 Modern Persian
New books with audio CD
March 17, 2005
iranian.com
Excerpt from the introduction
to Modern Persian: Spoken and Written, [Volume
1 / Volume
II] (Yale
University
Press,
2005)
by Donald Stilo, Kamran Talattof and Jerome Clinton.
Donald Stilo is a scientist at Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
in Leipzig, Germany, working on the Northwest Iranian Language Project in the
Linguistics Department. Kamran Talattof is associate professor of Near Eastern
Studies at the University of Arizona, Tucson. Jerome W. Clinton was professor
of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University.
The language presented in Modern Persian: Spoken and Written,
Volumes
I and II,
is that of contemporary Iran, particularly as it is spoken
by educated inhabitants of the capital city,
Tehran. The text (and the accompanied glossaries and audio CD)
is designed to provide beginning students Persian sufficient
to meet most everyday needs. Once students have finished these
books, they should be able to understand colloquial Persian spoken
at normal speed; to speak it fluently and idiomatically, although
with a limited vocabulary and grammatical range; to read elementary
but unsimplified texts; and to write legibly. They should also
be able to continue learning with a minimum of formal guidance,
particularly in a Persian-speaking context. In other words, they
should have active mastery of modern Persian, and be able to
move easily between its spoken and written forms.
Modern Persian is a living language and in this text is taught
as such. It may seem unnecessary to assert the vitality of a
language spoken by well over 60 million people, but Persian has
traditionally been taught in North American and European universities
as virtually a dead language. Only its written form is presented,
with classical language given preference over the contemporary.
Moreover, this approach relies heavily on memorizing the rules
of Persian grammar and applying them to the task of translation.
In our experience, even the best students emerge from such instruction
with an extensive but largely passive knowledge of the written
language. They acquire virtually no ability to speak or understand
it. While such students -- with heavy reliance on dictionaries -- can
translate difficult passages of Persian into acceptable English,
they usually pronounce it badly and are unable to carry on the
simplest conversation.
For us, the most persuasive argument against beginning with
an emphasis on passive mastery is that it can prove a serious
barrier to gaining active mastery later on. Those with advanced
reading knowledge are reluctant to start all over again at the
elementary level in speaking. They wish, not unreasonably, to
express ideas as complicated as those they can read, forming
each sentence in English and then laboriously translating it
into Persian, with results frequently either painful or amusing.
Those knowing only the written form of the language also often
disdain the colloquial, viewing it as an inferior form. They
prefer to speak in a bookish and unidiomatic way, because that
is the language that seems "right" to them. In doing
so, however, they give an impression of stodgy foreignness far
from what they intend. Finally, although it is hard to learn
the correct sounds and colloquial forms, it is harder still to
unlearn frequently rehearsed errors. To speak the language, one
should learn to do so sooner rather than later.
Finally, even if students have no immediate need to speak the
language, it has been proven repeatedly that students learn all
aspects of a language with greater speed, assurance, and permanence
when they obtain active mastery in a meaningful context rather
than by learning a series of exercises. In practical terms, this
means that students learning to speak and understand easily now
will spend less time with the dictionary or grammar book once
they begin to read in earnest. Gaining control of the spoken
language will not only yield quicker access and keener proficiency
but will provide students with the spoken form of a living language
and all the practical advantages that come with it.
Spoken and Written Persian
Modern Persian in its spoken form
is the basis of this text, so we emphasize learning by ear from
the very first lesson.
Grammar, phonology, and vocabulary will be introduced and drilled
orally
and explained in writing only once active mastery is achieved.
As a result, students will progress more rapidly in speaking
and understanding Persian than in reading and writing. As the
course progresses, the written language will receive more emphasis,
but the spoken language will remain the basis for instruction.
The spoken and written forms of Persian differ in a number
of essential ways, and students will, in effect, be learning
two separate but overlapping dialects. Mastery will mean, among
other things, facility in moving between these two dialects.
Drills are included to promote this facility. Students will find
that we place far more emphasis on alternating from spoken to
written Persian than the reverse, replicating the way Iranians
themselves learn the language -- first spoken, then written.
Our principal reason for stressing the transformation of spoken
to written over that of written to spoken is that when learners
write they have more time to think ahead to what transformations
are needed in writing.
Levels of Usage
A language in its spoken and written forms has a wide range
of usage -- indeed the whole scope of the language. Neither
form is unitary. For example, we do not speak to friends in the
same way we do to an employer. Likewise, there are differences
among the kinds of written language used for personal letters,
formal essays, poetry, and so forth. These varieties of discourse
within each category are what we mean by "levels of usage." No
single version of either written or spoken language would be
appropriate to all these contexts.
