Studying the Islamicate Languages in 2023 (Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu)

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bolaobo
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Studying the Islamicate Languages in 2023 (Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu)

Postby bolaobo » Sat Jan 07, 2023 4:15 pm

Happy 2023, everyone!

This is essentially a continuation of my previous log, so I won't be saying much in way of introduction, but I thought I'd make a new thread since my focuses and goals have changed considerably. Given how fickle my interests tend to be, this could become a yearly occurrence so I'm titling this thread 2023.

I'm an experienced language learner, but my interest in the Middle East is relatively recent, so none of the languages are where I want them to be. I have a lot of work to do. So I plan on spending this year improving all of them, but I won't completely ignore my other languages and I'll probably touch them on occasion to keep them fresh.

I'm using the term Islamicate as coined by Marshall Hodgson


There has been, however, a culture, centered on a lettered tradition, which has been historically distinctive of Islamdom the society, and which has been naturally shared in by both Muslims and non-Muslims who participate at all fully in the society of Islamdom. For this, I have used the adjective 'Islamicate'. I thus restrict the term 'Islam' to the religion of the Muslims, not using that term for the far more general phenomena, the society of Islamdom and its Islamicate cultural traditions.…


I'm not a Muslim, and my interest extends beyond theology, so I feel this is an apposite term to describe my current interest in the region. In terms of the relevant languages, I would rank them in the following order in terms of overall importance, culturally and historically. There's other languages too, of course, but these are the big 5

Arabic > Persian >> Turkish >> Urdu > Indonesian/Malay

Arabic is a no-brainer. Persian also exerted a ton of influence from as west as the Ottoman Empire and as east as India. Arabic and Persian are the big two, and my focus for the present year.

Turkish is important for Central Asia, the Ottoman Empire, and current geopolitical importance of Turkey. I would say it's slightly less important than Persian but still not one I'm willing to ignore.

Urdu is of a more peripheral importance, but I've already studied Hindi quite a bit and I'm interested in India. Given how close it is to Hindi and how much influence Persian has had on it, not to mention hundreds of millions of speakers, Hindustani is a no-brainer as well. Urdu is my strongest of the above languages, solely because I've studied Hindi for years. But my vocabulary is severely lacking and I'm not reading Urdu as fast as Devanagari.

Indonesian is even more secondary in importance than Urdu, and I have no plans to study it this year, but maybe someday. It's not that I have no interest in it, but there's just no time. Unlike Arabic, I don't think it's a enormous task and I pick it up later if I so desire.

The languages in the title will be the ones I'm mainly studying via beginner textbooks. I will continue to improve my French, German, and Spanish via reading and Clozemaster. As for Japanese, I'll work on it slightly but my main goal is to just maintain. Chinese maintains itself daily. As for my weaker languages, like Russian and Latin, I will do just enough to keep them from disappearing in my brain (at least 5 minutes a day, more from time to time)

Thank you for reading my log and good luck with all of your language goals!

Here is my first progress update, which is usually at the beginning of the log but this introduction is an exception.

I finished Le Persan Sans Peine L53 and Le Japonais Sans Peine L93

Clozemaster: 794 day streak, 16,805 mastered sentences, Italiano from Español to level 47, Español from Français to level 56, Español from Deutsch to level 85, 中文 (Traditional) from English to level 53, Français from 中文 to level 68, Latina from English to level 31, 日本語 from English to level 72
20 x
Perfectionnement Arabe: 11 / 70 New Arabic Grammar: 30 / 51
Le Grec Ancien: 15 / 101
Hindi ohne Mühe: 44 / 54
Le Persan: 85 / 86
Le Turc: 19 / 71
Tobira: 3 / 15

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Re: Studying the Islamicate Languages in 2023 (Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu)

Postby fromaalborg » Sun Jan 08, 2023 1:03 pm

Happy 2023 to you.

