Comment by veqq | Hacker News Reader

Comment by veqq | Hacker News Reader

Author, you're not properly engaging with the language. Instead of learning to type (and simply adding vowel marks), you complain about letters having different forms akin to someone saying q and Q are different and then write a post about an actively worse approach.

You also didn't understand that cards in anki can have more than 2 sides. Making Persian writing->Latin transcription then Latin transcription->English translation is a huge antipattern, when you can have all 3 on one note (simply add a 3rd field, also there's a built in "hint" field) - and above all should not use a Latin transcription at all (Notably, in the deck settings, you can generate cards from notes in different ways.)

هیچ کُدام now has the o marked, that easy! (N.b. author, another issue with your method is... Youtube videos are teaching you random things without structure. Colloquial Tehrani Persian turns án/ám into un/um which you are learning in your vocabulary. But you can simply learn the replacement rules and apply them when speaking in certain contexts.) Please use a good textbook instead. In 100-200 hours, you should be around B2 with a good program. (Better Assimil courses bring that down to ~75 hours.)

I strongly recommend:

- Baizoyev & Howard’s Beginners Guide to Tajiki - teaches the written language, with all vowels marked, and multiple dialects, this is by far the fastest way to master Persian. Reading/writing in Persian script is essentially mechanical with a good base in the language and not an issue, but you can read all Persian classics in the Tajik script with all vowels marked...

- Lambton's Persian Grammar - teaches the written languages along with colloquial Iranian usage

- Elwell-Sutton's Colloquial Persian - uses Latin transcription, quickly teaches the grammar and a nice vocabulary

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But going further, if a vowel's not marked but feels necessary:

> In 1792, Edward Moises already suggested not trying and just saying e

Different dialects differ a lot on short vowel usage (even in grammatical forms), so this is a surprisingly valid trick.

Your post is actually very helpful, but comes across as harsh and condescending. I think you should reconsider how you approach this.

EDIT: to be more specific, language like "You complain" and "You also didn't understand" can appear abrasive and scornful. Removing them would probably make the effect you're hoping for (proper learning techniques for the language) more meaningful.

My observation is that in language learning there are always people that will come to correct or improve your method, say they have something better and tell you why you are wrong.

It’s important to be a bit strong willed against this type of comment in the internet and stick to your instincts. Not to say good things cannot be learned out from others, but finding out what works for your particular needs through self experiment is really important, and on the long run time exposure to the target language trumps over methods.

Some examples:

- Learn grammar from a good book vs. absorb it naturally from material.

- The [tool I’m using] is better than [tool I’ve never tried].

- The [method I used for a month] is better than [old method I used for years].

- The [tool I’m selling] is better than [my competitor’s].

It’s easy to get discouraged if you don’t see the patterns and think you are doing something wrong, it’s better to keep vigilant.

> Instead of learning to type

How do you know they are not learning to type?

> you complain about letters having different forms

Where did they "complain"?

The OP's article:

> From this, I will extract three screenshots (with the MacOS screenshot tool). First, to create a card of type “basic” (one side). I use this type of card to exercise my reading, which is very difficult and remains stubbornly slow, even though I know the 32 letters of the Persian alphabet quite well by now. But the different ways of writing them (which varies by their position in the word) and the fact that the vowels are not present makes it an enduringly challenging task.

It doesn't sound like they literally can't type in Persian, or they're complaining about how it's written, at all. They're merely stating the fact it's difficult for them (like every language learner).

They also screenshot the English part too. So presumably they screenshot because it's faster, not that they can't type.

> Author, you're not properly engaging with the language

Strangely condescending. They're focusing on reading and listening, which is legit for beginners.

I do agree that the use of Anki cards is suboptimal though.

In English you have to actually press shift to change q to Q. In Persian, this is all done for you. Simply press a letter key and the correct form will appear (automatically changing form based on letters later.) Describing that as "challenging" indicates that the author does not know how to type in Persian.

...

He's talking about reading as a challenge. Not typing. It's very clear and unambiguous from the original article.

You still misunderstand. This is only relevant because the author doesn't understand the system and instead of engaging with it, is making counter-productive crutches which prevent actual learning.

I'm flagging your comment for claiming I didn't read the article. If the author has trouble reading letters, how can he type well (which was your first point)? Addressing that first would prevent him from using transcriptions and dual sets of flashcards.

Author here: my learning objectives, in order of importance, are: (1) vocal understanding, (2) speaking, (3) reading, and (4) typing and writing (far further). As I explain, I'm mostly bypassing the problem of typing by using screenshots (ChatGPT's OCR capabilities are very good, and Anki works very well with it too).

With a few hours of applied learning, distinctions between these will collapse. If you work on typing, your reading will naturally improve (because you're identifying letters to input). With stronger reading, you won't see differences between scripts and reading will be the same as listening. That is, improving your knowledge of the language by reading will improve your listening comprehension too. (Reading the wikipedia article on phonology will also unify reading out loud and speaking, Persian is extremely phonemic.)

At minimum, consider a few hours now compared to the time saved by halving the number of flashcards you need.

Don't know how applicable it is in regards to vowel marks, but similarly in online conversation Czech people often leave out all diacritic marks (so no čšťďřňůúáéíýó). This used to be completely incomprehensible to me, until I had enough knowledge to read "normal" Czech text with relative ease.

So it seems to make a lot of sense to learn with that aid and later transition to no vowel markings (or reduced / the normal amount)

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