Persian is a language that distinguishes many levels of usage
in formally marked ways -- using different pronouns, deferential
word forms, and honorific forms of address. A simple inquiry
such as "How are you?" can be expressed at a half-dozen
levels of formality in both spoken and written discourse.
It would be self-defeating to attempt to teach comprehension
of all possible levels of usage in an elementary language class.
The classroom does not provide the appropriate context for using
extremes of either informality or formality. Yet students must
be prepared to deal with this aspect of modern Persian. Our solution
is to choose two levels of usage within the larger categories
of spoken/informal and written/formal Persian appropriate both
to the classroom and to the socio-economic level of university
students. These forms are the basis for most of our instruction
and will serve most purposes. Once mastered, they should provide
a convenient starting point for acquiring others. More formal
and informal levels are also illustrated at appropriate points
throughout the text.
In practice, learning to move easily among these various linguistic
levels is not as difficult as it may at first appear, and students
will probably acquire the skill naturally as new situations present
themselves. We mention the issue here principally to prepare
you for the efforts of well-meaning friends and relatives to "correct" your
Persian by teaching you more or less formal versions of what
you have already learned in class. One productive way of dealing
with such assistance is to ask what the appropriate context might
be for using what they wish to teach you. Is it something that
they would say to a teacher, or only to friends? It may turn
out that what they want you to know is a textbook version of
the language that they would never actually use. In the same
way, even educated speakers of American English commonly say "gonna" but
would teach a new learner of English to say "going to" because
it seems more "correct."
Language and Grammar
Unquestionably, it is impossible to master a foreign language
without learning its grammar. To say otherwise would be tantamount
to asserting that one could learn it without acquiring vocabulary
or phonology. We are as concerned about teaching modern Persian
grammar as are the authors of more traditional textbooks. However,
our approach to teaching grammar differs from theirs in several
ways.
Traditional grammars consist of rules (by which we mean descriptive
statements about the language), illustrative examples, and drills.
Students memorize the rules, study the examples, and use them
to do the drills. The proportion of rules to examples and drills
may not be high. Our text contains the same elements, but the
proportions differ sharply -- there are far more drills and
examples than rules, and they are studied in that order. Students
first memorize or simply listen to the examples and then do the
oral drills based on them, and the study of the grammatical rules
is left for study at home when students feel the need for them.
This order seems to put the grammar last, but in fact it is first.
Our text also contains the same elements and is basically a grammar-based
text in underlying organization. A crucial factor in this course,
however, is that this organization according to grammatical patterns
is "behind the scenes," and the in-class teaching methods
do not concentrate on grammar. Since the drills have been carefully
arranged in a progression that presents the grammar systematically
and cumulatively, as they practice them they are already studying
and acquiring the grammar in the most active and practical way
possible. Our grammar discussions are intended to be a summary
of what students have already internalized in the drills or,
occasionally, to serve as further clarification of confusing
points of grammar. Because the forms and structures of Persian
are relatively easy, we feel that students can read and absorb
most grammar explanations on their own, leaving valuable class
time for learning activities that require assistance.
As they begin a new set of drills, students may find themselves
formulating a "rule" to describe the point of the drill.
With increased skill mastery, use of that rule, that grammatical
pattern, will become automatic and eventually second nature.
As for written grammar explanations, however, we have found that
even when patterns are completely self-evident from drills, most
of our students feel more comfortable when the rule describing
these patterns is made explicit. Some students prefer to preview
that grammar before beginning the appropriate lesson or section,
while others wait and refer to the written explanations only
after they have begun to internalize the patterns through drills
and conversation in class. They might even use the grammar as
a type of review after they have finished the lesson. Different
students have different needs and learning styles. However they
approach it, the grammar is written out for their convenience
to read whenever they like and as many times as they need. Above
all, we think that drills and exercises offer the best aids to
help students learn grammatical patterns. Using these patterns
in conversation, then, leads to their full absorption to the
point that they no longer have to think about them.
In preparing these sections, we have found it necessary to
use a certain amount of linguistic terminology to describe Persian
grammar. Where special grammatical terms are needed -- and
sometimes there really are no simple equivalents -- we have
defined them before putting them to use. To clarify our descriptions
and analyses of the patterns of Persian grammar, we have included
contrastive analyses of parallel phenomena in English.
The grammar sections can be read independently outside of class
but may certainly be discussed briefly in class once the relevant
lesson or lessons have been completed and questions still remain.
