Learning Persian with Mnemonics
My history with Persian goes way back as I have a Persian uncle. I have always been fascinated by Persian culture and wanted to travel to Iran and Afghanistan one day. Unfortunately, in recent years, this has been easier said than done. Actually around 20 years ago, I made my first attempt to learn Persian. It didn't last long, though, because I decided to study Japanese and Chinese at university and so I put my Persian books away. Last year, when I decided to do some volunteering work for refugees and heard that there is quite a number of Iranians and Afghans living in Germany, I remembered my Persian books and dusted them off. The Persian language is divided into several varieties which are mutually intelligible: Farsi in Iran, Dari in Afghanistan and Tajik in Tajikistan. Farsi and Dari are written with the Persian alphabet, which is a modification of the Arabic alphabet. It has four letters, which don't exist in Arabic: پ (pe), چ (che), گ (ge) and ژ (zhe). Several le...