Throughout this website,you may notice that we feature Persian words in little white
blocks. Beneath each block we have a black block with two rows of white English text.
This is a representation of the Persian-English word magnets that are available
in the three new Magnetic Word Play kits as seen
in the column to the right. This page has the general FAQs. For kit-specific FAQs,
click on the picture of each kit at right.
FAQs:
Magnet Mechanics:
General FAQs
What is a word magnet?
It's a word printed onto a magnet.
What is the history of word magnets?
The idea is grounded in the "cut-up technique" pioneered by surrealist poets such as
William S. Burroughs, Tristan Tzara and Brion Gysin.
Here are some fun, do it yourself cut-up links.
The point was to break free from the tyranny of expectation
and encounter words fresh! New! Random and out of context.
One day this guy who was into the cut-up technique cut up a bunch of words
and then tried to compose poems with them. But he also had allergies, so every time he
got a good poem going, he would sneeze and all the pieces of words would go flying. He
then decided to stick the words onto magnets, and that's how
Magnetic Poetry™ was born.
Since then, English speakers have been playing with dozens of variations of magnetic word kits.
We here at ajabanzabAn were inspired to make Persian-English kits when we saw some Spanish-English kits.
Why words?
As the smallest unit of language, each word is a take off point into a universe of connections and
meaning and possibilities. Through play with a kit like this, your mind, your thoughts and your universe will expand.
Words are the building blocks of sentences. They can be combined and re-combined
in an almost infinite
number of ways.
We take words for granted when we read or talk. Sometimes just by looking at
the word in a sea
of randomness, we
can discover it anew.
For those who are learning Persian, the word is a good place to start because
they are in-between
letters and sentences.
Holding a magnet word in your hand changes your relationship to words. It lets
you own them, feel their flexibility, play with them.
Why not alphabet, or complete lines of famous poetry?
I think there are already magnetic alphabets out there. In any case, we here at
ajabanzabAn are working on a totally cool alphabet game. If you would like to be put on our mailing
list and informed when the product is ready, please contact us.
For more about the alphabet, visit our alphabet section.
Now, about complete lines of poetry. When you go to Iran, you can buy books of poetry and lots of
poems to hang up around your house, and that's all very nice. But the purpose of the word magnets is to be interactive and to encourage
you to write your own poetry, not to be a passive observer of other people's poetry.
It's true that Persian poetry is amazing. We just worry that sometimes our fellow Iranians are intimidated
by it, and so avoid reading and writing. To combat that, we encourage play! Anarchy! Crazy compositions with
words! (You can also do serious stuff. extiAr dArid).
What are the rules of Magnetic Word Play?
Well, obviously, they are a choking hazard, so keep them out of reach of children. But other than that,
from the magnet kit instructions we read:
The first rule of Persian-English Magnetic Word Play is: There are no rules.
If you want, you can take the sheets of magnets out of the
box and use them as drink coasters. If you want, you can
break apart the sheets and use the magnet pieces! You can
ignore the words on the magnets and use them to make abstract
patterns. You can actually use the words to make phrases
and sentences! They can be very serious, grammatical sentences.
They can be silly, random word art! The choice is yours.
These words are your toys. You own them. They are smaller
than you. Check inside for some tips and notes, but remember,
there are no rules and you can do no wrong.
Oh, you just wanted some grammar rules? Click here.
How do the magnets boost creativity?
Without preconceived notions, anyone can draw out words that resonate with them and put them together
into phrases that end up being poetic, whimsical, humorous, profound, random, practical or just plain
silly. Experiment and play often breeds creativity. Check out our notes on creativity.
Now if you want more specific tips on how to get started, try this:
- Spread the words out over the fridge (or other play space)
- Look the words over. Search. Scan.
- Notice that you are drawn to certain words. They stand out for you. Resonate with you.
Provoke you.
- Pull those words aside. Put them together. This is the start of your composition.
- Look for other words and grammar units, if needed, to complete the thought.
(See section on Grammar for tips)
- Don't forget, you can also make up new words out of the words you have by combining words,
using suffixes, prefixes, and just random word-sewing.
