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Is there any free online resource for learning basic Persian without learning arabic script? I tried several online courses but they all begin with teaching script first. This is very demotivating to me because I find Arabic script very difficult, and I really mean it - I can read Russian, Greek and even Hebrew to some extend but I just can't learn Arabic.

Ideally I would start by learning some basic words and phrases, spelled out in Latin alphabet and maybe learn the script later. Many Iranians type in Latin anyway in SMSs or on Facebook.

Milo Bem
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    My Colloquial Persian book only uses Latin transliteration. I got mine for a few dollars on eBay. Their other products may utilize similar methods; but of course I have no idea. – Dr. Shmuel Nov 21 '18 at 20:25
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    Check out YouTube for video courses that are entirely oral based. Iirc – Dr. Shmuel Nov 21 '18 at 20:28
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    @Dr.Shmuel If you can write up more detailed descriptions of the resources you are aware of, you can post them as an answer. Comments aren't permanent. – Tsundoku Nov 22 '18 at 10:23
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    What language should those resources be in? In other words, which language(s) do you know well enough to use them as a starting point for learning another foreign language? – Tsundoku Nov 22 '18 at 19:43
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    my first language is Polish but I mostly use English these days. I guess I could handle resources in Russian or Spanish if I had no other choice. – Milo Bem Nov 23 '18 at 12:17
  • I have a photocopied book from the Iran Language Institute that focuses on what you are looking for, however it's not published anymore and I don't have it scanned. Maybe I could put it up for you some time. Alternatively you can try learning Tajik, which is basically Persian in Cyrillic and you can already read it. – Neeku Apr 11 '19 at 16:09
  • @Neeku I do have some scans of Tajik coursebook and was considering going through it first, for the reasons you mention, but how close is Tajik to Iranian Persian? I know they are technically dialects of the same language, but are they actually fully intelligible? I was told by some people it would be hard to communicate in Iran only knowing some Tajik. – Milo Bem May 10 '19 at 16:50
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    @MiloBem I personally don’t have an issue understanding a Tajik person. The main issue would probably be the fact that the Iranian Persian is considered the posh or snobby one, so you may find people laugh at you for your Tajik accent, which is a shame because Dari and Tajik are a lot closer to the Pure or older Persian than what’s spoken in Iran these days (which is almost English with Persian verbs in the ends sometimes!) – Neeku May 10 '19 at 19:54

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There is a freemium app called Memrise which specializes in teaching mostly language but also other topics such as geography etc. Some courses are official which are available on the app, but for Persian I found a perfect community-made course which I'll link below. The course starts off with simple words and moves on to more complex sentences. In addition to showing the meaning of words in Arabic alphabet, it reads aloud the word and features IPA of the word along with memes to easily remember the words. https://www.memrise.com/course/330650/basic-farsi-persian/

Parsa Pajouhandeh
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We specifically designed farsi.school to support this as well. We are are video-based learning site specifically for Persian, and have subtitles in the Latin alphabet. We even allow you to choose between multiple romanization styles.

miracle2k
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