I studied Dari own my own and at college as an elective, and ended up taking a job with the ICRC to investigate ISAF war crimes in Afghanistan right after I graduated
These days Dari is my most comfortable second language (and I have quite a few of them)
I'm not sure if, given I had to start from scratch again, I'd go down this route - the description and screenshots seem very overstimulating for me
The most important parts of my language learning in Dari (and Pashto) - the "aha" moments if you will, were trying to express something, making a fool of myself, making everyone around me laugh, and then being gently corrected in a long-winded way (usually because I couldn't understand a simpler, more direct correction)
In hindsight this feels like a very equitable cultural exchange - I learned something valuable about the language and culture while giving my interlocutors a funny memory to share with their friends and family
Let me ask: what sort of background is necessary to get jobs based on your skills in a second language? I'm very into language learning as a hobby, but would it be necessary to get a degree before applying to these sorts of jobs? Where would one even look for jobs?
What happened for me was that the ICRC was so desperate for Pashto speakers in Afghanistan for this sort of work (they weren't allowed to hire people for the war crimes investigation work from Pakistan or Afghanistan due to neutrality stuff) that for a time they ended up accepting people who had learned Dari (ie. demonstrated the ability to learn) and gave them 3 months in-country to work with a Pashto teacher and learn enough to be able to be functional in their jobs
This was right after the financial crisis, I had just graduated with a liberal arts degree and had no other job prospects, and I had an interest in Afghanistan, so being paid to learn Pashto and possibly having a job afterwards seemed like a very lucky break to me at the time
Anki is great for building one's vocabulary. It is not meant to be the only tool used for learning a language. But actually learning a language is much easier and goes much faster when one has adequate vocabulary.
I've had some successful sprints using Anki, but I always get fatigued making cards for it after a few months, even when leaning on LLM tools to speed up the process.
One app I used early on when beginning French was Clozemaster, set to keyboard input (instead of multiple choice). The largest benefit was I didn't have to make all the decks, they progress you through the most common words (used in context), and there are ChatGPT grammar explanations for everything if you wanted to drill into it. It sounds very similar to what OP created for themself.
At a certain point you just need to switch to native content, but at the beginning I found Assimil + Clozemaster + comprehensible input on YouTube to be able to get me to watching regular French TV in maybe 6 months.
Shameless plug for anybody who has been through the hell that is Anki card creation for language learning - I built an LLM powered extension for Anki that allows you to wire up fields to arbitrary prompts, and then generate notes in batch (or selectively per field). I use it every day for generating example sentences, definitions, and TTS. Would have quit Anki ages ago without this.
FWIW I did get a lot more mileage from building my own deck vs a custom deck too, would recommend that approach regardless once you're past the initial vocab bootstrapping phrase.
There's a large number of prebuilt Anki decks available here as well if this is useful for anyone exploring the space - https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks?search
As far as I know about decks for language learning, you should be building your own. Pre-built decks don't work so well exactly because you don't spend the time to create the links that work for you personally, I know a few people who tried to shortcut it by using pre-built decks but gave up after noticing it wasn't working well.
It sucks though, it's also the one thing that makes me constantly not be consistent using Anki, I get tired of creating cards and stop for a while.
For sure! I've gone through some pre-made verb conjugation and vocab decks -- and actually have been meaning to upload one I made for learning Bengali script -- but I still find grinding Anki decks to not be that effective for me. Which sucks, because all you hear is how magic Anki is, but I guess I've always struggled with rote memorization.
This is why for learning Chinese I use Pleco, which is a dictionary that allow has a button to instantly add any word to your flashcard list. So when I encounter a new word I just look it up and then add it to flashcards which I review each morning.
I don't know what similar tools exist for learning other languages but it does help a lot for Chinese.
