Does anyone speak Farsi

Assalaamu alaikum Noraina,

Farsi e man khoub nist... but (twinkle) if you want to share some of your discoveries, that would be nice. It is enjoyable to learn new things, and language is a wonderful way to peek into another culture. (smile) And inshAllah, it will help you connect better with your parents.

May Allah, the Sublime, Bless those who strive to better themselves.

JazakAllah for the responses, I'll get round to beginning. We can learn together inshaAllah.

Actually, it was my great-grandparents who spoke Farsi, way way back their parents emigrated to Pakistan and then my parents came to England. So neither do my parents nor grandparents speak Farsi but I felt I wanted to learn. A beautiful language - I mean, it is the language of Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi and so many other Islamic treasures.

MuslimInshallah - ukht, do you speak Farsi, also?

Ruz-e khub-i dashte bashi - Have a good day!

I know a little bit which is nothing would love to learn

Assalamu Alaykum,

Before my first lesson begins, I will first give you an introduction to Farsi:

Farsi is the same language as Persian, and in official documents or research papers it is known as Persian; Farsi is the Arabized form of the word Parsi (as it was called in Iran/Afghanistan), however, following the Arab conquest of Persia, there was no 'p' sound in the Arabic language so they used to call it Farsi instead.

Apparently Persian is an extremely difficult language to learn, language institutes, on a scale of one to five, give Persian a rating of 4 (with 5 being the most difficult). I disagree, perhaps for us Muslims who struggle with the complexities of Arabic grammar Farsi seems like a walk in the park .

Farsi is written in the Perso-Arabic script, those of you who are familiar with Urdu or Arabic script should find reading and writing Farsi is merely expanding upon the basic rules you already know. It is made up of 32 letters and has many similarities with the above mentioned scripts. Although they are unrelated languages, Farsi shares many similarities with Arabic due to Muslim influence and probably a quarter of the vocabulary over laps with Arabic (Alhamdulillah!)

Also, Farsi is phonetic. What you hear is what you write, what you read is what you say, this is a major luxury in language-learning. It is also nothing like Arabic in terms of pronunciation, as it belongs to the Indo-European languages, it is extremely easy on the tongue for native English-speakers, many sounds are pronounced the same way in English apart from ق or خ. Also, Persian does share some similarities in vocabulary with English, more on that later.

I'll do the alphabet, vowels, grammar, vocabulary and common phrases bit by bit inshaAllah!
If you have any questions I'd be happy to answer!

Brother, although there are a ton of Farsi loanwords in Urdu and they both rely heavily on Arabic they are not mutually intelligible. You have to learn them separately because Farsi is more a European language and Urdu is more an Indian one. I think they did have a common ancestor but they went separate ways a long time ago. So an Urdu-speaking person wouldn't be able to really understand a Farsi-speaking one and vice versa.

Although their scripts are quite similar, which I found is a huge help with reading/writing. .

Assalaamu alaikum Noraina, Yahya,

(smile) I know a little Farsi, that I learned many years ago. As for understanding Urdu... mmm... if you know Farsi, certainly this will help you learn Urdu, as quite a few words will sound familiar. But they have their differences, too. (smile) Actually, the more languages you learn, the more learning a new one comes easily, I find. But each one has its wrinkles.

May Allah Bless you both.

Assalamu Alaykum,

I know you are probably bored with these long introductions but they have helped me so much inshaAllah they'll help you. This is the last one I promise!

The vowels in Persian are exactly the same as in Arabic, like this, three shorts ones and three longer versions.

• To add an ‘a’ sound to ‘cat’, you’d write َ above the c
• To add an ‘e’ sound to ‘beg’, you’d write ِ below the b
• To add an ‘o’ sound to ‘top’, you’d write ُ above the t

As in Arabic, people don't generally include the vowels in their writing but as your vocabulary expands it won't matter.


Like I said before, Persian is super-easy on the tongue if you speak English.
The only thing you need to be careful of is the differentiation of ‘a’ (as in ‘cat’) from ‘aa’ as in ‘farm’.
They are two distinct letters in Persian which will change a word’s meaning entirely, this is from personal experience when I completely humiliated myself with a Farsi-speaker. Let's just say it was an awful mistake thank goodness it was with a cousin

Dear Noraina,

You reminded me of my late Abba jaan. *wistful smile* He loved Persian. He considered it one of the most beautiful languages. He had a masterful command over the language and my eldest siblings had the pleasure of learning it from him.

I am making very sincere efforts in acquainting myself with Arabic these days. Or else I'd have loved to join your group too.

I wish you luck. And I love how enthusiastic you seem about learning and sharing information with others.

May Allah bless you.

Wa Alaykum Assalam,
@YahyaIbnSelam , brother, you are probably right. What I wrote above is the average rule but there would be exceptions. JazakAllah Khayr for the correction, I am learning as well .
@Mehnaaz , thank you so much for your kind words, sister, and ma'sha'Allah your father sounds like a wonderful person - Persian is at once a beautiful and difficult language to master. This is an attempt of mine to connect with my heritage and I'm delighted and honoured that others here are interested as well. I believe this may be an ongoing thread so inshaAllah you are welcome to join whenever you have the time.

@noraina

Where is the rest of the classes, il be waiting in sha Allah

I know spanish but im a bit rusty now as i dont speak it anymore as my spanish family dont live in thos country, i only speak it with my mum just when i want to talk to her in secret LOL

Arabic is the hardest language to learn ever in the world, if anyone is willing to do arabic classes like this, pleaseeeee do them i would be so happy and gratefull
I read at the pace of a snail LOL

Wa alaykum assalam,

It's been ages since I typed anything up here. My progress with Farsi has been a little slow, but inshaAllah I'm planning on picking it up a bit now. I like the 'immersion' method of learning languages so I was focusing on Arabic mainly - I think I know the basics well enough to study Farsi alongside it too. At the moment I'm finding Farsi quite simple gramatically compared with Arabic, and the fact I can read/write the script is a huge bonus.

Here a couple of resources I found which I liked:

http://www.easypersian.com/

http://www.childrenslibrary.org/icdl...untry=country5

I haven't been able to find as much resources as I would've liked The textbooks don't seem to work with me, unless I'm just too thick-skulled for them at the moment. Compared to Arabic there aren't many resources at all.

@YahyaIbnSelam akhi were the AZFA books helpful, would you recommend them? I might get the English version although they look a little expensive, lol.

@muslimah_B Arabic is one of the most difficult languages to learn, although it's beauty as well as significance in Islam makes it well worth it. Pronounciation and grammar are the most difficult things to learn, everything else compared to that is easy. Try out this website, I found it really helped me grasp the basics .

https://quranicarabic.wordpress.com/...for-beginners/