Customer Reviews

Azerbaijani-English/English-Azerbaijani Dictionary and Phrasebook (Hippocrene Dictionary & Phrasebook)

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3 star:		(1)
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I picked up this book on a whim, since I speak Turkish and wanted to learn Azerbaijani. I was pleasantly surprised to find not only words and phrases, but introductions to the alphabet, fairly thorough grammar, and loads of useful and very usable words and phrases. Awde is a great linguist, as well, I have picked up several excellent books by him on many subjects an find his work to be very reliable. I highly recommend this book.

This dictionary is primarily for tourists. It was not designed for language study. If you're trying to converse or translate, it is a poor tool. Although it attempts to use latin script, some letters are substituted which makes deciphering a bit slow until you get used to it. If you find yourself in Baku you might be able to survive with this dictionary in your pocket.

There are very basic errors. I found out several days into a trip that what this book told me meant "Thank you" was actually a very formal "Goodbye", and some phrases weren't recognized by native speakers.

My biggest complaint is that they screwed with the alphabet. Azerbaijani is already written in an alphabet any English speaker will recognize and will be able to learn in a few minutes. The one they substituted is no more familiar, but much more complicated. It also makes this book not very useful for translating written Azerbaijani and all but useless for passing back and forth when pronunciation fails.

Yes, it's not for serious language study. It's a phrasebook, not an intensive grammar. It's only meant to facilitate basic communication when you don't speak the local language. Sadly, the previous flaws prevent this.

I would strongly recommend finding a substitute if you can, but there isn't really much out there. There are a few online resources you can study ahead of time- both print and audio/video. I'll probably print those out for my next trip instead of this, but I may purchase Colloquial Azerbaijani by Kurtulus Oztopcu.

Is a brief guide to the language of Azerbaijani which I will make use of but wonder if there isn't a good CD set that allows me to hear the language.

I don't like the choice of transcriptions for some of the Azerbaijani characters. But that aside, if you're going to travel to Azerbaijan for a visit and you want a few local phrases, then you'll find them in this book. Good for the visitor, but not for anyone seriously wanting to learn the language.

I spoke Azeri relatively well once and decided to pick up this little book to revisit the language. Out of the limited amount of literature on the subject I chose this one on a hunch and it's nothing more than a phrase book for a tourist to get around. It does a good job of indroducing the most common expressions to an English speaker. Expect to find exact pronounciation of singlular words and 2-3 word phrases and expressions. Do not expect a textbook on the language :)