Customer Reviews

A Thematic Dictionary of Modern Persian

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
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First of all don't get your hopes up. This book is a big list of words organized loosely into several thematic chapters: crime, politics, trade, military, health, law, etc. Each chapter is about ten or twenty pages. And the format is sparse. Here is the english term, here is a phonetic transliteration of the Persian, here is the Persian in traditional script. No examples, no text other than the words. It's a giant set of lists, period. Each chapter is organized alphabetically by the Persian. However there is an alphabetic index at the back that lists the page where every English term is found. The book is certainly convenient and it's very nice to have everything for certain topical areas "right there". But I'm not sure if it's $135 worth of convenient. For this price one could actually afford to buy three or four specialized dictionaries. I would probably buy it again. Just wanted everyone to know what they were getting into though.

The book is not cheap, but it has been extremely helpful to me. This is not a "starter" dictionary, nor should it be the only Persian-Farsi dictionary in your collection. It is very useful when you know what subject you need to research, and it supplements my other dictionaries quite well. This dictionary contains useful slang, and some other uncommon words not found in other resources.

This book has a few key points that actually do make it worth the price - I watched on and off for a year and the cheapest I ever saw was $119. I use this in conjunction with the Combined New Persian-English and English-Persian Dictionary, by Manoochehr Aryanpur-Kashani and Abbad Aryanpur-Kashani, by Mazda Publishing. These are the two best dictionaries I've found so far.

The good:

- The Thematic Dictionary lists the Farsi text as well as transliterated pronunciations in English rather than a crazy linguistic phonics system that's about as complicated as the Farsi alphabet itself. It's amazing how difficult that is to find. Personally, I like to guess on the pronunciation, but also to check and see if I'm right. This book lets me confirm or correct as needed.

- It lists the stems of irregular verbs right next to the verb itself.

- It does list synonyms (in English) and slang.

The first two I would call invaluable for anyone looking to learn Farsi. As all things do, however, it does have its flaws:

- Everything's listed alphabetically by the Farsi alphabet, so the index of English words is a must. It gets annoying quickly when you're looking up more than a few words at once. It's still worth it, and (for me, at least) it's incentive to remember the vocab you're looking up.

- Trying to look up a word in Farsi when you don't know what it means is pretty much impossible with this book, since you'd both have to know what category it falls into and hope it's the same as the word listed, since synonyms are of course an issue. So if you're serious about learning the language, you do need a regular dictionary as well.

I cannot recommend this dictionary enough. It is simply fabulous in the breadth of material covered, conveniently arranged into well thought out, VERY comprehensive, long lists of related items. Gone are the days of digging through a normal Persian dictionary looking up political words like "politician", "senate", "judge", "election", all the while flipping back and forth through the entire book trying to find just those four words. Now they will all be under one subject heading; those and many more like them. Turner did a great job with the index as well which I'm always using to find words floating around in my head. It is extremely easy to locate the word I want, all the BS has been cut out to streamline the ability to get information wanted quickly! Turner clearly put a lot of time and thinking into making this because seldom do I not find an obscure word that I'm looking for. Yes it is a little pricey, but the little extra you spend=a lot less frustration and anxiety trying to find the entries you want. The cherry on top is the sleek feel of the book itself, a nice smooth texture and sturdy binding totally indulge the book fetish side of me.

I have been looking for a dictionary like this! The best part is, it is one of the few dictionaries that not only gives the word in Persian script but gives the English phonetic pronunciation. I've bought some other dictionaries and they were not bad but were missing a lot of key words. I'm speaking to my son only in Persian and this book is my bible! There were so many words that even my own parents (who grew up in Iran and immigrated 30 yrs ago to the US) did not know but this book had practically every word I've needed. Definitely worth the money!

This is by the best learners' Farsi vocabulary reference I've found in a few years' searching, full of word lists pertaining to almost every specialty, occasion, function, along with lots of illustrative sentences. Also helpful is the combination Farsi script/english transliteration, and the section on modern slang. Particularly helpful if one is writing thematic essays, or memorizing vocabulary. This is far from just a collection of words, it's almost got a storyline. The only drawbacks, as others have mentioned here, are the too-high price (seems a paperback is in the works), and the size (i.e., not easily portable). I wish something similar existed for Arabic.

Dear Amazon.com Users!
I would like to share my opinion on the Thematic Dictionary of Modern Persian. I live Budapest, in the heart of Europe and I like learning languages. I can speak English, Spanish, and French and Persian as well. This Dictionary written by Colin Turner is a great book, I like it a lot. When I saw it for the first on Amazon.com, I could not decide whether to buy it or not as I had not seen it before and I did not know anything about it. As I am a language teacher, I can see which books, dictionaries are really valuable. I saw some "bad" reviews on this book, so I decided not to buy it. But as I needed a Thematic Dictionary, I have changed my mind and I have bought it. It was a great idea and Amazon.com was the best companion for me in the selling, delivery process, so I am totally satisfied with my purchase! If somebody would like to deepen his or her knowledge of Persian, this book will be very very very very helpful! I grant it. Its paper is made of fine paper material, it is also very valuable and the book itself is also very nice, I mean the quality, the quantity of the words (the content is perfect, everybody can learn from it a lot).

To summarize it shortly: THIS BOOK IS PERFECT FOR LANGUAGE LEARNERS! Not just a list of words!!!
BR. T.