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Re:One AI Tutor Per Child: Personalized learning is finally ... by rpastuszak on Friday March 17, 2023 @11:47AM (#35198638)
> "Err... little timmy and his virtual assistant appear to have entirely neglected maths in favour of adopting Zoroastrianism".

Hehe, had to re-read this twice because it hits a little close to home. I ditched maths for Iranian Studies and ended up studying Avesta. I work in tech, but still remember Ashem Vohu by heart.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashem_Vohu

Re:One AI Tutor Per Child: Personalized learning is finally ... by eternalban on Friday March 17, 2023 @12:16PM (#35199084)
How cool. (Iranian born here.) So curious on your take on the meaning of that prayer. How would you translate it?
Re:One AI Tutor Per Child: Personalized learning is finally ... by kkarimi on Friday March 17, 2023 @01:05PM (#35199843)
That’s wonderful! I have a similar background and am also surprised at how I learnt and still remember it even though it is quite distant from modern Persian
Re:One AI Tutor Per Child: Personalized learning is finally ... by rpastuszak on Friday March 17, 2023 @03:05PM (#35201454)
Yeah, I imagine it's closer to Pashto than modern Iranian tbf. Ossetian is another outlier here, close to Georgia/Russia but related to the languages from Pamir/Tajikistan.

Avestan (IIRC, my memory is fuzzy) had some weird similarities to my native language—Polish. Occasionally I'd stumble upon a phrase I could actually understand.

Random example I just remembered: "both ears" (again IIRC) sounded like uba ushi /uba uši/ (uba being 2 in dual, ushi meaning ears). Polish used to have dual number, but now retained it mostly for some body parts ( oba == 2). Ears in PL is uszy /ushee/. You'd sound a bit weird saying saying "oba uszy" in Polish, but people would understand you.

Nowadays I just enjoy the fact that Ashem Vohu is one of the oldest phrases I can utter in its original language. (I'm really good at learning and forgetting languages it seems.)