Farsi Lesson 95 - A small exam!

/ye divu:neh ye sæng o tu: cha:h minda:zeh, sæd ta: a:ghelæm nemitu:næn dæresh biya:ræn!/. (A Persian proverb)

Hello everybody, how are you? I hope all of you are fine and enjoying your life.

Four years ago, computer was a very strange creature for me! I had never worked nor played with this modern tool in my life. Don’t laugh at me! This is true. I had never the opportunity to know this machine which is a very big part of my life now.

One day in around mid 2000, I met one of my friends on the way to shopping. He was going to buy a computer. I don’t know why, but I asked him to wait for me. All of a sudden, I had decided to buy a computer without any background or knowledge of it. The next day, we found ourselves on the way back home with two new computers! One for him and one was mine. We took my computer to my home and my friend set it up for me, turned it on and left. I started clicking on some icons on the desktop with special care and fear. Any sound of the computer would scare me very much. I thought I would never learn about this new creature. After a couple of hours, it was time to turn it off. But how? My friend had not told me how to shut down the computer! What was the best way then? I unplugged (disconnected) the wire from the main electricity line. That’s it! The computer went off!

Next time when I connected the computer wire back again to the electricity line, the computer turned on! Then, a message said, “The scan disk is now checking for errors! …. To avoid seeing this message shut down your computer by clicking on Start ….” Wow, this machine knew how I had turned it off last time! It took me hours to find the Start menu and learn how to shut it down properly!

After a couple of months, I met Paul whom you almost know. He said he had a website teaching guitar online. It was a wonderful news. I talked to him about my interest in teaching Persian. He encouraged me to write a couple of lessons so that he could help me build a website. At that time, I could hardly write on Microsoft Word. It would take me hours to write one page. But, I did my best. After I wrote a lesson or two, I contacted Paul to give me a hand with the website. The day when he came was one of my happiest day and the same day when he left became one of my busiest days! At first, I thought my lessons would go online in a couple of hours. Do you know what happened?

He had brought one CD with him. He installed a program on my computer. He opened that program and said, “This is DreamWeaver. Here are the help menu and the Tutorials. Read the DreamWeaver Tutorial and start making a page based on what the tutorial says. Once you made the pages, put your lessons on them. Next time when I come, I will upload the lessons for you!”

Almost four months passed! I had spent days and nights to make the pages. There was one more problem now. How could I write Persian on my English Windows? This time, I had to look for a Persian software. But I had no idea about such tools. To make the long story short, I finally managed all these things by October 2001. The site was ready eventually. Those pages I had made were my masterpieces! Yet still, Paul did not like them very much! He was encouraging me to make the pages afresh. Who would listen to him though? Who could go through those Tutorials again? I insisted and he finally accepted to upload those pages for me. But, to where? I asked him to just put the lessons somewhere on the internet! He laughed at me and said it was not possible. We had to buy a space and a domain name for the website. We went through all those processes and finally I became a webmaster!!

Now after some four years, I find new mistakes on the site from time to time. Two weeks ago, I was reviewing the previous lessons when I remembered what Paul had asked me to do long ago. So, I made all those pages afresh! I hope the new design look much better than the former ones. But still, I am not fully satisfied.

In Persian, when somebody does something that is not based on wisdom and logics – when he doesn’t listen to others – when he makes troubles due to lack of knowledge or experience and faces the consequences (or makes other people face the consequences of his work) is described as a stupid person who has dropped a stone in a well in such a way that one hundred wise persons cannot take that stone out! (cannot solve the problem)

We say, /ye divu:neh ye sæng o tu: cha:h minda:zeh, sæd ta: a:ghelæm nemitu:næn dæresh biya:ræn!/. And that person was Hassan H. who is still facing the consequences of what he did a few years ago!

Ye divuneh yeh sang

In spite of the fact that I am still facing the consequences of my poor job in making the pages in the beginning, I have learned some big lessons. Some of them are:

When there is a will, there is a way.
Don’t worry if you do not have experience about a job that you are going to start. You can always get experience on the way.
Don’t feel bad when people criticize you or your work. Those who criticize you even in a harsh language are better friends than those who just give you false praise.
Our works are subject to expiration. Whatever we do that looks perfect today is imperfect or even boring in future. Those who introduce Works, Writings, Messages or whatever that remain fresh throughout the history and do not get expired must be highly respected for they have experienced and introduced something that others could not.

All right,

I don’t know the reason, but I thought I needed to just speak today! I hope I haven’t wasted your time.

Please go to Useful Drills page to do your homework. You have a lot to do today!

Take care and Khoda Hafez!

P.S. Please let me know of any broken or wrong links. Thank you.

Quiz:

1- Listen to the audio files first (preferably once). Repeat it for a couple of times. Write it down on a paper. Find their English equivalents. (Seen)

One

Two

Three

2- Find the Persian equivalent for the following words and make four sentences with each of them (in different tenses).

Far

Near

Dirty

Lonely

3- Say these numbers in Persian:

14 – 41 – 441 – 414 – 441 – 114 – 141

4- Follow the examples, combine the letters, and make words using the given letters. You’ll have to change the big letters into the small ones whenever needed.

Friend <= /du:st/ < ==