Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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31 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
great stickers, but no stress marks, August 10, 1999
By A Customer
Unfortunatley, although this book is good for visual learners who only intend to read Russian, it is actually a very bad book for anyone who wants to speak the language at any point. The reason is (and I found this out the hard way) that there are absolutely NO indications of word stress or accent marks in the book. In russian, each word has only one, very strong stress point. If you leave out the stress or misstress a word, most Russians will not understand you. Believe me, it's true. Don't bother with this book. If they reprint it with stress marks, it will be worth the money.
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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good supplemental study tool., August 30, 2002
For anyone who wants to begin learning Russian, I wouldn't recommend relying on this book exclusively - you've got to have some language tapes or other means of aural study - but it makes for a nice compliment to more traditional texts. Of course, the "10 minutes a day" concept is silly. However, when study time comes around,I find myself turning to this book more than any other, especially when I only have a little time to study or when I've had a particularly draining day and don't feel up to more serious endeavors. The stickers are great, and I've found the pronunciations to be pretty accurate. It is a definite flaw that they don't show you the stressed vowels, but the individual pronunciations do account for the differences between stressed and unstressed vowels. On its own, this book isn't going to teach you Russian, but it is a fun and accessible supplemental study tool.
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21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Don't, March 7, 2003
By A Customer
If there were a way to put zero stars and still post a review, this book wouldn't have even gotten one.
Over time I have aquired 6 languages. This book is the worst language book I have ever seen.
1. It does not provide accent marks, so....so why bother even having it? You will have to get another book to learn how to pronounce the words...so...again, why bother with this?
2. It as a cool idea to learn Russian in 10 minutes a day (with this book, 10 minutes a day for the next 15 years still wouldn't teach you to do anything but to go around hoping to find magic vocabulary stickers.)
It does not provide, cogent explanations, or examples for syntax and grammar points. There is some vocabulary, but without real explanations of how to use the language, the book is pointless.
3. I recommend a travel phrasebook if that is all you want. Get a real text, Penguin's course isn't bad, or the "Ultimate Russian: Basic-Intermediate (Living Language Ultimate. Basic-Intermediate Series (Manual & Cassettes)) Nancy Novak / Crown Audio Cassettes / April 1998" if you really want learn, aquire, and use Russian.
4. "10-minutes.." is too big to carry around, too vapid for any real learning, and too disorganised to make any progress on any single topic.
5. The book is snake oil. I doubt the author had any intention of really trying to be usefull. It was easy to write, cheap to print, a quick money maker for a lazy author.
Get something else.
San Antonio physician.
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