- But most of all, relax and make any association you feel like! Logical, illogical, it's OK. Experiment! Play!
How do the magnets inspire songwriting?
Well, if you're musically inclined, some of the strange phrases you stick together might
be the start of a fabulous song. Allegedly David Bowie uses the cut-up technique for song writing,
and Madonna uses those English Magnetic word kits.
How will they help the Persian language to thrive in America?
Read our "Heritage Language" section for the complete answer to this.
Did you know that in America, on average, an immigrant populations loses its heritage language (the language of the country
of origin) within 3 generations? That is, unless they take strong steps to intervene.
Why is it important to surround yourself with Persian words?
Language fluency requires tons of repetition and exposure. You need to see words, experience their use
in different contexts, over and over for them to become a natural part of your consciousness.
What is subconscious word recognition?
Subconscious word recognition is the goal of literacy. You become a good reader when your brain can
identify a word, instantly, subconsciously, without you having to analyze it. For more information on
this phenomenon (and the amazing human brain) read our "Whole Word Recognition" section.
How do the magnets help with that?
Before you get to whole word recognition, you need to learn the alphabet and sounds that
correspond to each letter and group of letters. In other words, you need to learn phonics. Our magnets
can't help kids who don't know how to read English with this. However, if you're an older kid or adult
that can read English, the transliteration on the back is a very helpful phonics awareness tool that
will help you sound out the word and learn the letters.
Repeated exposure will get your mind to start mapping and recognizing patterns in the letters. Now you're
closer to the whole word recognition part. According to literature on phinics, it takes an average of 38
encounters with a new word before the brain learns to recognize it on sight. This may seem like a lot,
but if you keep the magnets out in an exposed place (like on the refrigerator, or other prominent place)
you will achieve this number of exposures quickly and painlessly, all while having random, silly fun
with a bunch of word magnets.
How can the magnets promote bonding with family members?
The best way for language to thrive is if it's spoken. It needs to live and breathe and exercise. Use it
or lose it. The way magnets help here is that they get you out of a rut. In the typical Iranian-American home,
the use of Persian language starts to erode and gets limited to certain types of conversations, pleasantries,
what do you want for dinner, and so forth.
When you suddenly throw in all these magnetic words and create a
situation in which you are playing with them, coming up with
novel concepts and deep thoughts, it naturally gets you to
express yourself in more complicated ways in Persian (as
well as English) (and did we mention the bi-lingual advantage). And
of course, you all talk amongst yourselves (and feel the
buzz of kinship and friendship) and get that lively humming
in the language centers of the brain
at the same time.
Magnet Mechanics: From the picture, it looks like you have an English magnet and a Persian one.
Yeah, sorry. We're just trying to show both sides as once. With an actual magnet,
you would have to turn
it over. Oh, they're double sided?
Yes! And what's really cool is that BOTH sides stick to metal surfaces! I don't
know how something can be magnetic on both sides, but get them and you'll see. Why do they turn over top to bottom?
The magnets are designed to be flipped over vertically, not horizontally, unless you like to read
upside down. Compare: 
vs.: 
Yes, the English words are "upside down" relative to the Persian words.
We did it this way is because
it's more efficient
to flip the magnet vertically
(you only use a thumb
and forefinger, whereas
if you want to flip it side to side, you use a whole
wrist movement.)
Also, when you flip vertically, you can
turn over a whole line of words in any order. With the horizontal
flip you would have to start at one end and work your way back, or lift your
whole hand up and flip and put back down. My refrigerator is titanium and magnets won't stick to it!
What do I do?
These days, everyone seems to be getting those titanium fridges, or the wood panel fridges and
MAGNETS DON'T STICK TO THEM!
But don't panic! There are many other surfaces you can use. For example:
- Magnetized Dry Erase Boards! These are available in two sizes and designs and
can also work as dry erase boards. This is great, you can play with magnets and draw pictures and write
all at the same time! Portable fun. Cheaper and lighter than anything you can get at an office supply store.
- Magnetic wall panels from Kling Magnetics! (if you want
more options on sizes, get your magnetized boards straight from the source!)
- Make any surface you want attractive to magnets by applying a base coat of MAGNETIC
PAINT from Kling.
