Team Middle East

[cjareck]

You may find this interesting - there are three seasons of it. I enjoyed it a lot, and I plan to watch it again soon - this time with more comprehension
- this is also very interesting, but you should have some knowledge of Judaism and Jewish history to understand the gags there. There are also three seasons.

[Deinonysus]

!שלום

I'm going to be studying Hebrew for a while. I also want to learn Arabic and Babylonian one day, but unfortunately there are a lot of languages ahead of them on my language queue.

[alfarisi2]

Hi, I am looking for Arabic to Arabic dictionary that has derivative forms on each item of the words. For example, the word root فعل has derivative forms like يفعل, فغلا, فاعل, مفعول, افعل, لا تفعل . Please help me..

[Doitsujin]

Hi, I am looking for Arabic to Arabic dictionary that has derivative forms on each item of the words. For example, the word root فعل has derivative forms like يفعل, فغلا, فاعل, مفعول, افعل, لا تفعل . Please help me..

Check out ElixirFM Lookup Online

[half entity]

I've started reading Persian newspaper articles. In Spanish or French this was "easy" - I learned the media vocabulary through reading. In Persian this is obviously not as easy because of the script. I need a long time to read one article. I don't have a problem with that but I'm wondering if there might be some possibilities to speed up that process a little. For example by studying some media vocabulary lists.

[Lycopersicon]

If anyone is still unsure on how to proceed from an advanced beginner level in Persian, especially regarding vocabulary acquisition, I recommend to have a look at the series of books that was published by the Dehkhoda Institute.

The title of the books is Learning Persian Vocabulary / واژه‌آموزی زبان فارسی and the author is Mahnaz Asgari / مهناز عسگری . There are three volumes in total, one each for the elementary, intermediate and advanced levels. These do not specifically teach the language of the media, but they will definitely help with acquiring a rich and varied vocabulary. The only drawback is that they might be hard to find.

Otherwise, you can also check out a manual that was recently published by Routledge: What the Persian media says. It is not geared towards self-learners but it does include a dictionary that comprises almost half of the book. It is not worth the price in my opinion though, unless one has the possibility of going through it with a tutor.

Michael Hillman also authored a Persian Newspaper Reader which is probably brilliant but is - alas - nearly impossible to get hold of since Dunwoody Press has gone out of business.

None of these were available to me when I was learning Persian so I had to do it the hard way by reading articles and memorizing all the new words I would come across.

Sadly, I'm afraid there are still not that many useful ressources out there.

I would also advise practicing reading actual Iranian (or Afghan) content because foreign-based news sources such as the BBC tend to use a simpler version of the language that is unidiomatic.

Learning arabic grammar will also prove incredibly beneficial. Actually, any detailed Persian grammar book is going to have a large section on Arabic morphology (have a look at Ann Lambton's grammar for instance). Let's not forget that Persian virtually possesses the whole Arabic lexicon!