However, we think that drills and exercises offer the best aids
to understanding. Our explanations are not meant to be exhaustive
but are tailored to the needs of the text. We have tried to present
only what is required to understand the patterns of a lesson,
and perhaps a little more. Where there are several stages to
a particular grammatical pattern, for example in the usage of
definite/indefinite nouns, we have explained each stage as the
students' expressive abilities become more sophisticated. We
find that students often begin to ask questions about grammar
or ways of saying things right before beginning the very lesson
that introduces those points. This anticipation of what is to
come reinforces the idea that learners need only as much grammar
as they are ready to internalize for the purposes of expression
and that they will actually learn new grammar points when they
are ready to absorb them.
Language and Expression
Persian is the easiest major language of the Near East for
English speakers to learn. Like English, it belongs to the Indo-European
family of languages, while Arabic and Hebrew belong to the Semitic
and Turkish to the Turkic. This family connection means that
Persian, English, and other Western European languages have similarities
in matters of grammar, syntax, and word formation. The sound
system of Persian also makes few unreasonable demands on American
palates, and Persian, like English, is unencumbered with case
or gender.
Persian grammatical structure is relatively easy to master.
There are essentially three aspects of the language that Americans
find difficult to learn: the two sounds represented herein as
/q/ and /kh/ (sometimes transcribed as gh and x), which have
no equivalents in English; the writing system, a modified form
of the Arabic alphabet; and the unfamiliar vocabulary. A substantial
portion of modern Persian vocabulary is borrowed from Arabic
and is altogether unfamiliar to Americans and Europeans. Arabic
loan words in Persian play a role very like that of Latin and
French loan words in English. The few cognates existing between
Persian and the languages of Europe delight only the hearts of
philologists -- madær ="mother," pedær
= "father," bænd ="bind," and so on.
There is nothing like the free gift of hundreds of bonus words
received by English speakers studying French or Spanish. As partial
consolation, in recent years Persian has borrowed the terms for
many objects and concepts from European languages along with
the objects and concepts themselves (see Lesson 4, Section 4.5).
Beyond that, Persian belongs to a very different world. It
is a truism among language teachers that teaching a language
is teaching a culture. In this case, that culture has little
shared history or experience with American and European cultures.
Its central religion is neither Christianity nor Judaism, and
never has been. The historical categories Medieval, Renaissance,
and Modern have no meaning in Persian history, and Iran had no
European neighbors until Russia invaded the Caucasus and Central
Asia in the nineteenth century. The absence of cognates between
English and Persian is surface witness to deeper distinctions
between the two cultures using these languages. Although Persian
is in simple, mechanical terms an "easy" language,
it expresses itself in ways that do not translate readily into
English. One is often at a loss to find even a rough equivalent
in one language for terms and expressions absolutely characteristic
of the other.
Another truism of language learning is that the more familiar
you sound to the person whose language you are learning, the
stranger you may sound to yourself. This truism works for the
language’s cultural levels, as well. In order to become
really comfortable with Persian, you must accept concepts and
modes of expression that will initially seem strange to you but
that are normal and familiar to Iranians.
Vocabulary
We have sought to provide a useful vocabulary for the context
in which students are learning Persian. It would be pointless
to emphasize cultural situations encountered only when living
in Iran and impossible to recreate in the classroom. For example,
this text avoids instructing students on matters of daily life
in Iran, such as how to hail a taxi or what to say to the greengrocer.
We have chosen vocabulary suitable for the average student studying
Persian in North America, in the context of an American university
campus, interacting with classmates or Iranians resident in the
United States. In some cases, we have asked students to imagine
a dialogue taking place in Iran, but we have done so without
requiring a stretch of the imagination or reliance on unfamiliar
cultural material.
We have organized the progression of the materials in each
lesson, especially the vocabulary, to enable students to talk
first about the most basic topics of learning a new language
in a new classroom situation. Gradually we have them fan out
from these first, most immediate needs to topics of ever-widening
circles of interest. We begin by introducing basic greetings
and politeness issues, and we give the students the tools to
talk first about the classroom and immediate language learning
needs, family background and simple personal information, daily
activities, and the languages they have studied. From there students
will progress to more complex information about personal issues,
likes and dislikes, daily activities, family and friends, skills
and fields of study, occupations, the wider university environment,
places and nationalities, and they eventually will learn to start
expressing opinions. They soon begin to talk about qualities,
emotions, and physical states, express more complex opinions
and learn how to agree/disagree in conversation, use humor, give
advice, and work on problem solving. Throughout the course as
a whole, we also teach students increasingly more sophisticated
ways to ask and talk about their own language learning needs
and problems, and we give them ways to explain and define words
in Persian, gradually providing tools to help them advance their
own learning skills. In this manner, we feel students can learn
comfortably and confidently to begin to "own" their
own language learning and identify with the language they are
learning.
