Customer Reviews

The First Thousand Words in Russian (Usborne First Thousand Words) (Russian Edition)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This picture book was great because we could look at it together with our Russian son. He helped us pronounce the words in Russian as we taught him the words in English. I highly recommend it for parents going to Russia to adopt. Very comprehensive. Great illustrations. (I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 only because it was lacking accents in the pronunciation guide; hence I didn't know which syllable to accent for best pronunciation. I would recommend that the next edition show which syllable is accented; then it would certainly merit 5 stars!)

As a beginning student of Russian I thought this book might be a good vocabulary builder, and for the most part that is true. The illustrations aren't always sufficient to identify the word depicted, but there is an English translation in the back so that's only a minor annoyance. Another minor annoyance is that words are given in either singular or plural form, whereas it would have been nice if both were included.

However, I found two major shortcomings relating to pronunciation. One that has been mentioned in the other reviews is the lack of anything indicating stress, which could easily have been done with either accent marks on the word itself or by capitalizing the accented syllable in the phonetic rendering (PEESma).

The other major shortcoming is that certain vagaries of pronunciation aren't taken into account, such as the devoicing of a consonant at the end of a word (e.g. the word for iron would be more correctly rendered as "ootyook" rather than "ootyoog") and the assimilation of consonants when they occur together ("foodbol" rather than "footbol").

I still would recommend this book but I also recommend getting a good dictionary that shows word stress and making sure you learn the rules of pronunciation and take them into account.

My husband is a native Russian speaker and speaks only this language to our 2 yr. old. This book has ended up being our son's FAVORITE book. He loves the illustrations (so do I) and will look at one page for a good 10 minutes. I helps me brush up on my Russian also.
I must add, however, that if you are a BEGINNER to the Russian language this book won't teach you how to correctly pronounce the words. Words are spelled out phoenetically but do not include any clues as to pronunciation.

Finally a language book that teaches practical vocabulary that isn't always found in the textbooks.

With large comic book style pages, vocabulary items are depicted in a color drawing that covers most of the page. On the page borders are small individual depictions of the vocabulary items with the name beneath it in Russian, there are no English translations (except in the glossary) because none are ever needed.

For example; the first page shows a color drawing of various rooms in a house. One room is the bath. The border of the page will have a picture of a toilet and its name beneath in Russian, then it is shown in the context of the bathroom without a label so the reader can self quiz.

An excellent resource!, good for beginner to intermediate level readers.

I got this book to begin my study of the Russian language. Although it's a wonderful book and taught me a LOT of vocabulary, there was one problem I found--the words are separated into groups and these groups are titled. However, the title is not translated into English. The first group in the entire book is pictured by a bathroom. The title, in phonetic English, is "doma." Doma means house in English. If I didn't already know that word, I would have gone around asking people where the house was. This happens all through the book. You get the idea.
Otherwise, though, a great book. I learned a lot, easily. Bright illustrations spread across pages and make it exciting to learn the words and be able to identify objects. A handy-dandy mini Russian-English dictionary can be found at the end of the book. All the words I found relevant and useful. (Not like the traveler dictionary I got later that taught me how to say "I've been run over by a car"!)I assure you, if you get this, you'll learn a lot and have fun doing it.

Recommended highly.

I found that learning a new languange is easies when learned as I did in school. This book has humorous full page color pictures of everyday life. The outside boarders of every page picks a list of single items from that page, and gives you the russian word, and the translitteration. I thought it was quite helpfull, and cute. dectaz@notnow.com

...the words are not stressed. For beginners who don't have a native Russian speaker around to pronounce the words for them, it is absolutely essential that each word show the vowel that is stressed. Normally, in textbooks for beginning Russian students, this is done by placing a stress mark over the stressed vowel. Unfortunately, this book does not do that. Like English, Russian words are pronounced quite differently depending on the placement of the primary stress. The reader of this book will not know, for example, how the word "aftobus" ("bus" in English) should be pronounced: AHf-to-boos, ahf-TO-boos, or ahf-to-BOOS. The correct pronunciation is ahf-TO-boos. No doubt most American speakers, analogizing from "automobile" (AW-tuh-muh-beel), would pronounce it AHf-to-boos. And is the word for "watch" pronounced "CHAH-see" or "chih-SEE"? The latter is closer to the correct pronunciation. But without a sress mark to show this, how is one to know? In addition, in conversation most speakers of Russian nowadays pronounce the consonant "shch" not as sh + ch (as in "freSH CHeese"), but as a fronted "shsh" (as in "I wiSH SHe wouldn't do that"). Although the concept of the dictionary is good, because of the lack of stress marks I don't think it's worth buying.

Roughly 10,000 children from Russian-speaking countries were adopted by U.S. citizens last year, and this book is a classic in adoption circles. Parents bring it along to their child's birth country and use it to communicate with their child, teaching English to the child while learning Russian themselves. Its scenes of family interaction (dinner, playing, gardening, bath-time, bedtime, going shopping, traveling) provide an introduction to what the child can expect from family life, as well as a vocabulary with which to describe it. It is therefore unfortunate that in the dozen or so illustrations of mothers interacting with children, every single mother figure has a hateful look on her face, as if she's ready to smack the child into oblivion. No kidding, there is not one single exception in the entire book. I hope the illustrator will realize the implications of this before the book is reprinted again. If you think this problem is trivial, I suggest you type "RAD" into your search engine to learn more about what adoptive mothers of post-institutionalized children face without this kind of "help." We NEED this book. Please take the time to contact Usborne publishers about changing the illustrations.

This book is even better than I hoped for! I bought this book to help prepare our three kids (3, 7, 16) learn some Russian words for basic items while we await the homecoming of their soon-to-be 8 year old sister from Russia. We thought this would also be a great way for our new daughter to be able to point to items for us to give the English word or simply tell us what she needs - like a toothbrush. The layout is GREAT because each section is a huge picture scene of a certain place - like a bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, city - and all the essentials that fill these spaces. Each item has the written Russian word and pronunciation underneath. In the back of the book is an easy alphabet, number and pronunciation guide along with all the words alphabatized from the book. We bought TONS of other books and tapes from Amazon to help my husband and I learn a little Russian, but this is the only book we found that ALL our kids (and us) like and can easily use.

As an adoptive mother and founder of Building Blocks Adoption Service,Inc. I highly recommend this book to keep your newly adopted child into his/her own language. This book is great for children who want to rekindle their former language as well or parents wanting to communicate with their older adopted children. We highly recommend this wonderful book.