Dates:

September: 14,21, 28

October: 5, 12, 19, 26

November: 2, 9, 16

Venue:

House of Annetta

25 Princelet Street, E1 6QH

Welcome to Babel’s Blessing’s course Persian for Beginners! This course is dedicated to establishing your connection to the Persophone world through learning to pronounce, express yourself and even read in the Persian language. Spoken by around 130 million people worldwide as either a first or an additional language, modern Persian is the linguistic cornerstone of a vast amount of different cultures and peoples. Fascinatingly, the modern Persian language you will engage with on this course is largely intelligible with what would have been spoken and written as far back as the 8th century. It is since the 9th century that Persian has been written in the Perso-Arabic script which you will learn on the course.

Learn how to construct sentences, speak about topics, gain vocabulary and introduce yourself, all in Persian!

✧ Dear Reader, welcome! My name is Darius and I exist because my Iranian grandparents settled in North London in the 1950s meaning that my Iranian mum could meet my Scottish-English dad. This highly literary, story-telling family of mine spoke language with different lilting accents and patterns of melody that language was experienced as animated music by me. This music undoubtedly ultimately inspired my focus on language and speech sounds in my career, having studied languages and linguistics (in two languages other than English, one of which I had taught myself while at school), leading to my MA in Voice Studies. I practise as a voice and accent coach, I sing, but I also spend much time researching, discussing and pondering the manifold voices of our climate.

✧ Teaching Persian is a passion so dear to my soul, as this language is one that I understand both through innate language feeling (a faculty one has if they speak a language throughout their life from earliest childhood) but also through language learning. There was (and is) a great deal of Persian that I have attained, myself, through the perspective of the language learner, so it is from these two founts of passion and curiosity that I hope we can together grow and nourish a thriving learning community.

✧ I cannot wait to explore the treasures of language together with you, see you in class ✧

✧ be omid-e didār ✧ بِه اُمیدِ دیدار ✧