Customer Reviews

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Learning Russian, 2nd Edition

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I didn't bother reading the reviews on Amazon.com when I bought this which was a big mistake. I decided to buy this book on impulse more than anything else at Dymocks. I just really wanted to buy something I suppose.
When I read about the author's credentials in teaching Russian (none), it should have rang a bell (ding! ding!) It didn't.
Whilst I'm sure the author's really, really good at... Russian, he's definitely not very good at *teaching* it, which is what I'm more interested in as the student. The way he teaches how to read the Cyrillic alphabet, the way to remembering what's stressed & what's not & various other essentials (some of which aren't covered) are very lax, to say the least. I don't mean to sound too harsh or anything but if you're intent on actually LEARNING Russian, this book won't help you. If you want to learn a word here & there to impress someone, then this book might be the one.

The reason I didn't give the book a 1 is:
-He can write English well & explains himself clearly
-The book looks pretty
-Some interesting points are made

I recommend "Russian Course". That's THE book to use to learn Russian.

Richard

Once you learn the alphabet (no small feat) you'll have fun with this book. And, you'll UNDERSTAND why Russian-speakers have difficulty learning perfect English (and that will be an epiphany).

So, in all circumstances, try this book out. Knowledge of another language that has gender cases for nouns (such as German) is helpful, because you have already jumped that hoop. Get ready to encounter a language with no real prepositional phrases, definite articles ("the"), and no particular concern about word order. However, it can be fun, and will give you some great insights into one of the world's great and most spoken languages. All thanks to St. Cyril, who wanted to invent an alphabet that took the best from the available ones. He missed on a few points, and those are worth discovering too!

One of the best free-standing Russian language books I have uncovered.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Learning Russian starts where it should: the Cryllic Alphabet, and it gives a good breakdown and a lot of sample words to go along with it. Then it gets into grammar, slowly etching vocabulary into your mind as you read. It's a really good introduction, and the fact that it stays with the Cryllic alphabet throughout lends it a lot of face in my eyes, because in reality you're not really accomplishing anything without using their alpahabet. As always with languages, you'll want to get a good set of CDs or tapes to go along, because without hearing the language there's no point, but I really must strongly recommend this book. It's witty once in a while, fun all the time, and doesn't let you get bogged down in the extreme nuances of grammar. If you want to begin the road to fluency in Russian, buy this book. You won't regret it.

Because this is labeled as an "Idiot's Guide" does not mean that you can sprint through the book. The focus is mainly on spoken Russian - how to communicate. It's a good overview of the language, teaches a broad range of vocabulary, gives a decent but not exhaustive explanation of grammar and pronounciation, and keeps it all interesting and fun. Each section stands on it's own, so you can skip around without getting totally lost.

This book is okay, I mean it was a nice introduction to Russian but I had to buy many other books to further my studies. This book is NOT, I reapeat, IS NOT going to teach you all you need to even be conversational let alone fluent. The book has non sequiter chapters about things that really aren't quintessential to the beginning student of the Russian Languages. One good point fo the book is that it has an excellent chapter on expalining cases in Russian which is a difficult concept to the English speaker. I reccomend getting an outling on Russian grammar and a Russian vocabulary booster to go with this if you want this to be your main text on learning Russian.

It's cheating a bit, as I wrote this book and therefore have no objective capacity with which to review it. I wrote this little tome when I was a mere 20 years old, fresh out of language school and headed to war in Iraq. Not a defense of the text's weaknesses, surely; however, it is food for my own reflection of the experience of writing this book.

The text's organization is its most glaring weakness (in my humble opinion). With only three months to write and edit the whole piece, I must have traversed several dozen major revisions of the structure of the text. With each revision, I tried to preserve the most essential elements of the language even as I had to amputate core grammatical and philosophical concepts.

It was an imperfect and rushed process with no opportunity to return for substantive edits later.

As a young writer, when faced with even the most inauspicious opportunity to write an Idiot's Guide edition, the cost of sacrificing all ownership rights to the penned work seems so much lower than the potential reward. The real cost becomes manifest within a few years or more. While Wikimedia entries can live and breathe in real time, humble CIG tomes are cast once and left forever to occupy a static space.

The Russian language evolves constantly, but it is sadly not possible to capture any of its mutations in the scope of my humble text. I can only say that I gave this book my all while I had the chance, and if I had been (legally) able to contribute more to it in the last 10 years, I would have.

If ever any dear reader wants to pursue the Russian language further with me directly, please have at me!

Why make a kindle version if the script won't show? I have the dead-tree version (which I gave 3 stars) and thought a portable version would be nice. However, kindle doesn't recognize the cyrillic script unless it is in a table.

There are too many errors in this edition to recommend it to a beginner. Approximately 75 errors were encountered. For a second edition, it is surprising that these errors were not corrected. Otherwise, I think this book would have been a good introduction to the Russian language.

The two languages that I speak are English and Japanese, but I am a huge fan of lots of languages and this is a great book to learn a little about Russian. The book is not very long but it covers a lot of information. It also doesnt use the Latin alphabet which is a big plus as you learn to read words as they are written.

I purchased this book expecting long hours of tedious memorization drills. But, I was extremely impressed with the layout of the lessons. This book allowed me to quickly learn the alphabet and start reading Russian newspapers and watching TV shows. Great Book