- COOKIE SHEETS and PIZZA PANS! Get these at a grocery store in the kitchenware
isle. They are portable and you can use them anywhere.
I got my kit and:
The lines aren't straight!
Yes, this surprised us, too. It turns out that the die that cuts the sheet of magnet into all the small pieces
is a "one pass" die - so it crunches down on the magnets in one pass. In order to get the straight lines,
you need a "two pass" die. With that, you run the sheets of magnet through one time and cut the horizontal
line, then another time and cut the vertical line.
The "one-pass" die we are using was custom made for our magnets. If it turns out that lots of people buy
these magnets, we will be able to afford a two-pass die process. It's all about economies of scale.
Aside from looking nice and straight when you open the box, the vertical lines don't really matter.
It's the horizontal line that we had the most difficulty with in designing these magnets. Persian letters
go up really high (the "gAf", "kAf", "lAm" and "alef") and go down really low ("jim", "ye", "qeyn" and
so forth). We had to be very careful to fit the words onto the magnets and place the cut lines.
Both methods (one pass and two pass)
have
room for error, and the important thing
is that
we have the words centered in the middle
of each
magnet tile with enough space for the cutting.
There are too many words!
Each Magnetic Word Play kit has 650 magnet pieces. The typical English kit has only 440.
Perhaps the English kit designers are on to something and 650 is too much.
I tried to keep it down, but had a hard time limiting myself even to 650.
I wanted MORE words!
But 650 pieces of magnet certainly can get overwhelming on the fridge.
The solution, of course, is to only put up the words you like, and put
the others
aside in a little dish or something. Then when you get bored
with
the words you have up, you rotate them out with fresh words.
We are currently designing a custom made clear plastic box that has dividers based on
the parts of speech. This is so that people can store extra words in the different
compartments (e.g., nouns
in one compartment, verbs in another.) Then they can have their favorite
words on the fridge and pull out other words as
needed.
Alternatively, we may
design a bigger plastic box with more compartments to store
the words alphabetically. This would be a sort of magnet box dictionary.
We are still deciding. Feel free to send us your comments/preferences.
There are not enough verbs!
This problem may be a result of the same "too many words" issue. There are a lot of verbs in the
kit, but you may have trouble finding them because they are drowned out by all the other words. It may
help to set aside the verbs as you put them up on your play space, just so they are all in one place.
And why aren't all the verbs in one place on the magnet sheets? Well, they are in clumps here and there,
but the sheet was laid out based on word size, so we could fit the maximum number of words on minimum
amount of space.
The good thing about this, though, is that the process of standing there, looking over a sea of words for
the one word that your brain wants, is an excellent mind-mapping excersize that improves subconscious
word recognition. Your brain is scanning, searching, eliminating, zeroing in. Soon, it will take
less effort, and you will notice that the word you are looking for leaps out at you quicker. That's a great
sign!
When we designed the kit, we had to choose a selection of words from each part of speech.
We have nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, connectors, articles, suffixes
and prefixes. We tried to use similar proportions as the English kits while making allowances for
differences in the Persian language (such as the fact that pronouns are often embeded in a word, or
that verbs require conjugation).
The word choices, therefore, were designed based on theory, and not experience of use.
If you have purchased a kit, please contact us and let us know what is working for you and what isn't
so that we can make improvements for Magnetic Word Play 2.0, or perhaps just design supplemental sheets
with more of the words that will make the kits easier to use.
I can't find a word I want!
Each kit has 650 words. The Persian language has...how many? 20,000? How many
are used regularly? 10,000? 5000? It is our
goal
to systematically
go through
the Persian
language
and make a word magnet for each word of a fluent person's vocabulary. If each kit has 400 new words (you have
to figure a lot of the words accross kits are the same, words like "and", "me" etc.)
how many kits will eventually cover the vocabulary of a fluent Persian?
How did you choose the Persian words?
We started with a theme because it's best to learn language around a theme as the brain can make
logical connections right away, and the more connections and "mind-mapping" the brain can do, the quicker you
learn the word. Then we discussed each theme with friends and family, plus scoured the dictionary for
related words. For a year there, I was taking a lot of notes during conversations. "Hey! What does that mean?
