Absolutely Wonderful, October 8, 2002

Finally a language book that teaches practical vocabulary that isn't always found in the textbooks.

With large comic book style pages, vocabulary items are depicted in a color drawing that covers most of the page. On the page borders are small individual depictions of the vocabulary items with the name beneath it in Russian, there are no English translations (except in the glossary) because none are ever needed.

For example; the first page shows a color drawing of various rooms in a house. One room is the bath. The border of the page will have a picture of a toilet and its name beneath in Russian, then it is shown in the context of the bathroom without a label so the reader can self quiz.

An excellent resource!, good for beginner to intermediate level readers.

First Thousand Words in Russian, December 14, 2004

I did not have to buy this book in order to notice its tragic flaw. I could see from the "look inside the book" feature that the words do not contain any indication of where the stress lies. What a waste of time, paper, and print. In order to benefit from such a book, one would have to look up every word in a Russian-English dictionary. And in that case, why bother to purchase the picture book in the first place.

This book is even better than I hoped for! I bought this book to help prepare our three kids (3, 7, 16) learn some Russian words for basic items while we await the homecoming of their soon-to-be 8 year old sister from Russia. We thought this would also be a great way for our new daughter to be able to point to items for us to give the English word or simply tell us what she needs - like a toothbrush. The layout is GREAT because each section is a huge picture scene of a certain place - like a bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, city - and all the essentials that fill these spaces. Each item has the written Russian word and pronunciation underneath. In the back of the book is an easy alphabet, number and pronunciation guide along with all the words alphabatized from the book. We bought TONS of other books and tapes from Amazon to help my husband and I learn a little Russian, but this is the only book we found that ALL our kids (and us) like and can easily use.

I Didn't Buy the Book Because..., March 8, 2004

...the words are not stressed. For beginners who don't have a native Russian speaker around to pronounce the words for them, it is absolutely essential that each word show the vowel that is stressed. Normally, in textbooks for beginning Russian students, this is done by placing a stress mark over the stressed vowel. Unfortunately, this book does not do that. Like English, Russian words are pronounced quite differently depending on the placement of the primary stress. The reader of this book will not know, for example, how the word "aftobus" ("bus" in English) should be pronounced: AHf-to-boos, ahf-TO-boos, or ahf-to-BOOS. The correct pronunciation is ahf-TO-boos. No doubt most American speakers, analogizing from "automobile" (AW-tuh-muh-beel), would pronounce it AHf-to-boos. And is the word for "watch" pronounced "CHAH-see" or "chih-SEE"? The latter is closer to the correct pronunciation. But without a sress mark to show this, how is one to know? In addition, in conversation most speakers of Russian nowadays pronounce the consonant "shch" not as sh + ch (as in "freSH CHeese"), but as a fronted "shsh" (as in "I wiSH SHe wouldn't do that"). Although the concept of the dictionary is good, because of the lack of stress marks I don't think it's worth buying.

two major shortcomings, December 28, 2003

As a beginning student of Russian I thought this book might be a good vocabulary builder, and for the most part that is true. The illustrations aren't always sufficient to identify the word depicted, but there is an English translation in the back so that's only a minor annoyance. Another minor annoyance is that words are given in either singular or plural form, whereas it would have been nice if both were included.

However, I found two major shortcomings relating to pronunciation. One that has been mentioned in the other reviews is the lack of anything indicating stress, which could easily have been done with either accent marks on the word itself or by capitalizing the accented syllable in the phonetic rendering (PEESma).

The other major shortcoming is that certain vagaries of pronunciation aren't taken into account, such as the devoicing of a consonant at the end of a word (e.g. the word for iron would be more correctly rendered as "ootyook" rather than "ootyoog") and the assimilation of consonants when they occur together ("foodbol" rather than "footbol").

I still would recommend this book but I also recommend getting a good dictionary that shows word stress and making sure you learn the rules of pronunciation and take them into account.

Wonderful Illustrations, Keeps Attention!, February 5, 2002
Reviewer: A reader
My husband is a native Russian speaker and speaks only this language to our 2 yr. old. This book has ended up being our son's FAVORITE book. He loves the illustrations (so do I) and will look at one page for a good 10 minutes. I helps me brush up on my Russian also.
I must add, however, that if you are a BEGINNER to the Russian language this book won't teach you how to correctly pronounce the words. Words are spelled out phoenetically but do not include any clues as to pronunciation.