Customer Reviews

Eastern Armenian-English/English-Eastern Armenian Dictionary & Phrasebook

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

First the bad news...
All the Armenian is ROMANIZED (ie. written in the alphabet used for the English language); NONE of it is written in the Armenian alphabet, not even in parentheses. For learning, this is really not a good thing. I know because when I hear Hebrew I visualize the words in Cyrillic (Russian alphabet), because I learned from a book where all the Hebrew was translated into Cyrillic. Once you learn that way it's just more work to re-learn it in the correct alphabet. At least the book contains a page that explains the transliteration system, so you can reverse-engineer the words back into Armenian.

Now the good news...
There is, as the author calls it, `a very basic grammar' section (eight pages long) in the front of the book. The second half of the book contains topic sections such as accommodation, shopping, health, politics, etc. that list useful vocabulary and a lot phrases. There are also cultural notes.

This is very good "pronunciation" dictionary for everyday travel phrases. It does not provide much help for reading, such as Armenian street signs or restaurant menu. If you're planning a brief stay in Armenia and want a small book for your jacket pocket, then this is probably the choice for you.

If yu are looking for a parlour to get around in Armenia, along with a simple wordbook covering the basics, this is your thing. I you need a wordbook to get around in the office and stuff like that, well, buy a real wordbook.

The book is divided into chapters useful for different situations. The chapter about how to get around in the doctor's office contains the sentence "please take off your clothes". Does not always work on Armenians, but it is a nice ice breaker!

I found this dictionary and phrasebook quite helpful for basic purposes. But in asking my Armenian friend (speaks Eastern Armenian as her first language) for help, she was saying some of the things in the book (mostly grammatical items) were incorrect. Then I didn't know which things I could trust as accurate.

Totally useless, romanized, no accent marks given to indicare which syy\llable to be accented. Only useful for someone already familiar wit the language.

I have had a hard time finding Eastern Armenian language resources so this was a treasure. Small enough that I carried it in my handbag the whole time I was in Armenia. There were only a couple of minor corrections made by my Eastern Armenian friends on a few words. Highly recommend.

this dictionary is either out-dated or the writers simply did not think about how one would need to actually communicate while visiting Armenia. For the most part this dictionary is useless! Common words and phrases are not listed (like: how are you?), but what is in the dictionary is a section on war and relief aid---totally USELESS for your time in Yerevan or even in the village where I went to work for several weeks! some of the helpful parts were the "grey boxes" which highlighted food and drink or "common expressions" In fact, the word for yes is almost exclusively used as: Ha! not ayo, which is more of the western style.