Persian: easier to learn than most Western European languages

Source: pagef30.com

I read an interesting article today about how Persian is a deceptively easy language to learn – far easier, in fact, than most western European languages that are the staple of many schools’ foreign language courses (e.g. French, Spanish, German etc.).

Check out the blog entry on pagef30.com for the full article, but here are the two main reasons why people think Persian is hard, or automatically dismiss it when considering what language they would like to learn:

• It uses the Arabic alphabet
• Persian speakers are not as numerous or as widely spread as users of more popular languages like Spanish or French

However, some of the details that make it easier than you’d think include:

• Verbs conjugate very easily, and are very regular in form – fewer irregularities mean much less to learn
• Nouns don’t require articles (the, the definite article, and a/an, the indefinite article)
• Nouns and pronouns also don’t require cases
• Adjectives are the same in form as adverbs – “you did good” is the same as “you did well”
• Persian is agglutinative – that is, longer, more complex words are formed by sticking together shorter words

So there you have it. Check out the full article for more detail. But if you’ve always wanted to pick up a Middle Eastern language but you’re worried of the difficulty curve, perhaps Persian is one to consider.