Persian/Farsi Resources?

Languages
#1

After listening to the excellent talk Iran: Land of language and literature by Mahya Mirsadeghi, I feel inspired to start learning Farsi again. I started learning earlier this year but found it difficult to source good quality/engaging resources. I quickly got overwhelmed by everything and gave up and just focused on Korean where there are so many resources I possibly have too many haha.

I’m a visual learner so I find anything that’s visually engaging helpful. I’m also a very social learner so ways of learning which allow connection with others are always welcome too!

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#2

Hey Emily,

I am an intermediate Persian learner and I totally relate to your experience with curating resources. I found I had to do a lot of digging (online and into my pockets) to get resources I enjoyed.

There is no doubt many more, but this is off the top of my head.

Language

Podcasts:

  • Khodcast
  • Album Pod
  • Podgap (but I recommend their Patreon!)
  • SBS Persian (News and Australian affairs)

YouTube: There’s HEAPS, but these were the ones I watched most watched

Listening:

  • Aparat (Iran’s YouTube)
  • MakTub (audio books)

Apps:

Tutors:

  • iTalki
  • NaTakallam

There’s more listed here, some of which I haven’t used.
And then Instagram is a whooooole other story. That place is a goldmine.

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#3

I must caveat that the levels here are all over the place.

Also, I am yet to find ANY such thing as “graded readers”. Bilingual books are either old poetry or children’s books for vocab or that parents read to children.

For a visual beginner, I would recommend:

  • FC Lang Media (for grammar basics and writing)
  • Colloquial Persian (for spoken language and exercises)
  • Glossika (for listening, reading and speaking SPOKEN language)
  • Drops (for simple vocab drilling)
  • Mondly (for simple vocab and sentence drilling)
  • LingQ (for reading and vocab study - you can import stuff!)
  • Podgap (for their transcriptions, worksheets and levelled episode approach)
  • NaTakallam (for a tutor)
  • Aparat (for cartoons, even East Asian and Western stuff)
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#4

Wow, @Candace, this list is a gold mine. Thanks!

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#5

That’s 2.5 years of keyboard mashing and hashtag rabbit-holes. Ha! But thank you. :blush:

If anyone has a particular interest for the language resources or within the culture, I’d be happy to see how I can help navigate that. Flick me a DM.

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#6

Wow Candance thank you so much! That’s such an amazing list. I appreciate you sharing this a great deal. It must have taken a tonne of work to find all this!

#7

I’ll talk for days about Persian, so it is no problem!
It’s also inspiration for me to clean up my bookmarks bar and desktop folders. :sweat_smile:

If you have any questions about anything, sing out!
Instagram: @the.far.see

#8

I would also add, there’s a discord server for polyglots started by one of the presenters, and there is a farsi room: https://discord.gg/vQg5QS8

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#9

Two more of the better online resources that I came across yesterday:

https://www.persianlanguageonline.com/ I really like this one: very clear layout; excellent audio, with script, transcription and translation; short self-tests, and animated video (playlists on YouTube). Nicely arranged in 20 manageable lessons each at Beginner, Elementary and Intermediate level. The Intermediate level has various interesting cultural topics, as well as texts with audio, in addition to dialogues.

http://www.persiandee.com/ Another one with well-focussed, short grammar explanations, building things up slowly with examples and some self-tests, in 32 lessons. Good for getting a sense of Farsi structure and grammar in a manageable way.

@Alexander @LinkaLovesLanguages @Jinyoung

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#10

Thanks @RonP for sharing! The first one seems like a good resource for me to learn Farsi at my own pace.

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#11

Hi, is there a Persian chat still taking place. If so can I join in?

#12

Thanks for the tip @RonP Tried out persianlanguageonline and it’s pretty good. Intermediate level stuff isn’t that common, so a good find.

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#13

A good option for learning Persian is the World Schoolbooks app. It is free and ad-free. It does not have a good primer on the script, but has a good Persian course other than that and multiple ways to learn.