#Farsi language

[soracities]

hii words cannot describe how much i adore your blog!! i was wondering if you had any favorite arab poets whose works deeply moved you/whom you’d like to suggest? i would love the recommendations as an arab girl who’s trying to expose herself more to arab lit :) thank you!!

i do!!!! ngl i think i am always just reccing the same poets in different variations but i loved all of these, and hope you find some joy in them also (not all of them are works of poetry but all the authors themselves are poets) 🤍

Women of the Fertile Crescent: An Anthology of Modern Poetry by Arab Women

Paris, When It's Naked / Shifting the Silence / The Cost for Love We Are Not Willing to Pay (Etel Adnan)

Without an Alphabet, Without a Face (Saadi Yousef)

Pages of Day and Night (Adonis)

The War Works Hard / The Iraqi Nights (Dunya Mikhail)

A Red Cherry on a White-Tiled Floor / Barefoot Souls (Maram al-Masri)

The Neverfield (Nathalie Handal)

Miracle Maker: Selected Poems (Fadhil Al Azzawi)

Revolt Against the Sun (Nazik al-Malaika)

Flawed Landscape (Sharif S. Elmusa)

I'Jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody (Sinan Antoon)

Memory for Forgetfulness / Almond Blossoms and Beyond (Mahmoud Darwish--or anything by him, really)

additionally @barcarole has a lovely list of arabic poems here which i also hope you enjoy. also honourable mention to Badr Shakir al-Sayyab because by god what i wouldn't GIVE to finally have an English translation but for now am consoling myself with "Rain Song" and these two

[notetaeker]

Knowing 5 languages with mediocre skill is not enough I need to be rlly bad at a 6th one

[morallygay]

look at this!

it's a stylistic mix of japanese script and arabic script! it looks so cool!!

[pomegranateandcoffee]

Forough Farrokhzad poetry for today

[mooncoreblr]

LANGBLR INTRO!!!

A little about me:

Call me Azara c:

Middle Eastern - Persian origins (not ir*nian please ;-;)

26 - isfp - sagittarius

lesbian - she/her

Got my BA in English Language and Literature with a minor in French

Preparing for an MA in Teaching English as a Foreign Language and self-studying and researching theoretical+applied+interdisciplinary linguistics

Languages I speak:

Arabic (native - standard and a dialect of the gulf)

Farsi (native but I don't speak the standard)

English C1

French (standard) B1/B2

Korean B1/B2

Languages Goals - short and long term:

IELTS BAND 9 

Arabic (build my vocabulary for translation)

Advancing in Korean C1

Advancing in French C1

Learning Standard Farsi

Consistently learn Japanese for 60 days

Consistently learn Chinese for 60 days

Could post about other languages that interest me at one point!

How I learn languages

tv shows mostly as I rely a lot on pronunciation and sentence structures in speech

music - I mostly listen to English, Persian, Korean, Japanese and French songs but I am open to anything as long as it's good

used to take classes before covid and then I enrolled in online classes and hated them - they were bland.

textbooks that I spent a fortune on ;-;

Let's be friends !! ♡

[roseofthomas]

cc can’t just write in that thomas helped james when he learned farsi and not give me a scene where two lovesick idiots sit down to learn the language their crush speaks, totally oblivious to each others feelings about literal siblings

[rotzaprachim]

there is no such thing as either “ a European language” or “European phonology” as a linguistic category btw. Europe is a physical entity but also a constructed idea with indefinite boarders; it is not a linguistic category

[name-esfandiar]

Persian translation of the Ring Poem by J. R. R. Tolkien (by me)

Here is my take at translating the Ring Poem from english to persian, hope it will arouse your interest !

If you are interested by the process and my notes, it will be below it all.

English

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all. One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

Persian

سه‌ حَلقه واسهٔ پادیشاه الفی تَحت آسمان،

هفت‌ واسهٔ اربابهای دورفی توی اُتاق سنگ،

نه‌ واسهٔ انسانهای فانی محکوم به مرگ،

یک واسهٔ ارباب تاریک بر سریر تاریکش،

در استان موردور کجا سایها می‌خزند.

یک حلقه واسهٔ حکم راندنِ برهمه. یک حلقه یافتنشان،

یک حلقه واسهٔ آوردنِ برهمه و توی تاریک پیوستنشان

در استان موردور کجا سایها میخزند.

Transliteration in latin script

se halqe vâse-ye pâdishâh-e elfi taht-e âsemân,

haft vâse-ye arbâbhâ-ye dvarfi tu-ye otâq-e sang,

noh vâse-ye ensânhâ-ye fâni mahkum be marg,

yek vâse-ye arbâb-e târik bar sarir-e târikesh,

dar estân-e mordor kojâ sâyehâ mikhazand.

yek halqe vâse-ye hakam rândan-e barhame. yek halqe yâftaneshân,

yek halqe vâse-ye âvardan-e barhame o tu-ye târik peyvastaneshân

dar estân-e mordor kojâ sâyehâ mikhazand.