I was not previous familiar with the term "islamicate". Sounds useful.
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Saim
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Re: Studying the Islamicate Languages in 2023 (Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu)

Postby Saim » Thu Jan 12, 2023 12:59 pm

Cool plans! I've also dabbled in a lot of these languages and am only now just getting serious about Arabic. I've also been going through Le persan sans peine, albeit slowly since it's not a major focus for me.

bolaobo wrote:Arabic > Persian >> Turkish >> Urdu > Indonesian/Malay


In terms of vocabulary, I see Malay as somewhat "peripherally" Islamicate compared to the other three. When I dabbled in the language I was surprised to see so many Sanskritisms in common use (sudah, warna, antarbangsa — more than in Urdu for sure!) and the comparative lack of Arabic loans.
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bolaobo
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Re: Studying the Islamicate Languages in 2023 (Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu)

Postby bolaobo » Fri Jan 13, 2023 1:36 pm

Saim wrote:Cool plans! I've also dabbled in a lot of these languages and am only now just getting serious about Arabic. I've also been going through Le persan sans peine, albeit slowly since it's not a major focus for me.

bolaobo wrote:Arabic > Persian >> Turkish >> Urdu > Indonesian/Malay


In terms of vocabulary, I see Malay as somewhat "peripherally" Islamicate compared to the other three. When I dabbled in the language I was surprised to see so many Sanskritisms in common use (sudah, warna, antarbangsa — more than in Urdu for sure!) and the comparative lack of Arabic loans.


Good luck with your plans! Le Persan Sans Peine, as I've said, is a great book, although sometimes the learning curve almost a little too slow and they'll explain the same grammar point multiple times.

Arabic is definitely a beast and requires a lot of dedication. I feel like I'm studying several different languages at once when you consider the literary Arabic, spoken MSA, and colloquial Arabic all have significant differences.

Good to know that my suspicions about Malay were correct. It might be worth studying in its own right someday, but it doesn't fit well into my current plans.

STT44 wrote:I'm curious about this bit. Is it the nashtaliq font that's giving you trouble? Because you didn't mention a problem with the Arabic script.


Nastaliq is part of it, but I have much more practice with Devanagari so it's just more familiar to me. The lack of vowels also means my brain needs to do extra work that I don't have to do with Devanagari although I'm getting better at recognizing patterns.
2 x
Perfectionnement Arabe: 11 / 70 New Arabic Grammar: 30 / 51
Le Grec Ancien: 15 / 101
Hindi ohne Mühe: 44 / 54
Le Persan: 85 / 86
Le Turc: 19 / 71
Tobira: 3 / 15

bolaobo
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Re: Studying the Islamicate Languages in 2023 (Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu)

Postby bolaobo » Mon Jan 16, 2023 10:52 pm

I finished L'Arabe L47, Speaking Arabic L16, Le Turc Sans Peine L4-L6 and Le Persan L54

Clozemaster: Level 172, 803 day streak, Français from Deutsch to level 89, 中文 from English to level 66, 日本語 from English to level 73, Italiano from Español to level 47, हिन्दी from English to level 103, 中文 (Traditional) from English to level 54

As you can tell, my Levantine Arabic progress has slowed. It's just not a priority right now and my focus is literary Arabic, although I'm still working on it slowly.

Persian is still kind of boring, but I have to pay my dues before I get into more advanced material. At the very least, the easy lessons are a nice break from Arabic and I can practice my Nastaliq.

I'm really close to finishing the latest A New Arabic Grammar. The grammar supplement has helped a ton, and the next chapter is the subjunctive, which Assimil hasn't covered yet. The two separate textbooks at once essentially halves my progress rate, but I'm OK with that as I'm aiming for a comprehensive understanding of the grammar.

Speaking of multiple textbooks, I'm thinking about adding Ottoman-Turkish Conversation Grammar by V. H. Hagopian. I'm hesitating because I don't want to spread my efforts too thin, but sometimes I have questions about Ottoman Turkish orthography and don't want my cards to use the wrong spelling. Without a doubt, Assimil Turkish won't be enough to get to the level I want, so it's just a question of when I should add the second track. In any case, this textbook seems like absolutely the best. It reminds me of A New Arabic Grammar with its many exercises and teaching style, and its focus on colloquial speech (from 1907!) reminds me a bit of Assimil. The Routledge Introduction to Literary Ottoman, on the other hand, is too academic with not enough exercises and way too much crammed in each chapter

Putting all of the sentences into Arabic script has forced me to be more aware of the vowel harmony / suffixes since the vowels aren't written. For recognition cards in Latin script I tend to just cheat and ignore it but one benefit of my dual cards is it forces me to actually learn the rules and not go on auto-pilot.


