Foreign Language Training & Use

[xf4wso]

Thanks to all who have responded. I found the info on subtitled TV programs, DLI courses and Tagalog quite interesting. I have some background in Arabic, Persian and, having lived in Turkey now for a number or years, Turkish. I used subtitled TV programs when I was first learning Turkish, and I discovered that there are some dialects of the language that are quite different from the standard language that I learned.

As for Dari, does the DLI give any reason for teaching the formal/written language rather than the spoken one? I know that written Dari is almost identical to written Farsi, but that the spoken forms are somewhat different, but mutually intelligible. It would seem to me that in most situations in Afghanistan knowledge of everyday speech would be more useful than the written language.

Finally, which language is more useful in Kabul, Dari or Pashto?

[ganulv]

It would seem to me that in most situations in Afghanistan knowledge of everyday speech would be more useful than the written language.

My experience in doing coursework in anthropology is that classroom instruction in all languages was invariably in a different register than that which we wanted to be able to eventually use in day-to-day interactions. So we looked at what we were getting in the classroom as the base from which we were going to build as much as anything else. That inevitably results in some timesink when you get in-country, but there is a practical side to consider when dealing with language with which there is a lot of local variation (something I am sure you are aware of if you have worked with Arabic!).