly. My grammar needs a lot of work, though (and yes, I am still at an utter loss when it comes to hamza seats).

So, besides Ahlam Mostaghanemi’s novel, I also read السندباد البحري and علاء الدين by Kamel Kilani, as well as عروس فرغانة ,فتح الأندلس and فتاة القيروان by Jorji Zaydan. I am currently going through العباسة أخت الرشيد, by the same author. Apparently, these novels constitute some of the very first examples of Arabic historical fiction as they date back to the late 19th century.

So far, my impression is that the books make for excellent reading for learners past a high intermediate level. One gets to practice reading advanced Arabic without being overwhelmed by the formal complexities of high-brow literature.

Anyway, it looks like I’m going to reach the 1900 pages mark quite soon (not counting graded readers and online material). Nothing very impressive, of course, but I’m not unhappy to see I might eventually be on the proverbial right track, given how impenetrable Arabic literature is!

Once I’m done with the story of Abbasa bint al-Mahdi, I plan to read بساتين عربستان , which is a fantasy novel from Saudi Arabia.

Not much reading to speak of as far as Persian is concerned, besides a few glimpses at Abu Hamed Ghazali’s magnus opus, کیمیای سعادت, but I’m definitely going to read more modern/contemporary stuff this winter (looking at خانوم by Masoud Behnoud in particular).

Apart from that, I’ve been following a daily regimen of colloquial Afghan Persian listening, with a heavy focus on fast-paced comedy and street interviews. My main resources have been شبکه خنده (https://www.youtube.com/c/ShabakeKhanda
) and Toot (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA4Trw ... OFC8ho6vJA).

Plenty of conversation practice with friends, too.

Earlier this spring, I ended up deciding to pick up touristy Turkish. I didn’t have anything overly ambitious in mind, and still don’t, as I only just really wanted to be able to use the language reasonably efficiently in the country.

This little project is almost over now, as I’m about to start Yeni İstanbul B2 (and I don’t plan to tackle C level materials any time soon). It’s my first time using a CEFR-graded textbook and I have to say I’m pretty happy with it, overall. Turkish really makes one feel spoiled, Turkish books are just so cheap and easy to source here in Western Europe.

I got started with the Assimil Turkish course. I can say I absolutely swear by it now, and I found that the content was very well-graded in general.

Besides Assimil, I have also enormously benefited from the Türkçe Öğreniyoruz series, of which I completed the first three volumes (there are six books in total, and the last two volumes are essentially C level readers), so that already gives me close to 450 pages of extensive reading in Turkish!

I’ll be more than happy with robust, not too terrible, low-advanced non-fiction reading skills and a shaky if honorable conversational ability in the medium term.
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