One of the most challenging aspects of studying any ancient language is the shortage of teaching materials, textbooks, and dictionaries for students to use. Older forms of Persian (like Pahlavi) certainly has this issue and if you're not familiar with reading linguistic descriptions of grammar, you may be desperate for more simple explanations as to how this language works. As much I loved studying Pahlavi, I struggled with it-- spending up to 5 or 7 hours on 15 lines of text only to come to class with a third or more of it totally wrong. What tripped me up was deciphering the letters. It wasn't until the end of last semester did I discover the textbooks of Prods Oktor Skjærvø-- a Norwegian-born linguist and scholar of Iranian languages at Harvard University (NELC dept). He has written learning materials for Avestan (young and old), Old Persian cuneiform, Middle Persian, and Manichaean Sogdian. All of these publications are free and available for download on his website. The Pahlavi Primer can be downloaded here. Thanks to Dr. Skjærvø for sharing his work with the online community! Here is a short interview with him by Pars Times:
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