Customer Reviews

Romanian Made Nice & Easy (Language Learning)

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

 

 

This book can give English natives who do not master phonetic transcription of any kind a very useful idea of how to pronounce Romanian by reading and not listening--as close as native English speakers can get it. As long as students of Romanian possess no theoretical basis such as phonetic transcription (either American or European) which can help with reading a foreign language, and want to get a crash course in everyday phrases, this book provides an almost ideal approach to the learning of spoken Romanian--it is "nice and easy", as promised.

To those who want to learn it for more serious purposes, though--such as getting a better grasp of the language, writing correctly, or even taking academic courses in Romanian--I would suggest them to supplement with more serious books, such as the Teach Yourself Romanian Complete Course, for example.

This little 90 page book is incredible. It may be small but it's stuffed with hundreds of usefull words and phrases for the traveler or simply for the curious mind. Not to mention is prefaced with a breif history of the country and some interesting stats on the current republic of Romanina. You will also find some lovely black&whites of certain land marks and notable locations; like Dracula's castle. This book is incredibly helpful with those interesting accent and stress-markers that are so different to the English language. (Now I know why they say English is the most difficult language to learn!) The easy to read, easy to follow phonetics make pronunciations virtually fool-proof, without having to buy tapes.

If you are looking for a casual, easy to use, non-threatening, introduction into this beautiful and culturally diverse language, I highly recommend this book. It is the perfect stepping stone in your quest to being able to communicate in or at least understand the basics of Romanian!!

i bought this book because my girlfriend's family is from romania and she speaks the language. i wanted to learn the language so her family would see me trying to fit in and... well, let me fit in. after i got the book, i pulled out my phone and sent a text in romanian. she replied back in romanian. the only problem with the book is it does'nt go very deep. it's pretty short. i'd love it if the same people wrote something bigger in the same format. the pronunciation guides were great. if you're just looking at getting started at learning romanian, or you just want to impress a romanian/american girl (cuz they're so hot) buy the book.

I was expecting a book with such a title to provide an overview of Romanian grammar. It doesn't. It is just a phrase book (with some good material on Romanian culture). It is a good phrasebook, but don't expect to get an understanding of the structure of the language from this book. That being said, I do appreciate the way that pronunciation is indicated (something that is missing from the the Romanian grammar book I bought at the same time).

This is an excellent book to have when attempting to learn the Romanian language. It covers the basics; it is accurate; and is simply written and easy to understand. However, without a tape or CD to listen to, it is hard to know if you are pronouncing the words correctly or not. If it did come with a tape or CD, it could easily be rated with 5 stars.

I do not regret purchasing this book. Later, when I purchased another Romanian language course, complete with a tape to listen to, I realized that 'Romanian Made Nice & Easy!' was indeed a big help because, having read and studied the book, I was one step ahead of the basic course & recognized a lot of the Romanian words, phrases and some of the pronunciations already.

I would recommend 'Romanian Made Nice & Easy!' to everyone who is interested in learning the language; and to anyone who will be traveling to Romania in the future. It is a great guide for beginners; and an excellent guide for the price. Since it is offered at such a low price, you can't go wrong; and you won't regret you ordered it.

Note:
*Since most language courses are a bit pricy, this is a great tool to start off with until you decide to purchase the more expensive ones at a later date; this is what I did.*

OK, they do try to give me a clue to how the words sound when spoken by giving me a pseudo-phonetic hint. But many times, the hint would have me saying the words incorrectly. I know this because my wife is Romanian and I've tried to say a few of the phrases the way the hint implies ... only to be laughed at.

Teaching me to say the words incorrectly doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in the book. But I guess it was based on the language courses for the U.S. Foreign Service Personnel. It's just a good thing that many of the Romanians these government employees will face know English.

For example, to say "I'd like to eat," the book tells me to say "ahsh vree-AH sa ma-NUNK." Well, I'd be closer to how the Romanians say it if that last word had been "ma-NINK."

But overall, it's a half-way decent traveler's Romanian. And I can tell them I'm an American ... though, using the pronunciation in this book as a guide, I don't think they'll have any trouble guessing that I am.

This is a really good book to begin studying Romanian. As mentioned in other reviews for this book, I have noticed that some of the vocabulary is out of date; however, it is not too hard to adjust once I learn those words (it just seems to be a few words that are out of date). If given the choice, I would definitely buy it again; however, I think it should be expanded in a newer edition. It has a great pronunciation guide. I have learned French and Spanish and am working on learning other languages; of all the books I have looked at in foreign languages, this seems to have the best pronunciation guide. I look forward to using this series when I study other languages.

I found this book to be a little out of date when I went to Romania and the terms were old school

I have bought a small set of books to learn the Romanian language and this seems to be the least useful of them.

It's not a book that will teach you the language - it will only provide you phrases that will be useful if you want to spend some days in Romania and be minimally understood. If you really want to learn the language by yourself, it should be really a better idea to buy some method (I particularly like the one from Assimil, which has an option with audio from the lessons spoken by native Romanians), a Romanian grammar (the one from Christina Hoffman is very helpful) and a good dictionary. This one is just for tourists.

This is a pleasant little book to use in conjunction with other Romanian study. If I were to suggest an improvement, it would be for more and more frequent review questions.