Lonely Planet Farsi Persian Phrasebook :: Education by Design Store

Customer Reviews

The most Farsi you'll get for your money

2007-11-06
This short book is packed with information and is unusually comprehensive for a travel phrasebook. After lamenting the lack of good Persian-English dictionaries on the market, the back pages of this offer a large range of words with both phonetic guides and Persian script. I was thrilled to see, as an astronomer, that there were two and a half pages of astronomy phrases, including "Is that Orion? It's the other way in the Southern Hemisphere" and translations of the words for UFO, nebula, universe, and space exploration. That section alone made it worth the buy for me.

Aside from obvious fun stuff, though, the book has short (but clear) sections on pronunciation and grammar, and have many phrases that are critical when traveling in a foreign country. Although it's not the only book you'd buy if trying to learn Persian, it is by far the most you will get per dollar spent. Good job, Lonely Planet.

surprisingly good

2007-05-10
Although this is a mini-sized paperback that could easily fit into your shirt pocket, it's remarkably useful.

Each page typically has three columns: the leftmost is the English, the middle is the Farsi in romanized letters, and the right column is the Farsi in Arabic script. But it's not merely a phrasebook: there are paragraphs scattered throughout to relieve the monotony.

For example, there are many, many notes on culture and linguistic usage. Considering how much information this book contains, it's astonishing it's so small. If the pages were made bigger, it could conceivably serve serve as a freshman-level text!

Really after studying from this I was impressed by how handy I became in Farsi, although in all honesty this is likely ascribable neither to my perspicacity nor the boon of this volume, but simply to the fact that Farsi is Indo-European, and so much of its grammar and sensibilities are readily apprehended by a Westerner.

But this book was a major help. When I reflect on how little it cost me versus how much use I got out of it, Lonely Planet's "Farsi Phrasebook" may have been one of the most profitable purchases of my life.

Excellent value and quite unpretentious

2007-01-10
An excellent little work, mainly through the obvious teamwork of author and editors in producing it to what must be a proven template by this publisher. I find I get endless and informative entertainment just by dipping into it. And you can do this on day one of learning Farsi, and just as enjoyably and profitably once your studies have advanced. Even the short dictionary section is very good. This is one Farsi language resource book that won't disappoint you.

Lonely Planet Farsi (Persian) Phrasebook

2006-11-10
A little bit of everything Persian. This would be a good suppliment to any language learning program and a "must have" for the person traveling to any of the Persian (Farsi) speaking countries. A very interesting compact book snd an excellent value.

Handy Travel Farsi Book

2006-03-14
this was invaluable for my last trip to Iran... small, easy to use.

VERY INFORMATIVE AND EDUCATING.....the language of Iran

2005-02-21
We'll hike up the masir e kuh and drop in at the local to sip aromatic chayi. Then, under the cool night skies and the full muh above, we'll take it in turns to recite she'r, and discuss the hasti: bale, amma...bale, hatman! 'yes, but...yes, sure!' From mystics to museums, barbers to bazaars, and art to archaeology, jump into the event with this phrasebook...

In This Guide:

Clear pronunciation guide for the scrupulous speaker.
Action-packed vocabulary for outdoor devotees.
Classical Persian poetry for that inspirational moment.
Savouries and sweets to summon up a feast.
Language tips for getting the perfect bargain.
Comprehensive two-way dictionary.

not perfect, but a good resource for beginners

2005-01-17
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.

ketabe khub!

2003-10-09
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.

Great for beginners 2003-06-20
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.

not perfect - but close 2002-09-21
Great description of grammar (Persian and English, by the way), and the right number of regular and irregular verbs are given in table form so you can see the differences easily. Also they have some excellent recommendations for how to get started with speaking a new language, which I only wish could be taught to more kids at school level. Two things let this book down just slightly: (i) they drop the "spelt-out-in-words" translations showing the Persian word order a little too early in the book, and (ii) the dictionary at the back frustratingly omits quite a few of the words encountered in the course of the book. Recommended, but if they write a second edition and fix up a few of these things then it will be just about perfect !