In any case, I'm enjoying myself. Arabic/Persian/Urdu/Turkish all complement each other in different ways, and I enjoy seeing a word I learned in one turn up in another. I'm looking forward to slowly working through these this year!

On a completely different topic, it's a little crazy what happened to Japanese. I went through almost two whole Assimil textbooks (vol 1 and 2) / 700 pages in a short period of time (as well as other studying) but somewhere along the line my motivations changed. I don't know if it's Japanese itself or just being more interested in other languages at the moment, but it just goes to show that motivations can change quite unexpectedly. I still would like to get to the level where I'm capable of understanding modern media (at least in written form) but it's going to have to wait. Absent a huge change in my interests, I'll be content with just a middling level where I can "cheat" a bit with my Chinese character knowledge. I don't regret what I have learned and it's been rewarding in its own way.
11 x
Perfectionnement Arabe: 11 / 70 New Arabic Grammar: 30 / 51
Le Grec Ancien: 15 / 101
Hindi ohne Mühe: 44 / 54
Le Persan: 85 / 86
Le Turc: 19 / 71
Tobira: 3 / 15

bolaobo
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Re: Studying the Islamicate Languages in 2023 (Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu)

Postby bolaobo » Mon Jan 23, 2023 11:04 pm

I finished Le Turc Sans Peine L7, Le Persan L55 and L56 (review), and A New Arabic Grammar Chapter 14.

Clozemaster: Français from 中文 to level 69, Italiano from Español to level 48, Español from Français to level 57

My motivation has stayed relatively constant with the Islamicate languages, with very little motivation to dabble elsewhere. Good sign for the future. But I spend so much time reviewing each day that I barely get time to go over new material sometimes. It feels bad, but I know from experience that it's important. Anki's forecast shows reviews going down pretty significantly starting next week, but it never seems to materialize unless I add zero cards and don't fail many new cards. We'll see what happens. It's not something I spend too much time stressing over because, as I've said, Anki is basically self-regulating. If I add too many cards, reviews get longer and I don't have time to add more cards, until it equalizes again. That's why I like Anki so much.

I'm still enjoying Turkish, and haven't added a dedicated Ottoman resource, although I occasionally check Ottoman-Turkish Conversation Grammar for an orthographic reference. Figuring out how to spell the Turkish words in Ottoman script is an exercise in itself, and helps me memorize the Assimil sentences. For converting from modern script to Ottoman, my resources have been Wiktionary, which is actually excellent in this regard, and this site.

Figuring out the consonants for a word is mostly self-explanatory (with some exceptions as Ottoman prefers historic spelling) but figuring out how to mark vowels is more complicated. Ottoman-Turkish Conversation Grammar prefers a spelling that leans towards "full" spelling (think modern Hebrew) where many vowels are marked with vāv, he, ye, alif, unless it's a Persian/Arabic word or a suffix governed by vowel harmony. This seems to be the trend in the late empire, but not earlier texts, where vowels are less commonly marked even for native Turkish words.

I could just use the full spelling where I mark vowels in native Turkish words whenever possible, but as usual, I want to make things harder for myself, and want to get used to reading both ways. So my cards use a mix of spellings. This sounds quite chaotic, but Ottoman spelling itself is chaotic. Another good resource is, believe it or not, Google Books, which has digitized a lot of old Ottoman documents, and doing searches for strings reveals just how inconsistent spelling really is. I can take a single word, spell it different ways, and return results for multiple variants!
12 x
Perfectionnement Arabe: 11 / 70 New Arabic Grammar: 30 / 51
Le Grec Ancien: 15 / 101
Hindi ohne Mühe: 44 / 54
Le Persan: 85 / 86
Le Turc: 19 / 71
Tobira: 3 / 15

bolaobo
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Re: Studying the Islamicate Languages in 2023 (Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu)

Postby bolaobo » Sat Feb 04, 2023 11:18 pm

I finished Le Turc Sans Peine L8, Le Persan L57, and L'Arabe L48.

