Persian: Lesson 4

18th October, 2016
Let's focus on the writing for a bit.  Being able to read the Arabic alphabet is something that I've wanted for years and years, because I like being able to read stuff.  (Not necessarily to understand what's been written, but to be able to sound it out.)

To begin with the basics.  Persian adopted the Arabic alphabet.  I think that there's a couple of minor differences, like those between, say, the English and Welsh or Icelandic versions of the Latin alphabet; nothing significant.  However, it means that there's a degree of duplication, because Arabic makes use of some sounds and conventions that Persian doesn't.  Our teacher mentioned that there's one letter - I forget which at the moment - that gets used, but that Persian "doesn't like", whatever that means.  Damnit, they're repudiating their own alphabet!

Anyway: to illustrate what I mean.  There're 5 different versions of the letter "Z".  Officially, they have different sounds; in practice, not so much.  Your bog-standard "z" looks like "ز".  But on top of that, there's zal, pronounded (on Wikipedia's telling) ẕ, and it looks like this: ذ.  Zhe - pronounced ž - is written as "ژ"; za, pronounced ẓ, is written as "ظ".  And then there's zad, pronounced as z̤, and written as "ض".  The transliteration available via Wikipedia is different from some of the suggested pronunciations I've seen on other sites, but I've no reason to suppose that it's wildly out of the way.  And there might be a subtle difference between them all (though the Wiki suggestion that we differentiate between ẕ, ž, ẓ, and z̤ is mystifying in its own right.

So far so good; and though I know there's no relationship between the shape of a letter and its sound, it's reassuring that there's a family resemblance between three of the letters, and another one between the other two.  On the other hand, the equivalent of "R" - ر - looks painfully like "ز", so that'll only take us so far.

The number and location of the dots can make a big difference, too.  Here are the equivalents of "B", "P", "T", and "S": ت ,پ ,ب, and ث.  Well, I say "S"; it turns out that there's multiple versions of that as well, with, س, and ص standing for sounds in that kind of are too.



Add to that the fact that each letter has an initial, medial, and terminal form, so can look different according to where it appears in a word - though some letters don't change their shape after all.  What makes the difference there is how easily they can be connected to the letters to their left.  One of the ways you can tell an "A" from an "L" is that the former never connects to the left: if it did, it'd be indistinguishable from the "L".

They make up for this superfluity of written forms by having some diacritics that modify vowels, but often aren't written down at all. So the letter "aleph" has three or four distinct pronunciations. That's right. As well as there being more written letters than the language needs, there's also a small handful of letters that are, to all intents and purposes, invisible.

I WILL GET THIS SORTED IF IT KILLS ME.

On a more down-to-earth level, one big problem I'm finding with the course - and it is to do with the course more than the language - is that I'm struggling to find time to do the homework.  This can't be good.  I know that I work too many hours a week on my job; and I'm pretty certain that if I were more efficient, I'd be able to achieve the same amount in much less time, thereby giving myself hours to pursue other interests like learning Persian.  Will I be able to break my bad work habits?  Who knows.  But the vocabulary isn't sinking in yet.  I hope it does soon.

Having said all that, I managed to say, in grammatically correct Persian, "My brother has one daughter" this evening. That's not bad for nine hours' tuition, even if I say so myself.  On the other hand, whether that phrase will sink in for good is another question entirely; and I'm already buggered if I can remember it. (Baradar-e man yek dokhtar darad, possibly.   Dunno.  I certainly can't write it yet.)

Maybe I should be a bit more optimistic - contrary to my nature as that may be.  While I don't get it yet, I feel like I'm almost getting it.  You know when you don't understand something, but you've got a funny sense that it's nearly there?  It's a bit like climbing a hill, and not knowing quite where the summit is, or how it'll be reached, but with a good feeling that it is at least reachable.  That's where I am in my better moods.  I don't know whether it's justified.  I hope so.