Background/Motivation
I first contemplated learning Persian towards the end of 2017. The logic and motivation behind it was pretty simple:
1) I wanted to prove to myself that I was indeed capable of learning a language that used a different alphabet. 2) I wanted a language that wouldn’t be as difficult as something like Arabic, but with different enough vocabulary to pose a good intellectual challenge. 3) I wanted a language that was dissimilar from the languages that I already knew, meaning that I would have to learn most everything from scratch. 4) I wanted a language that was spoken in more than one country. 5) I wanted to do something a little unique and different! Seems like 75% of hobbyist language learners learn English (if it’s not their native language) + Mandarin/Korean/Japanese + Arabic (to which no one ever seems to make any demonstrable progress sadly) 6) I was curious to learn more about the Persian language, culture, and history.
The timeline I set for myself was to begin by February 2018, when I planned on finishing a four month experiment of learning Romanian on Duolingo concurrently with Turkish to test my organization skills. Time to get started!
Step 1: Reading and Writing
I had previously failed to learn Arabic by simply trying to memorize the shapes of letters on a computer screen. I needed to get my hands dirty and face my fears of learning a new script: i thought utilizing transliteration would be tacky!
How to Write in Persian (A Workbook for Learning the Persian Alphabet): (Bi-lingual Farsi- English Edition) (English and Farsi Edition)
I learned to read and write by simply doing all the exercises in this book, which I bought off Amazon at the recommendation of a friend of the author. It taught me exactly how to form all the strokes of letters, and to my astonishment I was feeling pretty comfortable after just doing it Monday through Friday and hour or two a day. I had broke through the first psychological barrier!
Step 2: Writing every day by hand, doing exercises with apps, and copying/reading exercises from books!
For myself and many others, having high quality resources is often a deciding factor with whether or not we’re maintain motivation. My favorite app at that point was Duolingo, which had no Persian course. So I used:
https://www.memrise.com/course/385800/basic-farsi/
This Memrise Course, which is community made and imperfect and lacking in audio, but better than nothing.
This app requires a monthly fee and isn’t the best quality, but it has a ton of audio and visual content and allows you to even toggle transliterations. Plus if you subscribe to it. You can use it for other languages. Not bad!
I’ve also used the following books:
Essentials of Persian Grammar: Concepts and Exercises: (Farsi- English Bi-lingual Edition)- 2nd Edition (English, Farsi and Persian Edition)
This is by the same author who wrote the book I used to learn to write. Tons of bilingual sentences and explanations. The grammar will start to come together with this book.
]Assimil Le Persan (Persian (Farci) for French-speakers (book only-cd’s sold separately) (Persian Edition)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/2700507592/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_nvcEDb6PMJRZG)
The famous Assimil series. If you speak French well enough, this will definitely be a help. This book has bite sized lessons and great grammar exercises to reinforce the vocabulary. They’re short enough to not feel overwhelming and can be done casually on the go. Another plus is that this contains the Persian text, transliteration, AND translation. However, the downside to this is that the book is really thick for its size, and has been fragile and prone to falling apart. You’ll need to take good care of this.
Step 3: Completing at least one audio/book course all the way through
https://routledgetextbooks.com/textbooks/colloquial/language/persian.php
The famous Routledge Colloquial series. The name isn’t a gimmick. The book emphasizes the way that Farsi is spoken with the “Tehran” dialect, for example, long ā sounds becoming ‘oo’ or ‘ast’ being contracted to ‘eh’
Step 4: Having the courage to actively use what I know, review past resources
www.glossika.com: a web only application, I use this at least once a week if I can. It’s basically random sentences with audio going with them, but the obscurity of many of the sentences often kills my motivation. Nonetheless, it might be a useful tool. But keep in mind it comes with a very hefty price tag, a monthly subscription is about $30 a month.
Having the courage to talk with native speakers I come across in real life: This is heavily dependent on your geographical location, but I jump on opportunities to speak whenever I can. There’s a great Iranian and Afghan diaspora in my area, and I’ve been fortunate enough to incrementally run into Persian speakers from countries like Uzbekistan even! This goes without saying that I’ve practiced with tons of kind people online over the past year as well. Having these small even basic conversations will keep you going and your motivation sky high.
Conclusion
As far as languages go, learning Persian is incredibly rewarding and opens you up to a wealth of social opportunities, a new culture, rich history, and potentially even professional opportunities since this language seems to be pretty uncommon to find at most universities. It has a beautiful sound and most of the pronunciation shouldn’t be too difficult for most native English speakers. The orthography will be a constant battle, as some letters have the same sound, there are no vowels, and for me, iPhones do not have an auto correct option. Nonetheless, as I mentioned, you’ll be able to use the language with tons of people either virtually or in real life, and hopefully develop the same motivation and appreciation of this great langauge and all the rich history and culture associated with it.