Why? Simply because it never occurred to me in the first few weeks to record what was happening, so there's going to have to be quite a lot of invention. Here's the first mention of it, from the 22nd September:
I've decided to sign up for a language course. But which?The internet leaned towards Persian, with the odd suggestion of things like Tocharian, because that actually counts as trolling among some of my friends. My heart was also leaning towards Persian anyway, though, so that was reassuring. Indeed, I'd found someone in January who was working as a private tutor in Persian, and had fully intended to chase that up except that real life had got in the way and made it impractical.
(a) Russian - I've not done it since GCSE, and was never much good at it even then. (The A grade came more from knowing how to game the exam rubric than for understanding the language.) Requires the linguistic equivalent of intensive care.
(b) French - Did it to old-style A/S level; I was reasonably good, but am rusty now. Linguistic physiotherapy.
(c) Persian - Never spoken a word, but love the country, and have wanted to learn it for years. Linguistic IVF.
Help me decide, o internet!
Merely learning to read the alphabet counted for a lot in my decision: that was one of the reasons I did Russian at school. We used to have French lessons in B4, which was the room in which Russian was taught. I'd see the Cyrillic script on the blackboard, and want to be able to read it. A few years later, being able to make out the shapes of the letters was the most satisfying part of my abortive attempt to teach myself Greek. The Arabic alphabet is a bigger hill to climb, but I like being able to read stuff.
Here's what I wrote on the 27th September, just before lesson 1:
Right: off to my first Persian lesson from @UoMLangCentre. I'm slightly nervous...That much was true. On the other hand, how hard could it really be? It's an Indo-European language, so - surely - it wouldn't require any huge conceptual or structural leaps. And if 80 million Iranians can speak it like natives* then the likelihood that I'd prove dimmer than all of them was remote.
As it turns out, there's more than 80 million Persian speakers. That's roughly the population of Iran; but Dari is a dialect of Persian, so there's a big chunk of the Afghan population that's Persian-speaking as well. And if you write the language in the Cyrillic alphabet, then you're magically fluent in Tajik too. So, in a sense, success in this course would entitle me to say that I speak Persian - but I could spin it another way to say that I speak Farsi, Dari and Tajik. How's that for impressive? We've not finished the first lesson yet, and I'm learning stuff already - including two extra languages.
One of the first things we do in the class is to introduce ourselves, and to say what languages we speak already. Mozhgan, our tutor, insists that Persian is difficult, and doesn't seem impressed by people saying that they speak French or German. (How hard can it be, though? Really? 80 million, remember.) So my Latin and French doesn't count for much, even as a sign that I can do languages to some extent. She's a bit happier with the fact that I have some Russian - and with the couple of others in the room who're familiar with it. She also insists that she expects us to do anything up to 6 hours homework a week. To me, that seems like a lot; I'm not sure that I'll be able to make that kind of commitment, even if it is necessary. I've got a big course to teach, and that eats up hours. But we'll see.
There's a couple of people in the group who speak Arabic; this makes Mozhgan very happy - and I can see that they'll have an advantage when it comes to reading and writing, as well as at least some vocabulary, even though it's a different language family. There's also an Urdu speaker. That's the right alphabet, the right language family, the right geographical area... Yep. I think he'll ace it. There's a handful of people who have Iranian family, and want to be able to speak the language for that reason. One of them has been married to an Iranian guy for 20 years; she's fluent in colloquial Persian, but can't read or write it, and wants to polish what she speaks already. Is a beginner's class where she belongs? Who can say?
A couple of people in the class are learning the language for reasons related to their study or work; some are doing it for family reasons. One person plans to travel through Iran next year. I'm the only person, I think, with no real stake in it - for whom it doesn't matter what happens. In one sense, this is quite liberating. In another... well, a bit of pressure might be useful.
There's an exam in December. Maybe that'll serve as the incentive. Even if there's no point in the course in wider terms, not failing an exam ought to be incentive enough.
And we begin writing in this lesson, which is - for me - quite exciting. Just a couple of letters and syllables, ba and ab, to begin with - but it's something. The aleph joins with letters to its right, but not to its left. Ba and ab look like با and اب.
Cool.
*Yeah: I'm not above recycling a Mel Smith and Peter Cook joke from a 1991 ad for Wispa bars when the opportunity presents itself.
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