A Callidryas wrote:The Assimil Persian course is okay. The grammar explanations are clear and the CDs have good sound quality.
However, before you spend a lot of money on it, you might want to check out these resources.
Radio Iran has a program called 'Persan sans peine'. It consists of 166 conversations in Persian and French. You can download the audio as MP3s. The sound quality is good. A1-A2
http://frenchold.ws.irib.ir/programmes/ ... ?start=160
Persian Language Online also has lots of conversations and passages in Persian and English. Again, the sound quality is good and you can download the material as MP3s. There are also practice exercises. Beginner to Intermediate.
http://www.persianlanguageonline.com/
PersianDee is a good overview of all the basic grammar.
http://www.persiandee.com/view/showLess ... ntLesson/0
For more grammar, you could also get the John Mace book .
The Assimil Persian book is pretty good, but if I had known about these resources earlier, I wouldn't have bought it.
Taken together, the Radio Iran dialogues and the Persian Language Online expose you to about five times as much language and vocabulary as the Assimil course.
Thanks for the recommendations. I have reviewed the first few lessons of Radio Iran Persans sans peine and this looks excellent. I have a copy of the John Mace Teach Yourself Persian as well as the new Teach Yourself Persian; normally I wouldn't bother with the TY series except to extract the dialogues for listening practice — at least for languages that are well-served by Assimil, Linguaphone et. al. — but both of these are good resources. John Mace Persian was recommended to me as the best way of learning the Persian alphabet along with the Assimil course.
I purchased the Assimil book and CD as I heard that the transcription of the dialogues does not appear on the MP3 CD. Can anyone confirm if that is the case? I was surprised to hear this initially as every other Assimil MP3 that I own has the transcription in "lyrics" on iTunes. I sent an email to Assimil to confirm but haven't had a response.
Is it just me, or does there seem to be more in-depth Persian courses in French than in English? Perhaps this is more a reflection on the quality of courses in the respective languages.