Clozemaster: Deutsch from English to level 154, Italiano from Español to level 50, 中文 from English to level 67, العربية from Français to level 31, Italiano from Español to level 49, Español from Français to level 58

Gone are the days where I'm knocking out an average of a lesson a day or even half a lesson a day. But it's not due to lack of study. The fact that lessons have gotten more advanced, the previous reviews keep piling up, and the fact that I aim to absolutely master each lesson, all combine to slow my study considerably. I'm a little frustrated, to tell you the truth, but I can feel myself improving and that's what matters, along with the fact that I'm having fun!

Another confounding factor is Clozemaster. As of now, I'm almost solely maintaining. I only do my reviews each day and my rule is to add 5 new sentences to that particular language pairing if the daily review count is 0. This keeps my streak and the language pairing alive. But even that little amount of effort takes time to maintain since I'm up to 17,562 sentences and most of those have not been marked as 100% mastered (removed from queue). I think Clozemaster helps a lot so I will probably keep doing it (it's low-intensity study; I don't grade myself as strictly as I do Anki) but I will be monitoring it and cutting it loose if I find it's not helpful enough to justify the time spent.

Thanks to Clozemaster, though, I'm getting a lot of practice with German, Chinese, Japanese and the romance languages. So I'm not feeling like I'm slacking off despite not doing new Assimil lessons and I can keep those languages fresh in my mind while putting my hardcore study into the Islamicate languages.

I've gotten more intelligent when putting exercises into Anki. I don't put an exercise into Anki when it's so easy I feel like I know it 100% already despite not having seen it before. I used to put everything in for extra practice. On the flip side, if I see an exercise that is a little easy, but one that could be modified to test something new, I modify the sentence using a synonym, a different grammatical structure, a plural, etc..

For example, when Le Hindi throws another repetitive exercise at me that I'm mostly comfortable with, I'll look up the equivalent Sanskrit/Persian (whichever one needs more practice) synonym and put that into it instead. For Arabic, I'll convert the singular to a broken plural, a masculine to a feminine, etc. I only do this, of course, when I'm using TTS and not native recorded audio. This process is helping, and the process of "changing" the exercise gets me direct grammar practice and helps drill new vocabulary. It's especially helpful for Arabic broken plurals of which there are so many.
6 x
Perfectionnement Arabe: 11 / 70 New Arabic Grammar: 30 / 51
Le Grec Ancien: 15 / 101
Hindi ohne Mühe: 44 / 54
Le Persan: 85 / 86
Le Turc: 19 / 71
Tobira: 3 / 15

bolaobo
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=19845
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Re: Studying the Islamicate Languages in 2023 (Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu)

Postby bolaobo » Thu Feb 16, 2023 2:27 pm

I finished Le Turc Sans Peine L9, Le Hindi / Hindi ohne Mühe L40, Speaking Eastern Arabic L17, L'arabe L49, and finished intensively going through the story عقل کے دشمن from the Panchatantra in Gopi Chand Narang's Readings in Literary Urdu Prose

Clozemaster: Level 173, 中文 (Traditional) from English to level 56, Français from Deutsch to level 90, 日本語 from English to level 76, Italiano from Español to level 51

Quite the mix of languages this cycle, but recently I've been enjoying Arabic and Hindustani the most. I can feel the work in Arabic slowly paying off and in the newest Assimil Arabic lessons I'm seeing fewer newer words, fewer failures in Anki, and the things that are new I'm learning quicker and recognizing patterns.

I'm enjoying Turkish too, but I'm limited in terms of how much time and I have to be content with a little bit each day, which in the long run has been helpful in getting exposure. I wish I could focus on it more but my priorities are elsewhere and Turkish isn't going anywhere.