I use yomitan + a spanish dictionary + ankiconnect for flashcard creation. i can browse whatever in spanish, hold shift and hover to see the definition(s) of a spanish word unconjugated + how its conjugated, and hit a + button to add it to my anki deck, either in context or just as a word
Now I just click any word or phrase when browsing the web, and it shows me the exact meaning in context, thanks to an AI-powered dictionary that works for any language. I save the word along with the sentence, add a quick note if I want, and later export everything straight to Anki.
It’s cut out all the friction of card creation for me. I use it daily for English and Chinese, and it’s made sticking with Anki sustainable again.
I'm on year 10 of learning my second language and passed through a variety of teaching/learning methods. Intensive FSI courses, immersion including output as early as possible, self guided based heavily on reading and vocabulary, etc. While I get by mostly fine and now live in my second language, my listening is definitely my weakest skill.
Anki is probably my most beneficial single tool. Though if I were to do it over again I'd follow more or less the poster's strategy. Maybe 80% comprehensible input for listening and 20% Anki for vocab building. At least until I could watch native TV without much effort. I've played around a bit with LLMs, but still haven't found a really great use case for my study.
On the otherhand I think consistent practice (with growing difficulty) trumps technique. Whatever process keeps you motivated to practice month after month is most important.
Just kicked off my third language after reaching B2/C1ish in my second (~5 years in), we'll see what the C1 test determines this fall, and Anki has been the consistent thing that stayed through all the other learning experiments. It's amazing just investing in Anki right out the bat how much quicker I'm moving on the new language. Especially considering it's way harder as it's not like any language I know (rich declension system, etc).
GenAI also been a big helper when I run out of content. "Write me an essay involving [subject I want to learn about]. In my response after reading, any word I've written separated by a comma generate a CSV of the format "that word, english definiton"." I'll then just dump those new words into Anki.
I'm building a service that generates audio streams about subjects and vocab of your choosing, currently notebookLM based. If you have intermediate listening skills its pretty useful for deepening regular vocab and acquiring specialized jargon.
I dumped my 400 hardest recurring anki words in it and listen to the stream whenever doing chores or driving. Then sync with my deck again after a while.
Can you help me out and give it a try, you seem like the target audience and i'd value your feedback. If your target language is not available or want to upload an anki deck I can help you out.
The most effective routine is the one you stick with for sure!
I love anki and use it for Spanish which is showing marked improvement. I do vocab and conjugation with Anki.
Then I just find other ways to immerse myself and call it a day.
- Spanish audio for sports whenever possible
- Interfaces for personal computers/devices
- Picking up the Spanish language weekly from the little box on the corner
- Listening to Spanish artists
- Reading the news in Spanish instead of English (One major benefit here is consuming far less news)
- Writing notes for work and personal projects
- Texting friends
It all really adds up over time and is definitely doable even as an adult, but it requires a ton of work, so being able to find ways to incorporate it into the activities I'm already doing is key for me on top of the more active Anki learning.
Trying to learn a language by anything other than going through the process of constructing grammatical sentences in the language is my favorite genre of hackernews posts
This is a fine way to bring the material into your "cache" but you aren't doing the work required to learn a language: Communication!
I share your skepticism. The approach you mention seems to be not only the most efficient, but maybe actually the only one that works. This is probably more about neuroscience than personal preferences.
The approach presented in the post is not necessarily on conflict with that, but it seems like extremely laborious preparation stage. And despite expectations, learning the different alphabet is usually unnecessary until fairly late into the learning process.
That's pretty cool–but also quite a time intensive workflow when my biggest challenge is not being lazy. Anki has been useful for me but I find it hard to just stick to a rhythm.
I was super bullish about ChatGPT's Voice Mode, but it is so eager to respond that I never get a chance to complete sentences!
I, too, had the same frustration as you - until I figured out you can hold down the circular icon while you’re speaking then let it go when you’re done and it won’t interrupt you.
Edit: it looks like they updated the Voice Mode UI since I last used it - hopefully they retained this capability.
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
-----
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.
> 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.
