Fluent in 3 months??? (Farsi DESTROYED me) 

A great example of how languages aren't simply ciphers of one another.

"learn (language) in (number) months" is a weirdly common marketing gimmick seen as anybody with language learning experience knows it isn't really gonna work out that way I say this while my "Dutch in 3 months" book is within eyeshot

Your Farsi is really good and you did taarof really well!!!!! Just a few nitpicking: it's "Zaban زَبان" as in language and not "laban" 1:09 & at the beginning of the video you said Khahesh mikonam as a direct translation of please 1:37 but we usually don't use this phrase in this meaning but we use something more like: "boro baba!!" All and all you really did great thank you for paying attention to our culture and language!!!!

I don't know why, but almost every foreigner I've seen who speaks Farsi has a Tajik/Dari-like accent.

Thanks for sharing your language learning experiences! All the languages I speak fluently (Luxembourgish, German, Dutch, English, French) are closely related, but I'm still in the process of fully learning them. Interestingly, we live in Charlottenburg, Berlin, and have both a big Jewish and and a big Persian community here. You should come and visit one day. And that food looks so yummy!

There were lots of Iranians in the town I went to university in here in England. Persian food quickly became my absolute favourite. What a lovely language video, such a breath of fresh air in this space!

I've done a couple of boot camps with Fluent in 3 Months. The name came about as a speculative title for a blog years ago, where Benny Lewis wrote about his language-learning progress. The blog grew into a business and the name followed it. They do not actually promise fluency in three months, just that you will be able to hold a 15-minute conversation, which is fairly attainable if you apply yourself to the task. It worked for me and it sounds like it worked in LJ's experiment. Benny should probably change the name of the business, though, to avoid misunderstanding.

The line about in person Persian reminds me of the Purim story joke, where they ask the king if they want to make a call Persian to Persian. as always, super informative and entertaining, thank you

Hi Jones, really like the content you're putting out. I've done the first ten or so episodes of chai and conversations several times now, but the episodes you've put out on your methodology and the book you recommend have pushed me to pick farsi up again in a more structural manner.

That book story is beautiful. Maybe you could take them a gift and exchange details in case they ever lose their copy. If you keep visiting you might make a new friend and farsi partner. Awesome how language learning led to a connection so quickly!

The story about the book was lovely. The book, too, absolutely gorgeous. I'm glad you snagged yourself a small treasure while in LA!

just a comment to bump the algorithm, because i think that such content should be spread/promoted more widely...

Iranian Farsi speaker here. aside from your American accent, in some parts you used literal translations from English to Farsi to convey your message; for example one that I can remember is 'یک به یک'/'yek be yek' as an equivalent for 'one-on-one'. but the thing is, یک به یک/ تک به تک has a totally different meaning from what you intended. it is used to say 'every single one'/'each one' of a group of people or things. e.g: از تک به تکِ آن‌ها یک سوال پرسیدم= I asked a question from every single one of them. another one: آن‌ها یک به یک، خود را معرفی کردند.= they each introduced themselves. so for 'one-on-one classes' you could say: 'کلاس‌ِ خصوصیِ یک‌ نفره' or 'کلاسِ خصوصیِ فردی' (it's not necessary to use the plural form for کلاس here) Also, in another part you kind of used English grammar to talk about the app italki having teachers. you said: "اون‌ها معلم‌هایی دارند" but for apps, companies, etc we consider them as collective nouns(?) and we always use singular pronouns(اون/این) to refer to them. Therefore, to sound more naturally, you could say: این اپلیکیشن معلم‌هایی دارد.(formal, written form) این اپلیکیشن معلمایی داره.(informal, spoken form) aside from these insignificant small mistakes, I am truly impressed by how much you've improved in such a short time, and had minimal wrong use of the language. براتون آرزوی موفقیت می‌کنم❤️

Your Persian is already great! Just a few pronunciation notes. You do consistently pronounce “harf” with the wrong vowel though. It should be the fronted /æ~a/ vowel. To native ears, the vowel you produce sounds like the backed /ɑ~ɒ/. The stress and pitch rise should fall on the last syllable of “khodâ hâfez”: [xodɒ’fez]. It may also be my terrible speakers, but there may also be the lack of devoicing of final /r/-though there are accents that don’t do this consistently so that’s an extremely minor nitpick. Also a lot of non-Muslim Persian speakers may use “dorud” or “dorud bar shomâ” as an alternative to “salâm”.