I hope you will like it :) if you like the topic, you can keep reading

My process and few interesting notes

Of rhymes, rhythm, and word choice

As it can be seen, I managed to make the second quatrain have quite perfect enclosed rhymes ! A thing I could not successfully replicate in the first one… or could I ?

The first and forth verse are the problem — although both 3 syllables, and cretics as per my prononciation (kept the second e in esemân specifically for that effect) ; so quite rhythmically pleasant. But it was too close to perfection to let it pass. Even if the idea of the only two words not rhyming being the sky of the Elves and the darkness of Sauron’s throne was dramatically fortunate, even quite brilliant. But it was not by my doing, only chance’s ; so it was important to me to add brilliance intentionally, by making it rhyme all the way.

My first idea was to change the word for dark, تاریکش (târikesh) into ویران (virân), making it then :

se halqe vâse-ye pâdishâh-e elfi taht-e âs(e)mân,

haft vâse-ye arbâbhâ-ye dvarfi tu-ye otâq-e sang,

noh vâse-ye ensânhâ-ye fâni mahkum be marg,

yek vâse-ye arbâb-e târik bar sarir-e virân,

It was a fine solution, but that had problems still.

Firstly, the -esh in تاریکش (târikesh) is the possessive suffix, part of the bigger nominal group سریر تاریکش (sarir-e târikesh), meaning “his dark throne” (lit. throne dark his) ; hence the -esh. If I was to use the word ویران (virân), that possession was no more, making it mean “the dark throne”, which was okay-ish (ahah, get it?), but not literal.

Furthermore, ویران (virân) means more “desolate”, “ruined” than “dark” ; it could mean something, like a “dark world”, but it wasn’t literally because it was dark. But desolate was fine ! Mordor is quite it, given how it’s described.

Note how I wrote this time âsemân with parentheses, âs(e)mân, pronounced then âsmân — both are equally said — to match the metric of virân. A nice touch, but no possession.

I wanted the possession.

My second idea was to change the word for sky, آسمان (âsemân) into عرش (‘arsh), making it then :

se halqe vâse-ye pâdishâh-e elfi taht-e ‘arsh,

haft vâse-ye arbâbhâ-ye dvarfi tu-ye otâq-e sang,

noh vâse-ye ensânhâ-ye fâni mahkum be marg,

yek vâse-ye arbâb-e târik bar sarir-e târikesh,

As easily guessed, it had problems.

The first problem was both one… and a genius play on words. For عرش (‘arsh) means sky but in a metaphorical manner, think throne of God type of sky meaning. Which was a problem, and a miracle. Alluding to earthly religions is always risky for translations, in my opinion ; too much connotation, interfering with the translation itself. But, at the same time, it was fun. The parallel between the “throne” of the Elves (or maybe Eru Ilúvatar’s one ?) and the throne of Sauron. Good vs evil is always neat, especially when speaking of Tolkien !

Another issue was the fact that the rhymes were poorer than before, rhymes still, but poor.

A good point was the fact that we kept the possession. Important point, of course.

Of my process and sources

This part will be quick, I promise.

I mostly used Glosbe, not that much for words (well, I used it to find عرش (‘arsh) or ویران (virân), to be fair) but more to have access to its corpuses, diving into the open subtitles of the Lord of the Rings movies. I didn’t want to copy-paste the already made translations, but I used it up has a way to see how they prism through they translated english. It was interesting. Used the french ones, too.

Yes, because last of all, persian in not my mother tongue, neither is english. French is, so excuse my “frenchism” if it occurs.

If you are a persian speaker, any notes or thoughts are more than welcome ! Please, enlighten me. Know that I tried my best and do as best I could, given my knowledge, my guts, and my sources.

[bonefall]

Everytime I see Squilf's nickname in clanmew, Pishee, I get reminded of this one image with a spray bottle with "pishe pishe" written on it.

So, have Pishee:

Leaving who she's spraying up to you <3

POV You are Bramblestar and you have made your last bad call, bucko <3

[persianmom]

one of my favorite sayings in farsi is fadat besham bc it translates to I am willing to sacrifice myself for you because what is love if not sacrifice?

[makerofmadness]

third part to my series now of translating cookie run character names into farsi

I've done this for characters that aren't in Kingdom too but the art isn't as cool for them so making the images with the words over the images won't look as cool :(( I'll have to do it eventually though so Oof-

anyway uh romanization and also a fun fact at the end:

Strawberry Cookie = توتفرنگی کوکی (tootferengi cookie) Avocado Cookie = آووکادو کوکی (avocado cookie) Espresso Cookie = اسپرسو کوکی (espresso cookie) Latte Cookie = لاته کوکی (latte cookie) Pancake Cookie = پنکیک کوکی (pancake cookie) Lilac Cookie = یاس بنفش کوکی (yaas banafsh cookie) Clover Cookie = شبدر کوکی (shabdar cookie) Blackberry Cookie = توت سیاه‌ کوکی (toot seyah cookie) Raspberry Cookie = تمشک کوکی (tameshk cookie) Fig Cookie = انجیر کوکی (anjir cookie) Mozzarella Cookie = موتزارلا کوکی (mozzarella cookie) Almond Cookie = بادام کوکی (baadaam cookie)

Fun fact: تمشک (tameshk) is actually the word for both raspberry and blackberry in Farsi. I asked my baba how to differentiate and he said sometimes people call blackberries توت سیاه (toot-e seyah), or "black mulberry" (توت I think can refer to either berries in general or specifically mulberries. That's why it's also in strawberry. توتفرنگی basically means "foreign berry" on a literal level). there's your Farsi fact of the day

[arcadeyes]

Learning a “useless language” can be hard.