How do you spell it? Which T? Are you sure about that?"
Why these three themes (Standard, Courtship and t'Arof/Pleasantries?)
Our first three kits have three fun, accessible themes. The Standard kit has
a lot
of general fun stuff that most people are familiar with (and a few more literary, fancy
words thrown in for fun). Courtship is fun because of all the words of love and heart-break.
And of course, t'Arof is a pet peeve of mine. I don't know how to t'Arof! So I hunted
down every t'Arof word I could. The fun thing about this kit is that you can do proper
t'Arof with it, or you can do very wacky things using those same t'Arof words.
You know, I can't actually read Persian?
Well, that's normal. How long have you been out of Iran? But don't worry about it.
These handy word magnets have the transliteration and translation of the word right there
on the back for you. I have seen Americans start to figure out the sounds of letters just
by looking at several of these magnets and noticing the patterns.
We are also working on more direct reading improvement games and books.
Contact us and give us your
email if you want to be on the mailing list to know when these are available.
And go check out our Alphabet section
to start bonding with Persian letters.
How do I read right to left?
Check out our "Right to Left" page for a look at how to read a word.
Once you have that down, check out the "Word Order" page to see how to read a sentence. It's not
just right to left, Persian has a few other word order differences from English.
What's that about the "ezAfe"?
In the Persian language, the modifier and modified are connected with an "ezAfe".
This is an "e" sound that is never shown but always pronounced that comes at the
end of the modified. For example, in the phrase "Magnetic Word-Play", the word
"Magnetic" modifies "Word-Play" (Word-Play is a single noun made up of two connected nouns).
So, in Persian, the phrase is "kalame bAzi-e meqnAtisi". You won't see that
"e" anywhere on the transliteration of the magnets. You just have to remember to make an
"e" sound.
There's a bit more to the ezAfe than this. As we develop the site, we will elaborate. In the
meantime, check out the Word Order section for more visual examples of this.
How do things get "lost in transliteration?"
The "ezAfe" isn't the only thing that gets lost in transliteration. For a discussion
of transliteration challenges
with our magnets, click
here. Some of these translations look wrong!
Yes, things get lost in translation, too (Click here for more details). The magnets are small and have room for only one definition,
but each word can have many definitions. Interestingly, the smallest words tend to have the most involved
translations in the dictionary.
What are those little words with translations like "1s", "2p"?
These are "personal endings" for conjugation and possession. Our kits supply the personal
endings as separate word particles, but they have no meaning by themselves. In translating
these particles the number refers to "person". 1= first person (the person speaking). 2=second person
(person being spoken to). 3=third person (person being spoken about). The letter refers to "number".
s=singular, p=plural. More detail and visual aids to come on this once we fix up
the grammar section.
Why do some words have an asterisk (*)?
All "present stems" of verbs are marked with an asterisk to let you know they can't be
used on their own but must be connected to other words or word particles. More detail and visual
aids to come on this once we fix up the grammar section.
Why do some words have a plus sign (+)?
Any time you see a plus sign on the English side, it indicates that the word particle you are looking
at is a suffix or a prefix. Usually these word particles can't be used on their own, they must
be affixed to a word. They are tricky to translate. More detail and visual aids to come on this once we fix up
the grammar section.
OK, I made a sentence in Persian, but when I flip it around, it makes no sense!
Yes, of course. Read all about the differences in Persian and English Word Order here.
Why do some pieces look like they got cut off?
This was an experiment. Persian is a semi-cursive language, so sometimes,
when you join words together, or conjugate them, the word particle in writing would actually
attach to the letter it follows. We designed some pieces that you could overlap onto
another magnet. Help! I don't know grammar!
Our kits have a really nifty grammar guide included. Or course, it's no substitute for classes in
Persian, but it will give you a quick overview and help you see how easy Persian can be.
Our grammar section (under construction) will be
derived from this grammar guide. In the long run, we are designing a comprehensive grammar
book that will actually be fun and inspiring (instead of dull and intimidating like
some of the grammar books we've had to slog through).
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