 Hello, my name is Nargis Fazat and I teach Persian at SOA's University of London. In episode 2, we took tentative first steps at reading some very simple Persian sentences, albeit written in the Roman script. I also highlighted some of the many similarities between Persian and European languages. I'd like to introduce you to the Perso-Arabic script now, and let's look at some numbers too. Now, let's look at the script a little more formally. Again, we're going right to the left. A lot of... I don't want to turn this into a big, you know, theological or linguistics talk, and I'm not really an expert in that field at all. But I want you to think that many, many, many of our languages have an original source, or perhaps I should say more correctly, the scripts, apart from the, you know, Chinese, Japanese scripts, have these Indo-European languages, have a script that originates from a much older system of writing. However, the gene pool is as strong as ever. The DNA of this original script is very much there. So let's look at the Phoenician alphabet, and you see the order of those alphabets is very much present in the English alphabet, in the Greek alphabet, and in the Arabic and Persian alphabet that we've ordered. So if you think about the top heading of these letters, then it might assist you to learn them more easily. Maybe you just remove that scary element. This won't be so overwhelming because you're really just doing a bit of archaeology and discovering things that mean something to all of us, to all the languages we speak. Okay, so if you think it might be easier to think about the Greek or the English order, almost all these alphabets start with this alphabeta. So Alephbo, the Persian Arabic order, alphabeta, A, B. This system is also known as the arpeggiated. So you have the alphabeta going right to the left, alphabeta, gamma, delta. So you have an A, B, C. Look at the gamma and the C. It's still very similar. Change D. Think of D, delta. Even the way we write it. Look, can you see the D? If you just like to turn that delta 90 degrees clockwise, it will look very similar to the D in English and to the doll in Persian. And in Persian you have these four forms, if you like. So I have given you here 14 of the first 32 letters of the alphabet. And I just want you to take a visual snapshot of this. I'm not going to teach you the script just yet. Often people find it very difficult. They're like, oh my goodness, the structure. You know, suddenly one minute you're doing these, you know, top down letters, going vertical lines, and then it's now going across. And then these hooked shapes, then these tips of an arrow. If we have our alpha, beta, gamma, delta, or alif, be, gym, doll. Gym is the name of the letter J. The same way, the W is the name of the letter W. And then if I put them in the column. So I have my alif and my be, number one and two, alpha, beta. Then four letters fall into that pattern. Then I have my gym, like gamma. And then I have these four hooked letters. Then I have five letters that have the shape of my delta, if you like. That they're all very similar, not identical, but very similar. But in these patterns of the beta and gamma, if you like, really the only thing that distinguishes them are the number of dots or no dots at all. So I hope that removes a little bit of inhibition if you do not know the Persian-Arabic script, that it's really doable. You can really take steps with a bit of practice and perseverance. You'll get there. So now let's look at making a word. Let's look at one of these ancient letters, this sin, this S, which is like a W, if you write, a very soft curly W writing, or like the edges of a doily, some lacework. This comes from the old Phoenician alphabet. And its name, sin, was really the word that used for teeth as well. And look here, it's very sensible. Look at the shape of the teeth. It really is the S. And then I want to greet you in writing to say Siloam. So I've put my diacritic, that's my little S, so S is this letter, which looks like the T. L, as it happens, just a mirror image. This is the joinable L of the Latin L, my long O, and then M. So Siloam, going right to left. Let's see how that is written. If you see, this is not a very pretty shape, just looks like three sides of a square, but often it's written in a much more beautiful way. So that was just a little demonstration. And here we are, at the bottom of the image, if you look, that is an imperial aramaic S. It happens to have a dot there. This is a Phoenician sin. And look, if you turn it 90 degrees clockwise, here is the Greek letter S. And of course greeting in all the languages. And from the poster, Siloam Bambai, Siloam Mumbai. Let's look at another aspect. When you start learning the script, think about the way you're writing. You pick your pen up. Why are you doing an anti-clockwise? When you write your B, lowercase B, or uppercase, you do your line that, then you have these clockwise hoops. When you write your W in English, I've chosen a font to give me a very curvaceous W. Here you are, think about the way you write it. It goes anti-clockwise. You come down, curve, anti-clockwise, up again, down, anti-clockwise, up again. In Persian, the beginning of that S letter that I mentioned is clockwise. So you come down in a clockwise shape. And there it is. We have a website which we've been developing for a long time, led by SOAPS, and very much in close collaboration with University of St Andrews in Scotland and then University of Cambridge, called Persian Language Online, to enable you to provide the resource for you to learn Persian privately in your own time. And one of the most challenging aspects of learning Persian, as I said, was learning the script. So we wanted to really create these animations that would enable you to learn, to watch how it's written, pause it and repeat it. So I'm just going to link to the letter S on that website, and I hope it works. And I hope you'll hear the pronunciation of it. It's not out-readed. So what it said there was the name of the letter, letter SIN, and then it follows with an R, do I predict? Sar, with a R, Sar, meaning head. Let's move to the next, and we'll go. And remember, Persian is a cursive script. It means compulsory joint up, not all letters. Those letters that fell under the delta list, the D and the R, those six of them, five of them rather, and two other letters should stand alone. These are some of the, so you take the pen, you come down, it's curved, and you remember to put your dots. These hooked ones, these are like some utensil almost hanging off the line. And you always have a baseline. The letters either sit on it or just hang off it, and their big round bellies just sort of hang off it. So up you go, you pick the pen up, you go in the clockwise fashion, you reach the line, and look, now you change direction, is anticlockwise. I