Even though I should probably just finish the damn Assimil course, I enjoy the Urdu reader and it's been helpful. I haven't decided how much time I'll spend with it but the short stories are a nice break from Assimil's dialogue style. I started the next story in it but I intensively (and I mean INTENSIVELY) read and put everything into Anki if there's even the slightest doubt/hesitation so it'll take some time. There's also no answer key, which I usually hate, but so far I've been able to figure it out.

In terms of intensive vs extensive, I'm capable of extensively reading in German, French, and Chinese, but the rest just aren't there yet. In the aforementioned three, the focus is on extensive but I'll occasionally switch to intensive for very difficult material or new subjects. When I read on the computer, it's usually intensive since it's much easier to make Anki cards but on the phone it's almost always extensive.

Besides the usual study, I'm starting to look at the Qur'an, which is still obviously above my level but much more approachable than it used to be with a dictionary and good translation. Memorizing certain verses and just reading through it has been helpful without increasing my Anki workload. I'm focusing on the opening, the Throne Verse, and the surahs starting from the back, which are much shorter and memorable in terms of style than the Medinan ones.
8 x
Perfectionnement Arabe: 11 / 70 New Arabic Grammar: 30 / 51
Le Grec Ancien: 15 / 101
Hindi ohne Mühe: 44 / 54
Le Persan: 85 / 86
Le Turc: 19 / 71
Tobira: 3 / 15

bolaobo
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Re: Studying the Islamicate Languages in 2023 (Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu)

Postby bolaobo » Sun Feb 26, 2023 2:45 pm

I finished Le Persan Sans Peine L58, L'Arabe L50, Le Turc Sans Peine L10, Speaking Eastern Arabic L18, and A New Arabic Grammar Chapter 15

Clozemaster: Over 1,000,000 score in Deutsch / English, Italiano from Español to level 53, Русский from Español to level 30, Español from Français to level 61, Latina from English to level 35, 中文 from English to level 68, Français from 中文 to level 71, 844 day streak

The past few Assimil lessons for Turkish have been a little silly, especially this latest one. It's heavily focused on tourist-y phrases, proper nouns, food, and set phrases. L10 had me learning words like 'shrimp', 'lobster', 'bass', 'turbot', 'watermelon', and 'red mullet'. Fortunately, the next lesson (11) looks to be more normal in terms of progression and vocabulary. I think they just wanted to satisfy the people just learning basic Turkish for a trip to Istanbul!

It's getting increasingly tempting to take another language to the active stage. As you know, for all of my exercises, I put them in as passive-only, because passive is just so much more useful and easier to maintain. I'm also quite indecisive and can't decide which language I care to go to that amount of effort for.

As of now, if I were to pick one language to add to my repertoire alongside English and Chinese, it would probably be MSA. Yes, no one speaks it natively, but I'm different like that. My eventual goal would be understand dialects but respond in MSA, perhaps gradually making my speech more natural as I get used to it. But I'll probably still wait a bit longer because it would make my slow progress even slower and I'm still getting some active practice by being forced to recall vowels and word endings in Anki.

It would be easy enough to start getting production practice using Cloze deletion cards in Anki, but it could quickly get overwhelming and affect my workload, so I have to carefully plan out any major changes to my studying. I'm really hesitant to start adding full sentences to actively recall in Anki because from my experience, it can lead to burn-out quickly.

In terms of my motivation, as you can probably tell by my lesson updates, my motivation has been highest for Arabic followed by Urdu/Hindi. I still can't quite get into Persian like I can those other two, but I probably just need to spend more time on it and into some more advanced material. As for Turkish, it's still way too early to tell so we'll see where I am by end of 2023!
8 x
Perfectionnement Arabe: 11 / 70 New Arabic Grammar: 30 / 51
Le Grec Ancien: 15 / 101
Hindi ohne Mühe: 44 / 54
Le Persan: 85 / 86
Le Turc: 19 / 71
Tobira: 3 / 15

bolaobo
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=19845
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Re: Studying the Islamicate Languages in 2023 (Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu)

Postby bolaobo » Sun Mar 26, 2023 11:19 pm

I finished Le Persan Sans Peine L59 and L60, L'Arabe L51 and L52, Le Turc Sans Peine L11, Speaking Eastern Arabic L19, and A New Arabic Grammar of the Written Language Chapter 16

Clozemaster: 872 day streak, 17,720 mastered sentences

It's been a while since my last update, but my pace has remained about the same. I'm naturally getting a better handle on how to pace myself and how to fit in other languages. I even studied some new Japanese and Latin (but not enough to finish a lesson) because those daily reviews were getting a little low.