First off, i’d like to state that i believe no language is truly useless. Not ones people in your country don’t speak, not ones that have a very low amount of speakers, not even ones that died out a thousand years ago. But learning a language that the world (or even just yourself) has deemed useless can be hard.

The lack of resources available for these lesser learnt languages can be annoying especially if it isnt on duolingo or other language learning apps.

The lack of community. I’m attempting to learn romanes because my mother is romani but she doesnt speak it and its a closed language (might talk about that in a later post)

The lack of motive. Yes, i want to learn my ancestors/families languages but its hard. It’s not like i’ll get to speak it with anyone.

But sometimes its not so hard. Sometimes you get this sprinkle of hope- a reward that makes you want to push on. For myself, that’ll be talking to my irish friend A as gaeilge. We are both chugging through the duolingo course and sometimes we might attempt to have a little natter in irish and for a moment i’ll feel like i’m not wasting my time. i’m doing something worthwhile.

Learning a useless language can be hard, but the thought of giving up is worse.

Learning a useless language can’t be hard because in my eyes there are no useless languages.

[languagesandpain]

[languagelearningcorner]

Language Learning Journey Update

It's been a while since I've been on Tumblr! In the months I've been away, I was focusing heavily on Persian and strengthening my skills in all areas of the language before I switch to a maintenance phase and pick up another language. During this time, I also got really into planning and journaling which has helped me better structure language learning in my schedule as well as reflect on how best to structure my time.

I certainly learned a lot from this time but the biggest takeaway for me is that my biggest pain point when learning a language is acquiring vocabulary. I tend to let it happen rather naturally (slowly) and while it's a valid method, it also leads me to stagnate and plateau. That's why, with the change in my language learning plans, I've also restructured my learning schedule (for, like, the millionth time).

Learning Two Languages Simultaneously

I was originally planning on (re)learning Korean after going through the intensive 3 months of Persian but recent developments in my professional life have pushed me to start learning Cantonese instead. My goal for Cantonese is mostly to reach a decent listening comprehension level and a basic speaking level.

Although I'm learning Cantonese from scratch, I feel that I still have a long way to go with Persian. I am not ready for a traditional maintenance phase, but I know I am close to burn out and have to dial it back. The schedule is structured around Persian and I fill the rest of the time I was using for Persian previously, for Cantonese.

ON/OFF Weeks System

This system was inspired by my need to find a different way to learn and focus on vocabulary while also avoiding burn out in Persian.

ON Weeks: These are weeks where I will be focusing on 1 skill in Persian in the mornings. For example, on Monday, I will be reading intensively (e.g., breaking down phrases, re-reading, translating, compiling vocabulary) for about 25 minutes. In the afternoons, I am working on getting exposure to Cantonese and learning the sound system.

OFF Weeks: These weeks involve only practicing the Persian vocabulary I accumulated during the ON weeks. I'll be re-reading them, defining or looking up words on Forvo, writing practice sentences, uploading them to HelloTalk, and correcting them. I also do some light, passive activities like listening while I clean something or reading for a few minutes without stopping to translate.

Off weeks don't really change much in the way of Cantonese. I will continue with my plan as is.

Maintenance languages: I do have to maintain French and Spanish, however, I am lucky that I interact with languages almost on a daily basis. When I foresee that a day may be void of one, I'll stack it with another hobby of mine (e.g., journaling in Spanish or reading in French).

An ON week coming up.

Tools pictured: Night owl by Owl Paper Co planner, Asvine P50 fountain pen, Tombow Fudenosuke hard tip brush pen, Zebra Mildliner highlighters

[his-heart-hymns]

I want to see you.Know your voice. Recognize you when you first come round the corner. Sense your scent when I come into a room you’ve just left. Know the lift of your heel,the glide of your foot. Become familiar with the way you purse your lips then let them part,just the slightest bit,when I lean in to your space and kiss you. I want to know the joy of how you whisper “more”.

[lovevalley45]

sometimes i wonder how much farsi zari 1.0 could speak compared to z2 and behrad bc like,,, obv the reason we see them speaking more farsi is bc they have each other, or their parents, to talk to. but do u think that z1 could feel her farsi slipping from her tongue the longer her family was dead, furthering distancing her from the people she loved? was it a relief to go back into the totem and maybe not be surrounded by the family she lost, but the language that they held to despite argus trying to rip everything away from them? did she worry that z2 and her behrad had lost it, not out of oppression but negligence? was she happy that this version of her was spared from the same loneliness of language she was?