I am making a Farsi audio course (in English) - Episode 0

2024-07-29

Why

I am a native Farsi speaker. I've always had an interest (and occasionally an obsession) with languages. I'm interested in etymology of words, understanding how sentences are structured and why. I like to find patterns and understand the rules when I think about any language. My native language is no exception. I also used to teach English as a second language.

Over the last decade, I've come across people who had an interest in learning Farsi. They generally face a couple of hurdles right off the bat: 1) There are very limited resources, and 2) the language is not written in Latin script (like English or French or German are), so you cannot simply open a Farsi course book and try to teach yourself, because you can't read anything.

There are some courses online, but I found that they are either too complex for a beginner, or they start by words and sentences that are not particularly useful. It seems to me that they don't set up the learner to get a grasp on the basics first, feel rewarded, and continue to build up their knowledge.

So I decided to make a series of Farsi lessons in English.

How does it work?

Every audio session is a conversation between me and a Farsi learner. There is no writing, and no homework. You only have to listen and engage with the audio session. Each time, we learn only a couple of words together, and we build sentences right from the beginning. Over time, our sentences become more complex, only by combining all the words we already know. This way we can express a lot with only a few words, and the new words are revisited several times in new sentences, so they solidify in your mind, and we avoid the tediousness of simply repeating.

The audio files are not divided into "lessons". I keep their length short, and they're designed so that you can start and stop at any time, as long as you do them in the right sequence.