Phenomenal video. Brilliant to see a window to a jewish-iranian neighborhood. Ans that Sidur is gorgeous. Congrats!

I'm waiting for the Hebrew Livestream! I'm excited to help you learn my beautiful language!

This channel is outstanding! Thank you.

as a native Farsi speaker I wondered that how you pronounce the letter gh(ق) this much good , you pronounce it like a native Farsi speaker

Wild new info. There are almost as many Farsi speakers in Los Angeles as all people in San Francisco! That’s crazy and I love it.

I'm Iranian and Persian is my mother tongue. I'm still learning my dear. Persian has no end to it. Trust me.

Comment for the algorithm. Keep doing eat you're doing. It's great!

Super fun to hear about your experience.

Turkish has a bit of that taarof though they don’t use that term (in Turkish, “taarüf” is an Ottomanism for “being acquainted, knowing someone”). But it would ne quite rude to walk into a store and just say “give me one of those.“ You have to exchange pleasantries first, “kolay gelsin” (“may it come easy,” like خسته نباشید), usually you’ll say “hayırlı işler” (wishing them good business) when you leave. It’s not quite as drawn out as it is with Iranians, but it’s definitely there. There are also lots of those set expressions that have expected answers.

wow loving this channel

Jones, you should make a video concentrating all the best practices and methods of language acquisition baked by your linguistic knowledge, or, if one video isn't enough, an entire series, thanks

That's actually really inspiring. Farsi is not currently in my little language stack but the advice here is excellent, just really useful. We learn the languages for experiences like this. I hope you get a the opportunity to use Farsi again soon.

I always found the "Fluent In 3 Months", which might not have been started by Benny Lewis, he certainly made it 'Big', to be an experiment of sorts. Benny would travel the world and give himself the 3 month language challenge and document his results. This is similar to Scott Young doing and successfully completing the MIT CS 4 year degree in 1 year from home and not actually at MIT. It was just something to give a shot and document the results. Benny became 'Fluent' (a vague term, which he defined, as able to go out interact and live life with native speakers in a country where it was spoken) more times than not, and it became something he then marketed and taught to others. I followed the challenges because that was interesting and lively... the business it has become... well I am not interested in being marketed to so I stopped finding it interesting. I like seeing people setting their minds to something and achieving it.

that judeo persian book with the two scripts side by side is so beautiful. what a nice and special thing.

Commenting for algorithm :)

I had a few teachers for Farsi on Italki and I wasn’t gaining so much then I found MINA 🤩 and I’ve been progressing so much to the point I got addicted to class 😅😅 she structures her lessons really well and gets the content to stick.

Thank you, as always, Taylor, for sharing your valuable experience and expertise! I always love seeing your videos and I really appreciate your candid perspective. I think it's really important, as an audience member, to recognize how respectful you are of our intelligence and of our time. This is clear in the way you organize your writing.

You did "taarof" reaaally well 😂😎👌🏼

i liked your video and it was genuinely funny and adventurous. also your persian is remarkable although you were learning it for 3 months. persian is like a blue, poetic ocean. but as you go further in it, the tides become more recognizable... so you should be ready to immerse yourself in the free spirit of this language. its my mother tongue but i can say that its very different and hard to learn and also harder to use. but trust me its so much worth the effort cause its the language of love.

