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Robbie Giomi's avatar

This is great! Could you please give some advice on how someone would go about learning Persian on their own. Most of the textbooks I have seen are clearly meant to be used in a class room. My interests would be mostly reading classical poetry and literature, like Saadi, Hafez, the Gulistan, etc. Thanks !

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Alexander Jabbari's avatar

Glad you found it useful! I am planning to write a post about learning Persian on one's own, one of these days when I find the time. In the meantime I recommend Wheeler Thackston's Introduction to Persian, which is good for reading classical literature and suitable for self-study.

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Ulzhan R's avatar

Hi, thanks for sharing info about Persian. As someone who knows both Arabic and Persian, what would you recommend to start with Arabic or Persian? For 19th century texts from Central Asia, as plus language(s) to main Old Tatar/Kazakh/Turki. So far, I had a very basic Arabic for a semester sometime ago, and zero Persian. Merci.

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Alexander Jabbari's avatar

If your goal is to improve your reading of 19th century Central Asian Turkic texts, Persian would help more than Arabic, though both would ultimately be useful.

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Ulzhan R's avatar

Thank you. Indeed, ideally both would be great to know. Will try to familiarise myself with first Persian.

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