Customer Reviews

Elementary Persian Grammar

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Elwell-Sutton's work was a standard for many years, but it suffers the ills of most Persian grammars in English: too little of everything. Too little explanation, especially of syntax, too little reading, too few exercises and no sound recordings. The paucity of syntactical explanation, e.g. the use of verb tenses, leaves holes in the student's understanding of how Persian grammar works.

Wheeler Thackston's "An Introduction to Persian" has remedied all of these deficiencies and provides specific explanations and exercises for syntactical problems. The nine accompanying tape cassettes (available from a book dealer or from the publisher) reproduce all Persian that appears in the book and gives pauses for repetition--except for the twenty-five pages of Persian readings, which are read aloud at normal speed.

I've generally been disappointed with many of the Persian language tutorials. Most have been little more than phrase books which teach little about grammar or about writing the language. Thankfully, this book provides a very good foundation in Farsi. I would recommend it as a must-have supplemental text. For the next stage, look up the texts by A.K.S. Lambton (Persian Vocabulary, and Persian Grammar).

While more accessable than the frustratingly over-detailed Lambton, this book still focuses too much on archaic rules of grammar, often presented in an unintelligable manner. The reading excercises are outdated ie "His August Imperial Majesty opened..." and contain vocabulary which is questionably useful for the beginner. Because it is attempting to equip the reader to deal with classical as well as modern texts, much of the grammatical information and vocabulary is not necessary for active use, although this is not made clear and many modern usesages are overlooked or mentioned only in passing. Thackston is the book to use for the beginner who whishes to make quick and satisfying progress in the language and perhaps Lambton for those who want an obscure reference grammar. This book, unfortunately serves neither purpose adequately.

Like some other reviewers, I have tried learning Persian from several books (not including Thackston's); so far, I've found this book to be the best.

The first major obstacle for me was learning how to write the alphabet. It's not enough for books to introduce the letters one by one in type, since the letters, as with the Roman alphabet, are handwritten differently from how they appear in print. Although I ended up using an Arabic textbook to learn the basic shapes of letters (the excellent _Alef Baa_), I was glad to see that Elwell-Sutton's book includes "hand-drawn" illustrations with arrows showing exactly how to draw each letter (books like Abrahams' _Modern Persian_ do not). Lesson IV helpfully groups the letters according to basic shape and number of dots or extra strokes, and then relists them according to phonetic value. A section on punctuation marks used in Persian writing is also included. This thorough instruction on writing in Persian is necessary--it's hard even to get started with many books because they neglect to include it.

Another major advantage of the book is that it systematically includes short vowel and other signs that signal how to pronounce words, until it can be presumed that the words have been mastered. (Some books include these signs when the words are first introduced, but omit them thereafter.) Further, while some books that emphasize spoken Persian spell certain words in the Persian script as they are colloquially pronounced, this book does not confuse the reader with alternative pronunciations/spellings. For my part, I'd rather learn to pronounce words at first very formally (e.g., "Bebakhshid"--"Excuse me"--instead of the more colloquial "Bebakhshin," or "aanjaa" instead of "unjaa"), than learn to read and spell words as if I were always in conversation.

Other advantages to this book: (1) An answer key to the exercises is provided (for some books, the key must be bought separately). (2) In the English-to-Persian exercises, the reader is asked to use only those expressions and words that have been taught in the preceding lessons. If an expression is rendered in Persian using words difficult for an beginner to anticipate, those words are provided in the English statement to be translated (for example, in Lesson VIII: "During (In) this period . . ." and "At the end (In the last parts) of the sixth century B.C. . . ."). (3) Simple translation exercises at the beginning, which turn progressively harder--none of that analyzing complex sentences from the beginning. (4) Useful vocabulary lists--although it is necessary to spend some time with them, as they can include sixty or more words for one chapter.

I've been very pleased with this grammar: It's well organized and suited to the language learner who wants familiarity with some subtleties and exceptions to rules, but who also wants not to get bogged down in them and to make quick progress in learning the language.

While I agree with the majority of reviewers below that Wheeler Thackston's "An Introduction to Persian" is generally easier, and, for the student of the modern language, far far more up-to-date in idiom and vocabulary, Elwell-Sutton (which was the recommended reference book on my course when I studied Persian at Durham in 1999-2000) has two things at least to recommend it: it has a KEY TO THE EXERCISES included and has the best introduction to Persian handwriting I've seen in a textbook. I'd recommend it to the academic student of literary Persian.

I tried many different books to learn farsi and this one seemed to be the most helpful in acutally learning the language. I found this book in a library and I tried many other books but I enjoyed this one the most. I liked it so much I decided to buy the book to help me. I liked the lesson that were after each chapter, they were easy and it help to learn how to read and understand the characters more than just pharses like most books teach. As far as explaining certain grammer, it is left out but I found many books leave that information out and if you are fortunate enough like me to have someone who speaks farsi as a first language, they will explain what a lot of the books leave out. One thing I think helped me the most is a website "[...]", which is great for explaining grammer along with this book. Save yourself time spent on other things.

The information in this book is presented in a clear manner that is easier to understand than some of the other Persian grammar books. I am using Rosetta Stone to learn farsi but wanted some written material to go along with Rosetta Stone.. this book is helpful.

This was my primary textbook of written Persian back in 1976-78, when I was a teenager in Tehran. That was years before Thackston's book was published and in the days before a key to Lambton's was available. Thus, I still regard this book fondly as by far the most useful one in my study of the language.

I learned to write the Persian version of the Arabic alphabet from it, thanks to the detailed instructions in lessons 1-4. Elwell-Sutton spared me a lot of stumbling and fumbling in this endeavor. That is the first point in favor of this book.

In addition to the formal documentary hand introduced at the beginning of the book, Elwell-Sutton has a very useful appendix which introduces the student to the nasta'liq script routinely used for printing poetry and for many signs, and the shekaste script used in ordinary handwriting. Lambton and Thackston do not cover these.

The grammar and vocabulary of the book reach an intermediate level, but then again, the book's title proclaims it an "elementary" grammar, so it does not fall short of expectations in this regard. It will provide the user with at least the basics to interpret newspapers and middle-brow literature. For fancier literature and poetry, Ann K. S. Lambton's Persian Grammar: Including Key and Wheeler M. Thackston's An Introduction to Persian will be useful. But you will be glad that you have worked through Elwell-Sutton first.

Elwell-Sutton has the best coverage of intonation of any of the three books being discussed. Thackston has a brief note on it in lesson one, while Lambton covers it in an appendix of a few pages. Elwell-Sutton, though, has sections on intonation in most lessons, covering a substantial variety of sentence patterns and their characteristic intonation. You will be glad for these, as Persian intonation is appreciably different from that of English. You need to learn to both follow it in the speech of native speakers, and to reproduce it at least tolerably in order to make yourself understood with reasonable ease.

Previous reviewers have commented on the inclusion of some of the fancy polite phrases. These come toward the end of the book and are primarily intended to help the reader get a sense of the florid phrases used in cultured letter writing. One will not, of course, gain complete facility in the use of such phrases from this book or any other. Exposure to actual use is necessary for this.

The book concludes with Persian-English and English-Persian vocabularies, a subject index and a key to the exercises.