For the most part, I've been able to maintain / gradually improve all of my languages, except the dabble ones like Hebrew and Akkadian. Clozemaster helps fill in the gaps and give me additional exposure even for ones like Russian.

I'm still memorizing Quran surahs. I've memorized (fully understand with meaning and grammar too) Surah 1, 106-114, and the Throne Verse, as previously stated. It's not as much as it might seem, since those are all short chapters, sometimes only a few lines, but I've fully memorized them and they feature a lot of new vocabulary and it has given me practice with pronunciation and internalizing Classical Arabic. I don't know how long I'll keep it up. Probably until it stops being fun and the chapters get longer and harder. To keep them in memory, what I do is recite them in my head whenever I'm bored and have nothing else to do! I've only put a few into Anki because I repeat them so many times. I'll probably need to fit in Anki later when there's too much to maintain on my own or the verses become harder.

One of my weaknesses lately has been...the embarras du choix. Sometimes I'll have some spare time and then I'll ask myself "Hmm, which textbook should I study today" then I spend my entire time trying to figure out what to study, going back and forth until I end up doing nothing. This is inevitable, considering my breadth of study, but I need to get better at reining this in and just studying something, instead of second-guessing my choices. It's more important to just get studying time in instead of trying to be 100% optimal.

In terms of motivation, it's been the highest for MSA much to the dismay of Persian and Turkish which I want to fit in but can't. A Persian lesson takes me much less time than an Arabic lesson so even though I did 2 lessons of each, it's not equivalent in the least.

Arabic lessons have been a slight drag lately. I enjoy the language but I mean the content. Assimil has had some tourist-focused lessons which are chock-full of new vocabulary but not stuff I'm interested in especially since such interactions are usually in dialect. As for A New Arabic Grammar, C15 was 40 exercises on the imperfect subjunctive, C16 was 40 exercises on the jussive, and C17 is 40 exercises on the imperative. These exercies are tedious to say the least but I'm not good enough to skip them so have to pay my dues.

Finally, since we're almost past the 1st quarter of the year, I think it's a fitting time to do an overview of how much time was spent in Anki over past 3 months. There's additional time spent in Pleco, Clozemaster and Duolingo which I don't care to track since they don't have a good statistics interface.

I don't track my overall studying time (my obsessive tendencies would quickly drive me to an insane asylum), but Anki gives me a pretty good idea of how much time I spent per language since the majority of cards are young, not mature.

Past 3 months:

Arabic: 4437 reviews
Urdu/Hindi: 2602 reviews
Turkish: 2253 reviews
Persian: 2040 reviews
Japanese: 1480 reviews
Levantine Arabic: 1454 reviews
French: 811 reviews
Akkadian: 645 reviews
German: 511 reviews
Spanish: 398 reviews
Russian: 390 reviews
Hebrew: 195 reviews
Italian: 120 reviews
Total: 18,083 reviews, 102 hours

I've been true to my topic title with Islamicate languages occupying the first 4 positions!

Looking at this overview, it's about where I expected, except Turkish is higher than I thought. Persian is supposed to be #2 priority but it's #4 here. I guess I need to focus on it a bit more. The Hindi/Urdu reviews are high because I have many more cards dating back years, and each one has an Urdu script and Devanagari version.
6 x
Perfectionnement Arabe: 11 / 70 New Arabic Grammar: 30 / 51
Le Grec Ancien: 15 / 101
Hindi ohne Mühe: 44 / 54
Le Persan: 85 / 86
Le Turc: 19 / 71
Tobira: 3 / 15


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