said that the Persian alphabet started with alif, alfa. It ends with the letter ye. And ye, and which looks, in a minute, I'm going to switch to another document. Talks, doesn't it? Like you try to turn in that 90 degrees anticlockwise. It's like y in the English alphabet, y. And like y, it can pronounced as a ye or an e. You can say my or play, has that ye, or you can say happy or many or very. It has that e sound. Same in Persian. It could be mahi. How about the fish, the Hawaiian fish, mahi mahi, which I think is like a dorota. Or it could be pronounced as a ye-nei, like the reed flute. And here are the list of the letters of the alphabet. You can find these on many websites on our site. And I fully recommend you to follow this link and visit this website full of animations for simple discussions. And it takes you all the way up to lower intermediate level. There are many other websites I never like to encourage anyone to cheat. But I'm going to show you a couple of websites. If you know the word in English, so for example, now after this lesson, you know the word maadar, you know dokhtar, you know ast, you know setaril, you know barodar. You can write apartemal, you know dar. So you know khub, for example, good dust for a friend. And you might want to write this in Persian, but you still haven't learned the script. So what to do, what to do? Let's visit one of these cheating sites. And I hope it will work. I share it with you. And if we go here, I hope it is going to work. And here we are. That's one of the websites. Actually, I meant to open the other one. Here you just have the letters. You can just click them, for example. You want it to do maadar. You find your M and you find your R, and you find your tip of the arrow D, and your R, and it's written it for you. But I want to share another website with you. This website, it says it, you know, you don't know. You don't know the letters. So it tells you type on your English keyboard and the editor will do the rest for you. So we had asked, let's try that. I'm sitting here, of course, by mistake. I'm still in my Persian language. So here we are, asked, and it's done it for you. Magically changes. Let's do duster for you. However you pronounce it, it can guess. What it is. Let's do centare for you. And here it does it for you. Before I end this talk, I want to tell you something about the days of the week in Persian. And I'm going to teach you five numerals, five numbers in Persian from one to five. And so you can order the days of the week. And you might think this is a very strange thing. You know, why would I need the numbers to have the days of the week? Before we get to the days of the week, there are, again, I want to draw your attention to the similarity of numbers. The numbers that you use in the West are known as Western Arabic numerals. These are used a lot, actually, in the Arab world too. So, you know, they no longer use the Eastern numbers that we use. The origins of these numbers are actually from India. So they really correctly should be Indo-Arabic numbers, if you like. But of course they came through Iran, the Arab Middle East, North Africa, and to the West. So let's look at them. Number one, before I give you the name of it, obviously, is a universal image that almost anywhere in the world, you know, this will be recognized as one unit. How about two? What you see on the screen here is the Eastern Indo-Arabic numerals. Let me see, what if I grab it and try to turn it 90 degrees anti-clockwise? Do you recognize it now? As your Western Arabic number, you need to lip off a bit of that tail. But here is your two. Let's have a go at numeral three. Let's turn that just turn that down at 90 degrees. Anti-clockwise. Here is your Western three numeral. The same team actually works with number four two. If you turn it, you see that a little bit of imagination, that's the Western digit number four. What about number five? Number five, its name in Persian is Panj, which again, you will hopefully recognize in the name of a region or rivers, you know, Punjab, Punjabi name of the language. And again, if you hold your palm up, I don't have a particularly chunky hand, but that's really, there is your Panj. And Panj means your claw, your hand that can grab, so with the five digits. So you have that base with the five digits up there. So let's learn the names of these numbers and days of the week. So number one, its name is Yik. Before C, number one, Yik asked Yik. Can you repeat after me? Yik. Very good. Number two, Doh. Doh like you know, Doh Adiyah, Doh. Can you say that? Doh, almost a D-O-W sound, Doh. Number three is Seh, a very soft S, with just a little E, rhyming with cafe, Seh. So so far we had Yik, number two, Doh Seh. Number four, Chahar. Number four, two syllables, so Yik, Doh, Seh. Each word is one syllable. Chahar, four syllables. Number four is Chahar. And five, I'm sure you already remember, because of its appearance in all the other names, Panj. Number five is Panj. Shall we run through it one more time? Yik, Doh, Seh, Chahar, Panj. Very good. In order to make our days of the week, we now need a day name for the first day of the week. Persian week starts on a Saturday. So Saturday is the start of the school week, working week, etc. And the weekend are Thursday, Friday. So we start on Saturday. And we use a name for a sort of like, an old Sabbath name for this, which is Shambi. So Saturday is Shambi. In fact, it's spelled with a S, a Seh sound, a N, B. But if you try to pronounce an N before a B, often it comes out as an M. So what you hear is Shambi. Shambi is Saturday. So Sunday is one Saturday, Saturday plus one day. So now you know why I need this number. So tell me, if Saturday is Shambi, Saturday and one day will be Yik Shambi, one plus Saturday. Shambi, repeat after me, Shambi, very good. Now Sunday, Yik Shambi. So what's Monday? Very good, Do Shambi, Do Shambi. Does that ring a bell in the names of capital cities in the world? Capital of Tajikistan, Do Shambi. So we had our Shambi, Saturday, Yik Shambi, Sunday, Do Shambi, Monday. I now want Wednesday, four days after, day four after Saturday. Very good, Chal Shambi. And I want day five after the start of the week, my first day of weekend in Iran, Pan Shambi. And of course, since the Islamic time, the Friday, which has always been in Iran, has always been a day of communal get-together for worship and prayers. And that has its Arabic now, Jum E, which I think you hear in many other languages referred to as the Friday. So we run through this one more time, first day of the week, Shambi. One day after that, Yik Shambi, Do Shambi, Se Shambi, Chahar Shambi, Pan Shambi, Jum E. Very good, so what day of the week is today? You tell me. Thank you very much for joining me. You've been an amazing audience, and I hope to see you again soon. Falan khuda hafiz. Khuda negahtar.