Customer Reviews

Roots of the Russian Language: An Elementary Guide to Wordbuilding (NTC Russian Series) (English and Russian Edition)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

More than any other language I know, Russian is built upon roots. This book does a good job of presenting the most important roots of the Russian language, usually listing five or more different words formed from each root. Each new word is used in a sample phrase with English translation. The introduction discusses suffixes and prefixes (including prepositions that are used as prefixes). And, importantly for beginning students, all the Russian text is shown with accents!

This book of 450 different roots of the Russian language is the ultimate tool and guide to learning not only how to build your own words in conversation and in writing, but also (and I feel most importantly) in determining how to deconstruct words you pick up in reading and listening to better grasp their meaning.

Patrick could easily have stopped at simply providing the roots, as well as words built from those roots, but he also gives you sentences with the words in them as examples. Last but not least, he provides a handful of exercises for practice at the end of the book.

This book should be on the top shelf of every translator and/or student of the Russian language.

I first heard about this book from my college Russian teacher, who gave it a strong endorsement as a must-have for all serious students of Russian. I couldn't agree more. This book provides Russian language roots alphabetically and lists around 3-10, sometimes even more words that are derived from that particular root. Memorization of the root leads to a rapid expansion of vocabulary derived from that root, cutting the amount of time spent memorizing vocabulary down significantly. It also allows you to figure out words with great accuracy if you're reading a text and stumble across an unfamiliar word. I strongly reccomend this book for all those who seek to learn to speak Russian fluently for any reason, as well as linguists who will be studying Russian and other Slavic languages.

I know the title of this book alone sounds so boring it could put a tweaker to sleep, like a homework assignment in some graduate course at an Ivy League Russian grammar symposium, but it's really interesting for those of us trying to learn Russian. This is the only book I have ever seen that finally organizes groups of words by their roots, enabling a student to see the connections between words and concepts and even a fascinating glimpse into Russian etymology, or the history of words and their development. I think this book is absolutely essential for anyone trying to study Russian.

If you use it, it really will enable you to memorize whole goups of words much faster and help you guess at the meaning of words you don't know if you can pick out the roots of the unknown words. Since these are two of the biggest obstacles to learning Russian, you can see what a valuable book this is.

Many Russian textbooks are heavy-handed with grammar, and far too light on vocabulary. This is an excellent suppliment to any Russian course, or better yet, a way to improve your own wordpower in the Russian language. By building on common roots, wordpower is expanded rapidly, and the ability to understand words by identifying roots, just like is done in whatever your native language is, dramatically helps the learner to go from simple sentences to actual discourse.

I highly recommend this book to any student of Russian, from novice to master. You can never speak a language too well!

Russian is such a hard language to learn you need all the help you can get! This book assists with how Russian uses compound words and the more you understand suffixes and prefixes the more you can begin to understand the language.

Russian student? Reading Russian? And you keep running into words with component parts '' in them that you've already seen somewhere else, and think there's something you need to know?

Well, you're right. There is! There are a large number of Russian word-components that are recycled through all the vocabulary. This book gives the main prefixes, and then has a little chapter for each of the units of meaning, with each variant illustrated in a sample sentence, and the sentence is translated.

I find this book a great way to multiply my Russian vocabulary and increase my Russian reading speed.

Many foreign language books use lessons, practice, and short grammar sections to explain the concepts behind the language and the philology. Roots of the Russian Language: An Elementary Guide to Wordbuilding (NTC Russian Series) (English and Russian Edition) deviates from the traditional exposure via lessons and vocabulary sheets. Though I expected the layout to be so based in reference, I feel that getting my hands on the books really showed me how it is laid out. There is a foreword, a section concerning the component elements of Russian words, a list of the "most important" suffixes, and a list of prefixes. Each prefix, suffix and root has multiple examples and the examples used in a sentence. The prefixes are well explained, and variations of vowels and consonants are addressed. After the prefixes there are some four hundred and fifty roots to the Russian language, including around four or five words accompanying each root with each word used in a sentence off to the side. At the end of the book, there is an exercise and practice chapter to help students break down the suffixes, prefixes, and roots of words. After the Exercises there an Index of Words, so that Russian words can be looked up by the root according to the root's location in the book.

The roots are listed in alphabetical order (by the Cyrillic alphabet, naturally).

The books is a fantastic reference for any student interested in Slavic language studies, and nearly essential for those learning Russian at an intermediate level. It brings the vocabulary level quite above beginner and intermediate into the advanced range. It also builds confidence to approach giant Cyrillic words and be able to break them down into manageable parts, thus minimizing difficulty in pronunciation and the mental block of learning large, Slavic words.

Though this book does not follow the traditional styles I have seen in other foreign language books, it provides an organized reference with efficiency in mind.

I have yet to find another book sharing the resourcefulness of Roots of the Russian Language: An Elementary Guide to Wordbuilding (NTC Russian Series) (English and Russian Edition) . I would consider the reference invaluable to my own studies, and I have confidence that any true student of the Russian language would benefit from having this grand reference.

I ordered this book and I found it to be priceless word-building-wise. I've been studying Russian for the past six months with a native, but also on my own (since I only can attend class once a week). One thing that I found to be daunting was vocabulary learning. I bought Visual education Russian cards (which you also should get. I totally recommend them. Worth every penny. Russian Vocabulary Cards: Academic Study Card Set) but I was going crazy memorizing ALL the words separately. This books teaches the 'roots and stems' system and by it teaches you a way of inferring how words are built, hence you can memorize lots of words through plain logic. it certainly lessens the headache that is word learning, at least it did for me.

The author explains everything carefully etc. And every word comes with examples on how to use it.

However, I rated this book with 4 stars because I did not like the way it was printed. It's a bit smudged, so it's a little bit hard to read. Although it shows the words with accents (very important for begginers), the letters are, well, badly printed. Not that I cared too much about this. Like I said the book is amazing. THE ultimate tool for word leaning. But the printing? not so good. I decided to write a review because I honestly think that the publisher should know this and improve future editions. After all, this is a tool for language study and after a while, especially if you are a dedicated student, it becomes hard to read (sad, but true).

This book is great for anyone earning the Russian language. It shows the roots of all the Russian words and is very easy to understand.