As I pass through Chapter 6 of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s/Philosopher’s Stone and see my reading speed increase along with my vocabulary, the question arises as to whether this would work on a language I have no background in. So the thought is to select a language like that that I have access to and perhaps some guidance on and begin reading H.P. in it. [note: Appalachian English would use ‘hit’ here instead of ‘it’].
The reason is that even in the languages I have much less proficiency in, Dutch, Norwegian and Greek, I nevertheless have some background of study. I got to thinking about this and I think I have the perfect language.
It is in a non-Latin alphabet, which should be avoided, but this one is one I read fairly well. The language is Persian aka Farsi aka Iranian. It fits in several ways: it is a language I have some need in due to its influence on Urdu poetry; it is an Indo-European language and I do have a concentration of interest in that family; a correspondent in Iran has sent me a pdf version and is available to answer questions; and the only connection I have to Farsi is a lot of “big words” in Urdu were borrowed from it.
That latter disadvantage falls away considerably when you consider that the challenge is not going to be the $25 words but the grammar and functional words. So I think Farsi would work nicely and this weekend I’ll just step in with it right where I am in H.P. now, Chapter 6.
Pat’s Polemics
On-going brilliance
