After several attempts to find a web-site that could help me to learn speaking Persian, without the husle of the arab characters, I think I found a possible detour today. It is based on two more or less solid connections, which allow me to bypass the abyss of the written Persian.
I will use the Tadjik language, which is basically a form or Persian, but it has the “advantage” that it uses kyrillic characters, like Russian. Since I learned Russian already in school and later at university and at home, I can read Tadjik word without problem. Here are a few examples how well it works:
So I might soon learn some more phrases than just “Ma mirim be Madrasseh, ba Elephantenschuheh”. The Tadjik version of Wikipedia contains today 29.633 articles and by this ranks on 89th place in terms of content size. But considering that only 4.5 million people in Tadjikistan speak the language, it is not too bad, as compared for instance with the Indian Gujarati, that has less Wikipedia article but is spoken by 50 million people.
So maybe, if there are more people who know Russian and want to learn Persian by going via Tadjik, then the Tadjik Wikipedia becomes even more popular. In addition to its being the official language in Tadjikistan, it is also common among the Tadjik minority in Afghanistan (“Dari”) and Uzbekistan. In Uzbekistan, the centers of Tadjik language are Samarkand and Buchara, so it is likely that Ibn Sina and Ulugh Beg spoke the Persian form of nowadays Tadjik.
