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Rating: 
Summary: not perfect, but a good resource for beginners
Review: As a student of Persian language and literature, I had some serious issues with this book. The written Persian component to the words/phrases is full of spelling mistakes. The (colloquial) pronunciation is not always consistent with itself, nor always correct, and a few of the words/phrases are a bit quaint. The book provides a great introduction to the grammar of Persian, but its explanation of Arabic plurals is misleading.
That being said, this book offers lots of great vocabulary, as well as many useful phrases that are, for the most part, idiomatically correct and commonly used. This book would prove indispensible to any traveller, and it is a good overall guide to Persian language and culture. I would, however, caution serious students of Persian not to rely too much on this book.
Rating: 
Summary: not perfect - but close
Review: Even though I've "advanced" through most of the vocabulary and grammar in this guide, I use this as a supplement to my other Persian-English dictionaries because of the handy explanations of grammatical rules. The dictionary in the back is extremely useful, with both an English to Persian section and a section with the phonetic pronounciation of words (in Latin script) for English speakers to easily determine the meaning of (and learn to spell in Persian at the same time!). Very useful for travel and for students of the language who want a small resource guide.
Rating:
Summary: ketabe khub!
Review: I liked this book a lot. I took a college-level Farsi class and found this was more helpful than any of our textbooks in our conversations. I thought the dictionary in the back was also helpful because I could follow the logic. For example, in my full dictionary, I couldn't find "pet" or "pets." This book explained that dogs especially aren't commonly kept as pets, which was interesting.I did not like the English transliterations. I thought they were distracting. I was also learning to read and write Farsi, so I wanted to look at the print and see words, as opposed to seeing something that needed translating. Although it may have provided a good transition for someone who didn't know the alphabet, it was frustrating for me.
Rating:
Summary: Best book for learning new Persian vocabulary words!
Review: Me and my wife where looking to find a good book for her to learn Farsi, and we found one in a bookshop in Manhatan last week, it is well designed, have almost everything that a person who wants to travel to Iran needs to read, in it. And best of all, it is pretty cheap. I have alreay recomend it to many of my friends and will recomend it to people who want to learn Farsi using our Farsi Learning Project (www.panjere.net/iran/language/learn/) that we will start on September 2001.
Rating: 
Summary: Farsi Phrasebook did not meet my expectations.
Review: Sorry, but I was very disappointed in this phrasebook. Thare are only 25 topics discussed. So many of the very basic conversation elements are skipped over. There are notes on finance and banking discussion. But I was interested in easy talk. This book needed about another 25 more topics on easy converation.
Rating:
Summary: Great for beginners
Review: This is a great little book for beginners. Unlike many phrase books or even grammar books, it does not simply romanize the phrases, but also gives the text in the native alphabet as well. It includes basic grammar lessons, sentence structure (farsi is an S-O-V language), and 2 glossaries (English and Farsi). The phrases and vocabulary sections are well-designed because they focus on the sorts of dialogues that occur when people are just getting to know one another socially and move on to the needs of travelers. Additionally, the book is interspersed with various cultural notes and also contains some poetry by the famous author Omar Khayyam in parallel text (Farsi, Romanized Farsi, and English). In my opinion, this cheap little book is packed with more than enough information and vocab for someone in their first 1 - 2 years of studying the language and is a far greater value than most of its competitors.
Rating:
Summary: Great for beginners
Review: This is a great little book for beginners. Unlike many phrase books or even grammar books, it does not simply romanize the phrases, but also gives the text in the native alphabet as well. It includes basic grammar lessons, sentence structure (farsi is an S-O-V language), and 2 glossaries (English and Farsi). The phrases and vocabulary sections are well-designed because they focus on the sorts of dialogues that occur when people are just getting to know one another socially and move on to the needs of travelers. Additionally, the book is interspersed with various cultural notes and also contains some poetry by the famous author Omar Khayyam in parallel text (Farsi, Romanized Farsi, and English). In my opinion, this cheap little book is packed with more than enough information and vocab for someone in their first 1 - 2 years of studying the language and is a far greater value than most of its competitors.
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