Customer Reviews

ROMANIAN CASSETTE WITH PHRASE BOOK (Cassette Packs)

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I found the book to be very helpful when I visited Romania a few months ago. The cassette was very helpful as it taught me the right pronunciation which is very much needed for the Romanian language eg. the word buna zuia which means hello is pronounced "boona zweea". Without the cassette I wouldn't have known how to say it. The book also teaches basic gramma such as I am, you are, they are, she is, he is. I recommend this book to anyone who is travelling to Romania or who just wants to learn the language.

I used this tape to learn a bit of Romanian before traveling there for about ten days. It introduces you to many of the important phrases (good morning, thank you, where's the bathroom, etc.), numbers, and other words used during travel. I found the pronunciation to be fairly accurate on my trip. Also the dictionary/phrase book is organized by topic, so all the travel related phrases are together, as are the medical terms and phrases.

This product does have some shortcomings. The dictionary and phrase book with the tape does not match the tape in a few isolated cases (I think in "good afternoon" and a few other phrases). Also, the female speaker on the tape is a little more difficult to understand than the male. The dictionary also is quite limited and left out a number of words I thought common. And, the dictionary is only English to Romanian. I did not learn the grammer with this product at all, just enough phrases to generally get by.

In spite of these shortcomings, it did give me a good start on the language and was helpful for short-term travel.

I got nothing but compliments on how quickly I was picking Romanian up, by the locals on my two week trip. As usual Berlitz has created a great introduction to the language. It is up to you to refine your language skills through immersion in the culture.

This book is chocked full of information. This book is not intended to be a phrase book and it's entire emphasis is the unique sentence structure that the Romanian language requires.

I also recently had one of the books I authored translated into Romanian by the Sibiu Monetary Financial Commodities Exchange. This was a book that one of the translators recommend to me and I was not disappointed.

The ROMANIAN PHRASE BOOK & DICTIONARY from Berlitz is a standard entry in this line from the publisher. It features phrases for every situation a tourist could imagine themselves in, colour-coded for quick access, with both the Romanian text and a phonetic transcription for English speakers. At the end one can find a small dictionary, and a brief grammar. Romanian is an exceedingly easy language, and someone with previous knowledge of a Romance language could pick it up in two weeks, but if for whatever reason you'll be dependent on a phrase book during your time there, this is certainly the best phrase book around.

However, the phrase book does have some weaknesses. The information on Romanian culture often discusses matters limited to one particular region of this very diverse country without warning the reader that the words or concepts discussed aren't applicable for other parts of the country. The phonetic transcription is for speakers of British English, and were an American to unwittingly read from the transcription, being understood may be difficult. Editions of the book prior to the 2006 inexplicably continued to use the Communist-era orthography long after it was revised by a 1993 language reform. Finally, there are a few misprints, though I should think that these are not serious enough to deter communication.

Nonetheless, in spite of these quirks the Berlitz is the phrase book to get for Romanian--certainly avoid at all costs the Hippocrene ones.