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)
I haven't incorporated Anki yet, but I guess a similar idea would be Memrise. My experience with that for Korean was that it was too intense in the beginning, since it was throwing random (though basic) phrases of like 9 syllables at me, and I couldn't keep them straight. I am considering trying Memrise again, since I've gone through A2 level on Busuu since then, and know more basic phrases and grammar. I do think I should be building my own Anki set by this point, but I've been too lazy.
Helping with language learning is one of the things I think ChatGPT is excellent for. I have a long-term conversation only about Korean, and I can ask questions like "how would a Korean understand [some grammatical structure]?" and it gives very insightful answers, and even refers back to vocabulary that I've already used or other discussions about similar topics.
I find it interesting that despite the relationship between Iran and various Arab countries being pretty hostile, there is no move towards stop using the word "Farsi" and revert back to "Parsi". Anyone know why? Seems like a easy political win for a besieged regime.
Because it has nothing to do with Arabic. /p/ in Persian is aspirated, and in some words, like aspirated /p/ in some other languages (e.g. Greek), it has turned into /f/; Ever wondered why ph is pronounced /f/? In Persian this is called "softening" (Narm şodegi).
Not only just a superficial change, and if anyone calls it parsi in iran they just come across like a literary person, it’s that Classical persian literature as we know it is from after arab era until 1300s. Persian imported arabic words and used them widely in its literature. Maybe an analogy is english should be called Anglish.
The difference between Persian and Farsi matters in english world because it is political. In english, Farsi doesn’t carry prestige, same way iran doesn’t carry Persia. But they do for those in iran. I’m not familiar enough with afghanistan to know first hand, but perhaps same can be said for Dari. I might be wrong though on this last one.
Both are used in Iran. Though a common folk etymology, Parsi didn't change under Arabic influence. Words like abzar and afzar exist in similar variation, guwspand gufsand, ispand, isfand, Espahan, Esfahan. Even modern loans from Russian sometimes undergo this change like apelsin->aflesun.
There are some people suggesting that, however at a small scale and not taken that seriously by many. What difference does it make? What about all the other words that underwent the sound change? Also, some nuanced people can keep languages and politics separate. The sound shift isn't even entirely clear to be due to arabic influence, how come it turned into 'f' and not 'b' such as the arabic approximation? How come sounds like 'g' remained?
And in the end, in English it should be "Persian" and not "Farsi", that is where the actual move should be. How sad and historically wasteful if we started to do that to all languages, "deutsch", "zhongwen" or "elliniki" instead of German, Chinese and Greek
It used to be called Persian in English, the media changed it to Farsi to reduce it's "prestige". If you knew English and you are old enough you even remember the shift (1990s–2000s).
Readit News
I studied Dari own my own and at college as an elective, and ended up taking a job with the ICRC to investigate ISAF war crimes in Afghanistan right after I graduated
These days Dari is my most comfortable second language (and I have quite a few of them)
I'm not sure if, given I had to start from scratch again, I'd go down this route - the description and screenshots seem very overstimulating for me
The most important parts of my language learning in Dari (and Pashto) - the "aha" moments if you will, were trying to express something, making a fool of myself, making everyone around me laugh, and then being gently corrected in a long-winded way (usually because I couldn't understand a simpler, more direct correction)
In hindsight this feels like a very equitable cultural exchange - I learned something valuable about the language and culture while giving my interlocutors a funny memory to share with their friends and family
What happened for me was that the ICRC was so desperate for Pashto speakers in Afghanistan for this sort of work (they weren't allowed to hire people for the war crimes investigation work from Pakistan or Afghanistan due to neutrality stuff) that for a time they ended up accepting people who had learned Dari (ie. demonstrated the ability to learn) and gave them 3 months in-country to work with a Pashto teacher and learn enough to be able to be functional in their jobs
This was right after the financial crisis, I had just graduated with a liberal arts degree and had no other job prospects, and I had an interest in Afghanistan, so being paid to learn Pashto and possibly having a job afterwards seemed like a very lucky break to me at the time
One app I used early on when beginning French was Clozemaster, set to keyboard input (instead of multiple choice). The largest benefit was I didn't have to make all the decks, they progress you through the most common words (used in context), and there are ChatGPT grammar explanations for everything if you wanted to drill into it. It sounds very similar to what OP created for themself.