I’ve been learning Persian for about 3 months and I’m shocked how fast I’m learning and understanding. But I also know Turkish and Punjabi which help a lot with vocabulary. I decided about a month ago to focus more of the Afghan dialect because I’ve definitely come across more Afghans than Iranians in my life. I mostly use LingQ and RU-vid (native speaker content) and recently got an italki tutor to practice what I’ve learned and learn more colloquial Afghan stuff. P.S At 3:45 about the third person, from what I have heard in conversation, it’s common in Dari to say how you said it.

My favorite singer is from Iran originally. Her name is Azam Ali, and her band is called Niyaz, which i believe means yearning in Persian. She has a powerful moving voice that transcends time and culture. Her mother took her from Iran, i think before the revolution. it sounded like she didn't want her father to have control of her upbringing, that is kind of the rumor surrounding her.

It’s more doable if the language is related to one you already know. Spanish students in Italy are expected to be able to write essays in Italian by the end of the first semester. Also check out Olly Richards’ Italian three month challenge videos. He knows several other Romance languages but still he was to have a comfortable casual conversation at the end.

Love your videos: down to earth, interesting information, and dry humor. (I'm learning Spanish and Russian)

I really really wanted to learn Persian. I love the way it sounds and I also find it very interesting. I decided to enroll in an online school last year in January and it was a nightmare. It put me off completely, it traumatised me! However, after watching your video, I feel like I should start learning it again (^_^)

İ really enjoyed hearing your description of how you took on the Persian language in three months and of your visit to Persian culinary venues in LA. I share with you a similar keen interest in the language but fluency in three month's would, for me at least, be setting the bar too high, even though I speak Arabic and some hodgepodge of Turkish/Azeri and I have some previous Persian language exposure. I decided to enroll in a Persian class in American Councils in Dushanbe last spring. I cannot say that I made fantastic progress but I did improve on the grammar and vocabulary fronts. Tajikistanis speak their own language and, while similar to Persian, they do not respond to Persian unless (perhaps) you change pronunciation to suit their ears e.g. Eron, bonk, peido kardam (they are fond of the vowel "o" in place of "a"). Overall, younger people in Dushanbe like to speak Russian so that is what I spoke largely. (Only one Persian restaurant seems to exist in Dushanbe, by the way; it is called Bonu. I had decent bagelo polo ba mahichei there but they served me stale merza qassimi; my favorite fessanjoon was not on the menu.) Anyway, I purchased 20 Persian films with English subtitles in July from a vendor in California; I intend to study from that media and take some additional tuition (face-to-face lessons) from a native farsi speaker in Tbilisi I have used previously before embarking again on another stint in Dushanbe. I also intend to pick up some survival tajik language skills before returning to Dushanbe. I may also take some tajik lessons if I can find the right tutor in Dushanbe. I am not an exponent of online tuition if face-to-face lessons are viable. I hope by the end of March 2025 to have two year's of university Persian under my belt as well as a modicum of proficiency in the language but without the expectation of being fluent by that point. That will take more time. Studying in Iran proper would probably speed the process up but that seems to me to be too risky. Don't really fancy a possible immersion program in farsi within the walls of Evin.

Thanks for your videos and advice. Would you mind making a video with your method to start a language from scratch? Like, what would you do if you needed or wanted to start a language from scratch, in the first 3 months. It'd be a nice, useful video. Have a nice day.

Really nice video bud. Interesting that you mention the Colloquial series. I'm between that and living language ultimate (not the newer ones) for French

Really love your recent videos! I hope youll revisit the tense/aspect/mood subject someday soon!

Wow this was an amazing video and that siddur looks beautiful. Thank you for sharing your experience ❤❤

You speak farsi really good ( I mean in 3 month!! It’s amaziiing!!)

A mistake I see a lot of people make when learning Farsi and probably other languages, is, translating the expressions they use in English straight to Farsi, even though the expression doesn’t quite work cause expressions are usually exclusive to each language. For example in the beginning of the video you translated “please, no way.” Directly to Farsi and it doesn’t quite work.

I sent this to a Persian friend here in SF. Interesting video!

