 My name is Nargis Fazad and I teach Persian at SOA's University of London. In episode one I talked about the evolution of Persian language, illustrated by some lovely images, and we stopped at about 7th century AD. In this episode we're going to look at the Persian language in the Islamic period. I hope you'll enjoy it. I now fast forward to the image of the modern borders of Iran and I always like to remind people that the top section of Iran does look like a Persian cat as well. The era of new or modern Persian starts in the 7th century. Iran or Persia was the only country conquered by the Russian caliphs who did not lose its language to Arabic. Many other of these lands eventually lost the use of their native tongue and Arabic became not only the lingua franca but the national language of those regions, not in Iran. What the Persians did, they ditched their rather complex inadequate middle Persian Pahlavi script gradually and adopted the Arabic script for their needs and because Persian is an Indo-European language and has various letters that Semitic languages don't have, Persian created a script which is now known as the Perso-Arabic script. Iran became an integral part of the Islamic empire and very soon it really became the engine that propelled the expansion of the empire further east and Persian became the second language of the Perso-Islamic empire. Relationship of Arabic and Persian can be compared to the relationship of French and English. You know there's so many French words in the English language but they're not grammatically structurally similar and same with Persian we use many Arabic words in Persian and these are mostly related to the legal, religious, scientific discourse. Persian soon became the lingua franca of big swathes of this empire particularly in Central Asia in the Indian subcontinent which when it was the official language of the mobile court. And if we go to today, Persian is the official language of Iran where locally it's known as Farsi alongside Pashto. It is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan again locally known as Dari and in Tajikistan it's the official language of that state and known as Tajik. And you will see I've given you an example that in Tajikistan Persian is written in the Cyrillic i.e the Russian alphabet but in Iran and Afghanistan it's written in the perso-parabic script. Some images of modern publications or a typed text and here is the children's book I think you can guess what story that is, Shenil Kermesi, Little Red Riding Hood and of course Iranians love their sports and of football mad as any in the region. I now want to introduce you to the language. I normally hate not starting the teaching of Persian with an immediate introduction to this script but I need to cheat a little bit because I want to squeeze quite a lot in this talk and so I thought it might be easier for you if you have no familiarity with the perso-arabic script to follow what I'm saying if I use the latin script but I'm going to give you several clues and I'm going to highlight the familiarities of say Persian and English or German. First I need to give you some just basic information about Persian. Persian has 32 letters of the alphabet in terms of the characteristic of the language there is no gender in Persian there is no he or she no feminine or masculine and this makes it much easier to learn compared to languages where you have to work out if it's this noun feminine masculine and so on but it does make the translations of love poetry very interesting. Who is the beloved female or male doesn't matter. Persian nouns are not subject to any inflection and the rules of conjugation are very very regular and the main challenge is learning the script but even then you can see that this script has come down from an original source and again as soon as you discover the common denominators and if you twist certain letters that you're already familiar with you know turn them clockwise anti-clockwise then the mystery diminishes and the learning will become a lot easier. So another characteristic of the Persian Arabic script is that the short vowels are not normally written in. Now what do I mean with that so if you have two solid letters two consonants let's say in English you have the p and a t okay if you just put them next to each other well it's very hard to work out what is this word is it pat is it put pet pit pot what is it so you do really need those short vowels and if not just in the shape of vowels o a e then you need to have some diacritic some little markers that will enable you to read it. Persian and Arabic do not use these markers of course you have them when you're starting to learn this script like you have training wheels when you're learning to ride a bicycle but before long these are removed and you might make a few mistakes but the beauty of Persian is unlike English where p and t can make so many words in Persian they would make maybe maximum of two words so when you learn them then you just increase your list of words you're not going to get modeled up another feature of Persian similar with very many languages is that the ruler of the verb the agent of the verb the subject comes first and the verb concludes a sentence so the order is subject object verb the action comes right at the end and full stop so if you are ready to take those on board let's read a little bit of Persian now can you get your eyes used to reading these Latin letters from right to the left that's the direction of the Persian language as is Arabic so the short vowels all the lowercase letters will soon be deleted the solid letters the consonants are in the capital letter and the long vowels like an or not an a or