Best dictionary for English speakers, August 22, 2002

Even though I've "advanced" through most of the vocabulary and grammar in this guide, I use this as a supplement to my other Persian-English dictionaries because of the handy explanations of grammatical rules. The dictionary in the back is extremely useful, with both an English to Persian section and a section with the phonetic pronounciation of words (in Latin script) for English speakers to easily determine the meaning of (and learn to spell in Persian at the same time!). Very useful for travel and for students of the language who want a small resource guide.

As a student of Persian language and literature, I had some serious issues with this book. The written Persian component to the words/phrases is full of spelling mistakes. The (colloquial) pronunciation is not always consistent with itself, nor always correct, and a few of the words/phrases are a bit quaint. The book provides a great introduction to the grammar of Persian, but its explanation of Arabic plurals is misleading.

That being said, this book offers lots of great vocabulary, as well as many useful phrases that are, for the most part, idiomatically correct and commonly used. This book would prove indispensible to any traveller, and it is a good overall guide to Persian language and culture. I would, however, caution serious students of Persian not to rely too much on this book.

ketabe khub!, October 9, 2003

I liked this book a lot. I took a college-level Farsi class and found this was more helpful than any of our textbooks in our conversations. I thought the dictionary in the back was also helpful because I could follow the logic. For example, in my full dictionary, I couldn't find "pet" or "pets." This book explained that dogs especially aren't commonly kept as pets, which was interesting.

I did not like the English transliterations. I thought they were distracting. I was also learning to read and write Farsi, so I wanted to look at the print and see words, as opposed to seeing something that needed translating. Although it may have provided a good transition for someone who didn't know the alphabet, it was frustrating for me.

Great for beginners, June 20, 2003

This is a great little book for beginners. Unlike many phrase books or even grammar books, it does not simply romanize the phrases, but also gives the text in the native alphabet as well. It includes basic grammar lessons, sentence structure (farsi is an S-O-V language), and 2 glossaries (English and Farsi). The phrases and vocabulary sections are well-designed because they focus on the sorts of dialogues that occur when people are just getting to know one another socially and move on to the needs of travelers. Additionally, the book is interspersed with various cultural notes and also contains some poetry by the famous author Omar Khayyam in parallel text (Farsi, Romanized Farsi, and English). In my opinion, this cheap little book is packed with more than enough information and vocab for someone in their first 1 - 2 years of studying the language and is a far greater value than most of its competitors.

not perfect - but close, September 21, 2002
Reviewer: A reader
Great description of grammar (Persian and English, by the way), and the right number of regular and irregular verbs are given in table form so you can see the differences easily. Also they have some excellent recommendations for how to get started with speaking a new language, which I only wish could be taught to more kids at school level. Two things let this book down just slightly: (i) they drop the "spelt-out-in-words" translations showing the Persian word order a little too early in the book, and (ii) the dictionary at the back frustratingly omits quite a few of the words encountered in the course of the book. Recommended, but if they write a second edition and fix up a few of these things then it will be just about perfect !

Best book for learning new Persian vocabulary words!, February 21, 2002
Reviewer: A reader
I am a student and non native speaker of Persian language. For the longest time, I have been wading through grammar books in my attempt to become conversant in Farsi. Most grammar books go on and on about grammar and introduce very little conversation or new vocabulary words at the start. They emphasize how to write the Persian script which is complex to learn and all new words are written in it so these grammar textbooks insist that you can read and write Farsi before speaking it. Well, since I need to be able to communicate with Persians in dialogue this book is much better. Not perfect but quite useful to quickly get basic level of speaking skill in Farsi.