Cool work dude. I think we were at similar levels of competence that far into our Persian learning- and I did the same exact thing as you, Routledge Colloquial persian, but I also used Assimil le Persan and a little bit of the app Mondly and a Memrise first. But the Routledge one was amazing quality

I grew up in this community and the story with the siddur actually made me cry

8:27 😂😂love it دمت گرم

Wow, a linguist after my own heart! I'm learning Farsi at the moment and hope to more onto Levantine Arabic afterwards haha دمتون گرم عزیزم

I'm disappointed. I've been waiting wasting so much time on RU-vid and not learning much. I learned so much in this video about the Persian diaspora, food and culture of Persians, and the intricacies of language. Thank you

Ah farsi, the language that i have been putting on the side for like 1 year and half,

Wait, you’re learning Levantine Arabic?? I’d be curious to see your approach to a language with few resources and the spoken language being the focus 😊

Great video! Middle east joke was hilarious haha. I'm hoping I can have as much success with Modern Greek that you have had with Farsi. I'm going to Athens this summer so my studies have begun!

Farsi isn’t easy but it’s a beautiful language. You are actually pretty good for 3 months. I studied for a few years about 15 years ago. Wanting to get back into it.

So glad that "isolated enough at work that I'm listening to language videos" also means "nobody can see me crying about the siddour"

"Exceptionally Far in 3 Months" "A Surprising Amount with Fluency Visible Over the Horizon" A couple excellent new methods I'm dying to try!

That was charming. Persians are a lovely people. I wish I could meet more...

A comparison of the different Routledge books, which ones are good, which are so-so, would be great.

به به افرین ..

Verbs are clause-final in written/formal Persian. When introducing the italki app, some of the word-order was a wee bit skewed, even by colloquial standards where rules of verb position with regard to direct objects still apply. Otherwise, very well done with your fast-paced Persian learning!

"Fluent in Three Months" just started as a challenge to himself when Benny was a monolingual language enthusiast. He's a friendly guy, you should have a chat with him. It would be better than second guessing and assuming.

It is so awesome to see another jewish language nerd who also studies Farsi, Arabic and Hebrew. It is a small world.

Not much to add to the converstion, just commenting to boost the algorithm :)

Great video, I love it.

Super interesting

You are doing very well! For me it took like 3 years to get to my current level in Farsi and it is still noticeably inferior to my English..

It would be great if translations were on the screen a bit longer. I literally struggled to hit pause and it already went away. Had to rewind like 4-5 times just for one sentence. Made me question how movies and tv shows do it so effortlessly.

I love Persian and tried to learn it when I was 16, but I gave up because I'm from Israel and trying to find learning materials for Persian in Israel is like trying to find learning materials for Japanese in the US 1941-1945. On top of that, this was during the era before the Internet 😥😥

چه لهجه بامزه ای دارید

So how much longer for fluency? What about reading and typing?

Can you introduce any source to learn some Judeo-Persian?

عالی بود. سپاسگزارم.

I think you meant 70k farsi speakers are in LA, not 700k

In all honesty, as a linguist and polyglot, I find it extremely difficult to predict a specific amount of time that could generally be considered "sufficient" for anyone to achieve whatever we call fluency. To begin with, fluency itself is a term that is fluid enough to pose a considerable challenge. Secondly, everyone has a number of filters and other factors that hinder the process, which is to say we are all unequal when it comes to language or any other type of acquisition. Thirdly, we also have varying goals when it comes to language acquisition, so I personally always treat each and every case individually. These would be just three of numerous other factors that play an important role in this conversation, but irrespective of all the above, fluency in three months is simply a joke. In my mind, I picture someone leaving their current environment and immersing themselves entirely in the target language and culture while also having enough self-discipline to focus on it without fail (a constant flow state?) with the minimum amount of filters involved. Only under such circumstances can I imagine that person making progress in leaps and bounds, but how many people can realistically afford to make such a drastic transition in their lives? Personally, I recommend patience and self-development as a positive side-effect of this process. We simply need self-discipline and time, but the problem is we are very ill-equipped with the established calendars and wishful thinking, neither of which is entirely conducive to our achieving our desired goals.