an e not an a these are written in and are never deleted and the long or which is almost you know verging on to an o sounds like I don't know what word can I say like you know or as an honor you know the long arm so have a go at reading this I'll give you 10 seconds very good salam a universal manner of greeting only enough in countries that became Muslim converts if I'm not mistaken two Arab friends don't greet each other with salam it perhaps has a more of a religious calling connotations they say ahlans ahlans but in Iran in many more new Muslim countries we use salam for just a very quick way of greeting so here I am salam now can you read this this is how I greeted you when I started this talk can you go right to the left shall we have a go together naam me man narges ast the verb right at the end naam do you recognize anything there can you spot the familiarity between these Persian words and the English word or you're quite right name what about man man mean I or my for example and asked what about asked what verb does that sound like the German east is ast so what could this mean the verb is at the end but let's look at naam me man I'll give you a clue may not work forever but for a short while with the elementary person if you read the person from left to right if you like you put a drop down menu you read it from left to right you get the English remember you then put the verb in the right order because English is a subject verb object you say I saw my friend last weekend while in Persian we will say I my friend last weekend saw so naam me man can we read this from left to right my name is narges what about the next bit naam me for me man farzad ast what about this one let's put a drop down menu here drop just put the English underneath these words man my family name my family name my surname is farzad what's that little air doing there when you listen to Iranian speakers you might put so many of the words seem to end with a little air rhyming with cafe for example this little air is a vocal link that holds a noun like name or house or friend keeps it vocally linked to its possessor like my name naam me man like an apostrophe if you like and to its other attributive characteristics to an adjective for example so it's like saying name of mine my name and my family name i'm going to be a bit nosy and ask about you naam me to she asked to again in many languages a second person singular person is a to or a thou or you Persian unlike English but like very many languages has a plural second person uh so we can use that for really when i'm talking to when i'm referring to you which is more than you one person you several person or four more you a very polite you so chi again can you think of some european languages qi qi qi question words for who or what what am i asking you naam me to she asked what is your name a note my question word my interrogative it's gone where the answer should be unlike English question was usually in english they usually start the um a question word don't you wear wear you who is that person what color is um this um jumper for example but in person it goes where the answer be so you will say i can say naam me to Melanie asked naam me to philip asked i can then use a polite plural uh you naam me so ma she asked that's how i would ask you i wouldn't be so presumptuous to call you to just yet you will remain the formal uh very respected show ma let's talk about nationalities a bit normally you can add an e to the name of the country and you get the nationality a little bit like i am that you can add to countries you know america american um you know australia australian and so on iran iranian in english in person we add an e the names of these countries if they happen to be part of our world and existence for a long time they will have kept their names so you know we have miss for egypt we're not going to use the word egypt but for newer countries we've taken the french pronunciation of their names so for example germany in iran would be all mon so but for our purpose here we add an e to the name of the country and we get the nationality so i'm going to tell you a little more about me can we read it together and remember i'm now just making these vowels these short vowels going to disappear man man iranian custom man iranian custom now you remember that asked which was is well that's for a third person verb ending now i'm saying i am look at another similarity what if we start reading this from left to right the doer of the verb man is always repeated at the end of the verb every person verb has a little ending who tells you who's done it you can look at that a little later at another time but here if you read this this has some i am look let's read this from left to right i am iranian now i'm going to remove these vowels and i'm just going to put a little little diacritic there a little sign there that you know that m in order to say man i has to be followed with a little a man iranian custom and when i remove this then you may get a bit of a shock but hopefully by that stage you will know what man is you're not going to say man or man so you will remember this is man iranian and you will have learned this word as custom the word who's tomb for example doesn't exist or his tomb doesn't exist and if you make a mistake and read it differently well an iranian or a persian speaker will say for goodness sake why did you learn your persian and they will correct you this um rarely happens you will soon soon get used to this let's move on let's do a little bit more reading a european word is in there can you read this i'll just give you a second or two remember barcy persian daddy goes from right to left always remember that