At a certain point you just need to switch to native content, but at the beginning I found Assimil + Clozemaster + comprehensible input on YouTube to be able to get me to watching regular French TV in maybe 6 months.
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1531888719
https://smart-notes.xyz
FWIW I did get a lot more mileage from building my own deck vs a custom deck too, would recommend that approach regardless once you're past the initial vocab bootstrapping phrase.
It sucks though, it's also the one thing that makes me constantly not be consistent using Anki, I get tired of creating cards and stop for a while.
It's gotten quite popular enough that I've gone full-time on it
I don't know what similar tools exist for learning other languages but it does help a lot for Chinese.
Now I just click any word or phrase when browsing the web, and it shows me the exact meaning in context, thanks to an AI-powered dictionary that works for any language. I save the word along with the sentence, add a quick note if I want, and later export everything straight to Anki.
It’s cut out all the friction of card creation for me. I use it daily for English and Chinese, and it’s made sticking with Anki sustainable again.
Anki is probably my most beneficial single tool. Though if I were to do it over again I'd follow more or less the poster's strategy. Maybe 80% comprehensible input for listening and 20% Anki for vocab building. At least until I could watch native TV without much effort. I've played around a bit with LLMs, but still haven't found a really great use case for my study.
On the otherhand I think consistent practice (with growing difficulty) trumps technique. Whatever process keeps you motivated to practice month after month is most important.
GenAI also been a big helper when I run out of content. "Write me an essay involving [subject I want to learn about]. In my response after reading, any word I've written separated by a comma generate a CSV of the format "that word, english definiton"." I'll then just dump those new words into Anki.
I dumped my 400 hardest recurring anki words in it and listen to the stream whenever doing chores or driving. Then sync with my deck again after a while.
Can you help me out and give it a try, you seem like the target audience and i'd value your feedback. If your target language is not available or want to upload an anki deck I can help you out.
https://listen.longyan.io
I love anki and use it for Spanish which is showing marked improvement. I do vocab and conjugation with Anki.
Then I just find other ways to immerse myself and call it a day.
- Spanish audio for sports whenever possible - Interfaces for personal computers/devices - Picking up the Spanish language weekly from the little box on the corner - Listening to Spanish artists - Reading the news in Spanish instead of English (One major benefit here is consuming far less news) - Writing notes for work and personal projects - Texting friends
It all really adds up over time and is definitely doable even as an adult, but it requires a ton of work, so being able to find ways to incorporate it into the activities I'm already doing is key for me on top of the more active Anki learning.
This is a fine way to bring the material into your "cache" but you aren't doing the work required to learn a language: Communication!
The approach presented in the post is not necessarily on conflict with that, but it seems like extremely laborious preparation stage. And despite expectations, learning the different alphabet is usually unnecessary until fairly late into the learning process.
I was super bullish about ChatGPT's Voice Mode, but it is so eager to respond that I never get a chance to complete sentences!
Edit: it looks like they updated the Voice Mode UI since I last used it - hopefully they retained this capability.
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
-----
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
Helping with language learning is one of the things I think ChatGPT is excellent for. I have a long-term conversation only about Korean, and I can ask questions like "how would a Korean understand [some grammatical structure]?" and it gives very insightful answers, and even refers back to vocabulary that I've already used or other discussions about similar topics.
The difference between Persian and Farsi matters in english world because it is political. In english, Farsi doesn’t carry prestige, same way iran doesn’t carry Persia. But they do for those in iran. I’m not familiar enough with afghanistan to know first hand, but perhaps same can be said for Dari. I might be wrong though on this last one.
And in the end, in English it should be "Persian" and not "Farsi", that is where the actual move should be. How sad and historically wasteful if we started to do that to all languages, "deutsch", "zhongwen" or "elliniki" instead of German, Chinese and Greek