Farsi has the letter "p" which Arabic does not. That letter has three dots on top (sometimes drawn like ^. I think there may be another. Arabic only has the "sh" sound with the three dots.
Trying to read Farsi, it feels like I should know what's going on but am left with the feeling that I've forgotten all my Arabic. Then I'll see some of the bonus letters.
There are four letters in Farsi that do not exist in Arabic - (گ ژ چ پ), which make the 'p', 'ch', 'zh' and 'g' sounds, respectively. But the underlying calligraphic system (RTL order, joining forms, harakat diacritics, and so on) is pretty much the same across the Arabic script and its descendants.
The same issue also exists in Latin script, where German has the ß, not to mention various umlauts, strikes, circles and cedilles modifying letters of the otherwise standard Latin script.
If you live in Europe and speak a language using a Latin script, you probably have come across most of the extensions other European languages add to the shared base in loanwords or foreign media. But then you look at something like Vietnamese and you are no longer sure how letters work.
> Trying to read Farsi, it feels like I should know what's going on but am left with the feeling that I've forgotten all my Arabic
This is what Dutch sounds like to me as an English speaker - plenty of common sounds with English; it has a similar speed, rhythm, intonation to English. It feels like I’m hearing English but have lost my faculties to parse it
Oh wow, I've encountered a lot of words in English/Czech that are "false friends" but it's too far away gramatically to construct similar sounding entire sentences. That's brilliant you can do it with English and Dutch :)
Also I wonder if there's a connection between trousers being "broek" in Dutch and "breeks" in Scots.
At a NATO spy convention, an English spy asks their Estonian, French, Spanish, German, and Bulgarian counterparts if they can see them in the new camouflage they are testing.
An ex had the smaller example of incorrectly asking for "un préservatif" when she meant "un préserve".
One of her friends was half of a multi-nationality couple, I think it was French and Irish, and the punchline was their kid, at a beach, yelling, in a strong Irish accent "Look mummy! Phoques!"
If by "un préserve" they meant a preserve/marmalade then in French that's "une confiture" (or "marmelade" but it's less somewhat rare). I don't think "un préserve" is a word...
Although I may be misremembering the exact word as I have a GCSE grade D from 23 years ago, her French is much better than mine as she lived in Paris for a few years.
Thanks, thought it was 3 dots on the Arabic "b". It really doesn't take long until you Farsi tries to sneak in some extra letters to figure out it's not Arabic.
Looking back on it, I remember feeling like I can't remember Arabic, but part of it is that this also happens during that time when I'm getting used to the script. There is always an adjustment period with every new font/handwriting that takes a sentence or two to sort out the style before I truly start reading.
Trying to read Farsi, it feels like I should know what's going on but am left with the feeling that I've forgotten all my Arabic. Then I'll see some of the bonus letters.