so you need to read this or does it is from right to left okay let's read it long ball all all partimone man or partimone man dar which city is this london persian way of saying london or partimone man dar london ast let's go from left to right my apartment dar is a preposition meaning in or at my apartment is in london and here i'm just going to remove these vowels there which i've put them here in a in a lowercase e and i'm just going to give you a tiny little hint of it so you know that the word is apartimone not aparto man this east days because that's my vocal link is my apartment vocally needs to link to man and here can you read this one a universally recognizable name alex angelesi ast a british person an english person is known as someone from english time alex angelesi ast angelesianity what does that mean in english very good alex is english and here i've just put a little marker and gradually those training markers will be removed and this will be alex alex angelesi ast let's expand our words let's look at this one again take a few seconds to read them right to left and keep those long vowels alex really alex not an a and alex norme modare man mariam ast time for another characteristic feature of person actually it applies to arabic too there are no words in person that start with two consonants in a minute you'll see an example of how that can go wrong in person we cannot say unless you know we've lived in a country for a long time and used that language for a long time it's very hard for a person speaker or an arabic speaker to say words that start with two solid letters say for example blue you have the bl and then to say you know brown or stop or street that's three consonants we have no problem with pronouncing this solid back-to-back consonants later on in the word with no problem saying empty but a word like stop or smith or street is quite hard because we're used to having a vowel and then consonants or a consonant vowel consonant so you might next time if somebody's just arrived from iran or an arabic speaking country you listen to them and they might say you know oh mr smith i'm very pleased to see you because sm has to be split or i'll see you outside russell's square tube station station in itself would be hard it would become a station probably another feature of person which arabic doesn't have this problem we do not have words with t h so the is very hard for us we have to really pause and focus and say this is a t h i must pronounce it as a the therefore words words that so many languages use if it has a t h in person these become a d sometimes a t but often a d armed with that which relation am i talking about here should we read it one more time nomi madara man mariam asked let's go from left to right who is madara or pedar mother and father the d really is the t h that you have in english so my mother's name and here that little link the vocal link really comes through as an apostrophe in english my mom's name what's her name mariam of course the biblical virgin Mary but also the name of a flower what about this one might need to think about the word not just in english in german too take a second to look at this nomi duhtare man setare asked duhtar but that's real you really want to clear your throat does that sound like a german word for daughter sounds like close enough to the english as well so what about this my daughter's name what is her name look at this little short vows if you ignore them reading right to left what is this absolutely it's star so my daughter's name is not star the english pronunciation setare where the word toro comes from do you know any girls called toro very popular name and i believe you have toro in Sanskrit as well so setare is split because the two consonants don't feature in person i have a setare let's see find that little more about my mom modare man dar tehron asked modare man dar tehron asked remember what dar was of course the monaman dar landanas in oat where is my mom modare man dar tehron asked my mom is in tehron and here i am removing the short vowels for a little while i give you these diacritics and then i'll take them off completely and here is modar modare man dar tehron asked i want to show you a bit of the script now so and i'm still going to write it in the Latin script going right to the left but time really for you to see the real script too so i was saying that really you read the person construction from left to right while you translate it into english and you get the right order and similarly you can read the english you know now an adjective for example noun possessor from right to left and you get the passion so we have a little drop down menu and you put the english word underneath so here is nom here nom i'll put name underneath that here is my man i'll write my underneath and farsi as rostbecha farsi from right to left nomi man in glisi as chap beroz from left to right my name let's add a bit to this and remember we can't do teh here we are can you have a go at this going from right to left nomi barodare man who's this one my brother's name my brother's name let's add another bit to this and here we have nomi duster huber man my good friend's name nomi duster huber man and you realize i hope that all this word nom duster huber all mine my friend is mine my good friend is mine so the name of my good friend is like the apostrophe so almost every word sounds like it's ending with a like a cafe let's take a break again and get ready for episode three when we will look at some of the characteristics of the Persian language and see whether i can make it just a little bit easier for you in order to take the first steps in reading Persian take care bye for now