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Learn Farsi or Arabic or...

Richard Masters

Illuminator
Richard Masters
Joined
Dec 27, 2007
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I've been following the news in Iran, but the news reports are scarce. I will be away from computers for about 60 days, and would like to learn Farsi, but I'm almost certain Arabic would be a better use of my time, since it is more widely used.

1) What's the learning curve like, and 2) is there use for it outside of intelligence? 3) how does intelligence work pay? 4) would it be better to learn Arabic? (I was put Arabic off a while ago for lack of explicit vowels, is this the case with Farsi?)

I suppose I'm posting under education, because this is more about linguistics and educational priorities. Any suggestions?
 
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Seriously, I don't remember anyone in here being capable of speaking Arabic/Farsi. Why don't you ask in an "English-speaking" Arabic forum, or at least a Turkish one, for example.
 
The learning curve for Arabic and Farsi greatly depends on your previous knowledge of languages.

Like Hebrew, they are languages where the form of the words changes, sometimes drastically, based on the tense, actor, passive or active voice, object, etc. What's more, again like in Hebrew, there are no explicit vowels (they are written above or below the letters, but in practice are dropped in any reading that's above third-grade level).

Being a native Hebrew speaker this is not a particular problem for me, but it might very well be for someone who has no experience in such languages. E.g., in Hebrew, the root SKV ("Sakhav", to sleep) can be used to create such one-word sentences, monstrosities such as HSKVTHN ("Hiskivatihen" -- "I have laid the women to sleep") -- due to the punctuation, beginning and ending of the words, etc.

Similar and worse things happen in Arabic and Farsi.
 
Only problem is I won't have access to listening material, only reading material. I have experience with Romance languages, (fluent in Spanish) and conversational Indonesian. Thanks for the responses so far... I'm about to leave so I may not be able to reply any time soon.
 
dudalb said:
I think that is true about just about every language; I can read Spanish fairly well but get blank looks when I try to speak it to some people from Mexico.
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Perhaps every language with a phonetic alphabet. It is much easier to learn to speak Chinese than to read it, for instance.
 
dudalb said:
I think that is true about just about every language; I can read Spanish fairly well but get blank looks when I try to speak it to some people from Mexico.
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English is particularly bad for that. Spanish spelling rules are at least consistent:)

Sorry, you dredged up some bad memories there:)
 
Kitten *(My daughter) speaks Arabic and has a smattering of Farsi.

She uses it with her work (she's a geologist). There is a lot of need for Arabic speakers, even just a tad... you don't have to be fluent. Just good enough to get along. SHe's fluent but usually needs a few days to gear up when she gets to say Oman. Plus Arabic differs greatly... so she has to get used to the local style. She studied Egyptian Modern, which is basis enough to get along.

She uses Netflix Arabic films for keeping herself sharp. So she would suggest learning the basics on your own and renting some films to get the accent.

Also she got the Arabic television station when she was in college, all the Arabic students had to get it, and that really helped.
 
Skeptic said:
The learning curve for Arabic and Farsi greatly depends on your previous knowledge of languages.

Like Hebrew, they are languages where the form of the words changes, sometimes drastically, based on the tense, actor, passive or active voice, object, etc. What's more, again like in Hebrew, there are no explicit vowels (they are written above or below the letters, but in practice are dropped in any reading that's above third-grade level).

Being a native Hebrew speaker this is not a particular problem for me, but it might very well be for someone who has no experience in such languages. E.g., in Hebrew, the root SKV ("Sakhav", to sleep) can be used to create such one-word sentences, monstrosities such as HSKVTHN ("Hiskivatihen" -- "I have laid the women to sleep") -- due to the punctuation, beginning and ending of the words, etc.

Similar and worse things happen in Arabic and Farsi.
Click to expand...

Indeed. And while Hebrew and Arabic are going to have many similarities, Farsi uses the same (with a few extra) characters in the writing but the words are markedly different.

Also, as kittynh touched on, Arabic is going to differ depending on the region you're in. There are regional differences in both spelling and pronunciation, with some pronunciations existing only in that region. Egyptian Modern is the most general and widely understood version to learn. You'll still sound like an obvious foreigner to native Arabic speakers, but they'll know what you're saying.

Two links for free software for learning (on Win or Mac): BYKI - Arabic and BYKI - Farsi
 
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