راستی، لطفا محتوای بیشتر برای یادگیری زبان فارسی تهیه و منتشر کنید. بازم ممنون 😊

Boooy your very good and funny 😂😂😂

Thanks!

You are the egg man (while eating the kuku gerdu)

01:35 xaahesh mikonam خواهش می‌کنم means "you'r welcome"!

3:25 strange, in my dialect of hazaragi i do say او for he/she without the n, but for objects i use different words

Here is a tip to learn and laugh Farsi at the same time: سریال “دایی جان ناپلئون” رو بشین ببین!

as taleshian ( another iranian people), I can assume that Taaroof is situation when two human beings try to show their hostility to each other, while both are extremely stubborn even in their politiness😅 besyar khoob, daste to dard nakoni😊

Well, I don't speak Farsi, but I'm pretty sure I heard "$5" in the middle of the iTalki sponsorship, but that seemed a bit small ....?

what are some reccomendations for books about second language aquisition?

What is your take on Wiktionary as a dictionary for foreign languages?

About 20 years ago I studied Hindi for a while but gave it up because it seemed increasingly unlikely that I was ever going to re-visit India, plus it was very difficult for me to get past the lower intermediate stage. As you know Hindi, and especially Urdu. have a fair amount of borrow words from Persian. Am I correct in assuming the word you pronounced "subzi" referred to vegetables.. I think I also heard "panch" or "punch"; is that the number 5? I think I heard a couple more cognates but maybe not.

@languagejones Will you run your linguistics course on Patreon? Will you announce when you start?

@languagejones How did adding 100 cards a day to Anki go? Did you end up near 1000 reviews a day after a few weeks? Did you keep up with the review schedule?

ayo, can you spell the name of the restaurant, please?

Mr professor When you can say I speak foreign language How much you need to know Can you do video about that

REALLY helpful video, thanks! Seeing all those lovely books leads me to a tangential question: I have long considered nastaliq to the most beautiful script in the cosmos, but can't read a letter of it. I'd love to be able to read Urdu poetry in nataliq instead of devanagari or Roman, BUT my motor skills are declining to the point where I barely even write English unless I absolutely on pain of death have no other choice. Can you recommend a way to learn how to read nastaliq that doesn't involve having to engage both my brain and my hand(s)? They communicate about as well as Seoul and Pyongyang, sadly.

uuuhhhh ooohhhh engagement?

1. It's actually called Parsi or Persian, not Farsi. 2. good job on the hard work.. you sound really good

Just another comment for the algorithm passing through

@languagejones Salve D. Jones, sono uno studente di filosofia italiano che ha intenzione di fare uno scambio Erasmus in Germania tra un anno. Questo vuol dire che seguirò lezioni di filosofia in tedesco, studerò su testi tedeschi, darò esami in tedesco e vivrò in germania per alcuni mesi. Per poterlo fare, però devo aver prima raggiunto il livello B2 di tedesco (una volta arrivato lì si frequentano dei corsi intensivi per mettersi a pari con la lingua). Io ho appena iniziato a studiare tedesco, quindi volevo chiedere secondo lei come posso fare, visti gli obiettivi che ho, per raggiungere il livello B2 in un anno. Grazie dell'aiuto!

Any recommendations for a complete beginner to learn Farsi? As in, I don’t even know the script beginner. Thanks!

How did you navigate the balance of English in your classes with feedback on your speaking/building listening skills?

It is possible to learn a language in 3 months. It is impossible to reach high fluency in 3 months.

i' learned Korean on my own i'm probably intermediate or between intermediate and a beginner but i feel all i do learn but i'm not sure if i actually memorized anything so i took a break and i feel unmotivated how to feel that hype one more time cuz i feel i'm stuck and i'm not achieving . Tips ?