Akoni
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Farsi, Dari, PashtoDoes anyone here speak any of these 3 languages? I've looked at some CD-ROMs to learn Pashto, but they're €30-€40. Bit expensive for me at this moment. I need some help finding the right course, as going to the country where they are spoken is not do-able at this time. (Afghanistan, Iran)
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Deborah
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Do have a particular reason for wanting to learn these languages other than just an interest in the languages themselves?
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Walker
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| Deborah wrote: | | Do have a particular reason for wanting to learn these languages other than just an interest in the languages themselves? |
That's a good question. I would certainly need more reasons to learn a language than just an interest in the language itself. Maybe there's an Iranian princess is Akoni's neighborhood. To Arabs Farsi sounds soft and melodious, like they're singing.
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Deborah
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| Walker wrote: | | To Arabs Farsi sounds soft and melodious, like they're singing. |
Not to all of them. The only time I ever heard an Arab make a comment about Farsi, it was not flattering. But this was only a second-generation American Arab.
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Akoni
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To be honest I want to visit Afghanistan in the near future, it's a beautiful country, with very polite people. The sky is always blue and there is always some snow on the tops of the Hindu Kush.
To get around you need to speak Pashto or Dari, which are both relatives of Farsi. Not many people there speak English or any other language. The northern areas are relatively safe and with some help you can travel around there. I've been saving money to go there and in a couple of years I will be able to go.
Here are some photos:
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Walker
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| Akoni wrote: | To be honest I want to visit Afghanistan in the near future, it's a beautiful country, with very polite people. The sky is always blue and there is always some snow on the tops of the Hindu Kush.
To get around you need to speak Pashto or Dari, which are both relatives of Farsi. Not many people there speak English or any other language. The northern areas are relatively safe and with some help you can travel around there. I've been saving money to go there and in a couple of years I will be able to go. |
It looks nice but just how safe is "relatively safe"?. I know that most of the fighting goes on in the south of Afghanistan where the Americans are; there are some Swedish troops (Isaf) in the north where it's more calm. But there're still dangerous elements up there.
| Deborah wrote: | | Walker wrote: | | To Arabs Farsi sounds soft and melodious, like they're singing. |
Not to all of them. The only time I ever heard an Arab make a comment about Farsi, it was not flattering. But this was only a second-generation American Arab. |
The one I talked to was a first-generation Swedish Arab, and she said that they (Arabic speakers in general) think that Farsi is soft and sing-songy. However, this person was broad-minded and tolerant unlike some other people from the Middle East who are taught from childhood to dislike or even hate other groups from the Middle East. Perhaps she was talking more about her own perception of Farsi than that of Arabs in general.
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Loic
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Akoni, welcome back! I haven't seen you for donkey's years!
Just a suggestion: join the army and volunteer for peacekeeping duties in Afghanistan. I am supremely confident that Afghanistan would not be safe for leisure travel in the next decade, at least.
But then again, you might be thinking of using the next ten years to pick up the local lingo so that you can blend in seamlessly when you visit a (hopefully) peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan in 10 years' time.
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Deborah
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| Walker wrote: | | However, this person was broad-minded and tolerant unlike some other people from the Middle East who are taught from childhood to dislike or even hate other groups from the Middle East. Perhaps she was talking more about her own perception of Farsi than that of Arabs in general. |
I think my friend was broad-minded and tolerant; he just didn't like the sound of the language. However, I think dislike of it may have been exacerbated by the number of times that someone he was with would hear Farsi and ask him to translate, since he spoke Arabic. I could never understand how people could get the languages confused, as they sound quite different.
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Walker
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| Deborah wrote: | | Walker wrote: | | However, this person was broad-minded and tolerant unlike some other people from the Middle East who are taught from childhood to dislike or even hate other groups from the Middle East. Perhaps she was talking more about her own perception of Farsi than that of Arabs in general. |
I think my friend was broad-minded and tolerant; he just didn't like the sound of the language. However, I think dislike of it may have been exacerbated by the number of times that someone he was with would hear Farsi and ask him to translate, since he spoke Arabic. I could never understand how people could get the languages confused, as they sound quite different. |
I haven't been exposed to Farsi all that much so I'm not sure if I would be able to identify it very quickly. But I do not think that I'd confuse it with Arabic.
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Deborah
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I suppose the key is to have some exposure to one or the other of the two languages. Maybe if you've never heard much of either one and you're not interested in languages, you wouldn't notice that they don't sound alike.
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Deborah
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Anyway, Akoni, maybe you'll see a snow leopard if you make it to the Hindu Kush...
...if there are any left by then. 
And here I have to put in another plug for the nature series Planet Earth, which is available on DVD, both in PAL and NTSC, and maybe other formats. There's an amazing scene where a snow leopard chases a young markhor down an almost vertical cliff (talk about extreme sports!). Here's an adult markhor:
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Walker
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| Deborah wrote: | | I suppose the key is to have some exposure to one or the other of the two languages. Maybe if you've never heard much of either one and you're not interested in languages, you wouldn't notice that they don't sound alike. |
Yes! There are those who go even further (backwards) - whenever they hear Arabic or Kurdish or Farsi or Turkish they'll go: "no, not those Turks again...".
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