Because it's much easier to pick up than you might think.
I've only written a few diaries on DailyKos before; is it bad etiquette to request that a lot of people recommend this diary? If not then please recommend this diary! I think this is a pretty important subject because most people don't know just how easy it is to learn Persian compared to what one might think, and the relationship with Iran / success in Afghanistan in whatever form (where they speak a variant of Persian called Dari) is going to be important in the next administration.
Persian's a language like any other of course in that it takes a lot of time to learn, but aside from the writing system it's grammatically a pretty easy language to get the hang of.
I've written about this in quite some detail on my blog before:
http://mithridates.blogspot.com/...
but I'll provide an explanation here too.
I'm learning Persian right now and besides getting used to the script in the first place it really is quite an easy language to get used to. To the student it's kind of like the opposite of German in a way. German is a language that has a fair amount of recognizability in the beginning for the student with words like Wasser and Hand and Pfeffer and Apfel, but the grammar takes a long time to get used to and there's also the three genders that have to be remembered for every word. Persian is the opposite of that in that there's much less to recognize at the beginning (almost nothing), but since the grammar is so much easier to pick up it gets much easier after a bit of time.
Persian is an Indo-European language like English, but has borrowed a lot of Arabic words as opposed to all the French and Latin borrowings that English has. Over time though it has simplified quite a bit. Here's an example of how simple the grammar is:
First of all, verbs. All verbs end in "tan" or "dan". Past tense is formed by taking off the -an at the end and then adding on personal endings...and there are no exceptions whatsoever. No irregularities. Here's an example:
u - he/she/it
raftan - to go
U raft - he/she/it went
budan - to be
U bud - he/she/it was
goftan - to say
U goft - he/she/it said
The personal ending for I is "am", so raftam means "I went", budam means "I was", goftam means "I said". For we it's -im, so raftim means "We went", budim means "We were", goftim means "We said".
The only irregularity in verbs in Persian is found in verbs with an irregular present stem, so you keep your eye out for those, but once you know the stem the conjugation is once again 100% regular.
Genitive (possession): genitive is great. Put e in between two words and now you have the genitive. The word for I is "man", and the word for friend is "dust". So how do you say my friend?
dust-e-man (sounds like doost-eh-man)
The word for we is mâ (long a, like the a in father). How do you say our friend?
dust-e-mâ.
Nice and easy. Now the verb comes at the end, so how do you say "our friend went"?
dust-e-mâ raft.
Nouns in Persian have no gender, so no worrying about that like in French/Spanish/German/etc. There are also no articles. "Dust" could mean friend, a friend or the friend.
Just as in English you use a lot of prepositions:
be - to
dar - in
az - from
So to say "my friend went to Washington" you say "Dust-e-man be Washington raft". If you want to say "I came from Washington" (come is âmadan) you say "Az Washington âmadam".
Let's see, what else is easy...
Plurals are easy (the general rule is you put hâ on for inanimate things, ân for living things, and gân for nouns that end in -e. There are some Arabic plurals for some nouns but they're not strictly necessary and you can always use the Persian plural ending, kind of like octopuses vs. octopi to sound smart)
A lot of basic words are like English/German/other IE languages: ast (is/there is, like is or German ist), nist (not, also like German nicht), basic words like mâdar (mother) and barâdar (brother), bad (bad), etc.
Adjectives are great too: with only a few exceptions that you can count on your hand, you form the comparative with tar (like English bet'ter') and the superlative with -tarin.
bad - bad
badtar - worse (think badder)
badtarin - worst
bozorg - big
bozorgtar - bigger
bozorgtarin - biggest
Even some of the few irregular adjectives look a bit like English:
khub - good
behtar - better
behtarin - best
The bad news of course is that you have to learn the Perso-Arabic alphabet, which means getting used to writing only consonants when you don't have a long vowel, so bozorg above is written bzrg and you have to know that it's bozorg and not bazarg or bezarg or bazerg or any other combination, but besides that it's a refreshingly simple and fun language IMO.
Like any language Persian takes a lot of time to learn and I wouldn't suggest just taking it up on a whim, but every once in a while you can see an article on how Persian is apparently a difficult language when it's really not at all compared to some others like Arabic and Russian. Some will also bring up the fact that Persian has two forms, colloquial vs. formal, but this really is no harder than learning colloquial forms in any other language, like English wanna vs. want to or a frenn-a-mine vs. a friend of mine in English, Japanese sugoi vs. sugee and wakaranai vs. wakaran, Korean gu vs. go or hae vs. hayeo, and all the rest. Don't let anyone tell you that a language is difficult just because it has colloquial forms. Only dead languages don't have colloquialisms.