این یک کتاب است

I had my first proper Dari lesson last night. It was so exciting! I recently met someone from Afghanistan in Toronto who is willing to teach me Dari. We met up in Second Cup last night and spent three hours working on it. I LOVE this! It's so cool.

It turns out that my reading and writing is quite good. The only problem with that is that I don't understand any of the words yet! Still, I shouldn't trivialise the ability to understand the symbols of a compeltely foreign language!

The sentence I wrote above (این یک کتاب است) is the Dari for This is a book. It's the first thing I learned in Urdu as well. The Dari is pronounced Een yak kitab ast which literally translates into This one book is. If it was Urdu, it would be Yay kitab heh which would be This book is. Urdu doesn't need the "one" in front of it but otherwise the word order seems similar.

I learned a couple of variations such as your book, his book, her book. I also learned how to say on top of, underneath and in. Pretty soon I'll be able to construct some sentences of my own!