Students in Persian classes in the United States cover a wide
range. Some students wish only to read medieval historical texts,
for example, and possibly do no more than translate them to extricate
information needed for their research. Others are Americans married
to
Iranians who desire to speak only the most colloquial Persian
at home with their spouses or in-laws as well as American-born
Iranians who have a vested personal interest in Persian and
Iranian culture and wish to speak with older relatives or recent
arrivals, but have no further academic aspirations with the language.
The vocabulary, dialogues and readings herein are designed for
learners somewhere in the middle of these two categories--that
is, for students of the humanities and social sciences, such
as history, literature, sociology, ethnomusicology, political
science, and the like, who will eventually need to speak Persian
with colleagues, as well as to read relevant textual material
in their own disciplines. Most students study Persian out of
a genuine interest in modern Iran and may in addition have Iranian
friends or acquaintances either on campus or beyond the academic
environment. Because no two language classes will have the same
mix of students, individual teachers must tailor certain aspects
of this text to the needs of their classes.
Many students in our classes come to Persian with knowledge
of a second or even third language, such as French, Arabic, or
another Islamic language. Therefore, we have made a special effort
to "overstuff" lessons with Persian vocabulary coming
from Arabic, English, and French. This extra material is presented
on an optional basis with the hope that students with prior knowledge
of these words will find this vocabulary useful and easy to master.
These words may then be added to drills or omitted according
to the needs and composition of the class.
Culture
In the context of language learning, culture refers to how
people interact when they are speaking to each other, what the
givens and assumptions common to most speakers of that language
are within that society, and how people use their language. A
conversation between two people is a microcosm of their society.
In this sense, culture might involve the following among a multitude
of other possibilities:
- developing friendships and interacting socially with a group
of people you do not know very well
- asking questions of, and talking about yourself with, new
acquaintances
- interacting with various types of people in different social
situations
- dealing with the unique situational needs for respect, equality,
age difference, same gender/cross-gender interactions, friendliness,
intimacy, gratitude, and so on
 Culture is the context in which the language is spoken. Iranian
culture in the context of this course involves how to use Persian
for interpersonal exchanges with Iranians, based on the expectations
and norms of Iranian society.
In this vein, we introduce students to certain important Iranian
cultural areas at some length, for example, politeness and respect
in greetings, addressing people, asking permission, and other
contexts; food and accompanying behaviors and expectations; the
use and importance of gestures; formal, informal, and intimate
ways of speaking to people; attitudes about family relations;
making and responding to compliments, requests, favors, and so
forth. In addition to this material, we also provide students
with background information on Shiite Islam, Iranian calendars
and festivals, Iranian educational systems, Iranian names, the
geography of Iran, money, poetry and proverbs, humor, sarcasm
and irony with friends, and many other cultural topics.
While we try to have students communicate in the terms of their
own realities quickly, and relate to the language as something
they can actually speak, we also expose them to Iranian culture
from day one. We start out with what is familiar to the students,
by enabling them to talk first about their own backgrounds; next
they ask and talk about the same issues with other students,
and eventually with Iranian friends and Iranians on campus, and
for some students, in the community at large. There is a large
Iranian presence in the United States, including many recent
arrivals and visitors from Iran. Most university environments
have attracted Iranian students and professors and usually their
families as well. Urban centers have an additional asset in having
even larger, more varied Iranian communities, bringing with them
a wide variety of personal and general cultural styles of interaction.
In addition, more and more American-born
Iranians are attending Persian-language courses on the university
level, some to learn the script and increase their vocabulary
and others to learn Persian from the very beginning. Classroom
interaction allows for students with more contact with, and insights
into, Iranian culture and to share their own experiences, further
enriching the students' understanding and learning of Iranian
culture. We do not mean to imply here, however, that students
will learn to speak Persian only if they meet Iranians outside
of class.
 This course is set up to provide the maximum number
of opportunities for them to use the language patterns learned
in class. This is accomplished through classroom interaction
and peer teaching, valuable tools in the learning process.
Thus the relationships students form in class will play an important
role in their language learning process throughout this course.
Since structured and open-ended conversation time with classmates
is built into this course, students will begin to use Persian
for real communication and at the same time have fun as they
learn.
Modern Persian: Spoken
and Written,
[Volume
1 / Volume
II] are also available at Yale
University Press.
.................... Peef
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