One of the things you do to make life interesting
as a nerd is find something new to study.
I am no stranger to studying "unusual" languages
from a Western perspective, like Japanese,
Chinese and Arabic. But I think it's time
to show Farsi/Persian some love.

I appreciate the value of learning a new script,
and in this case my knowledge of Arabic script
is clearly helpful, but I don't quite understand
why a lot of textbooks seem to be allergic
to transliterations. Call me difficult, but I 
prefer to have some way of knowing which vowels
go in a word.