Modern Romanian

by James E. Augerot

book

330 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1983

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

MODERN ROMANIAN by James E. Augerot and Florin D. Popescu, a textbook for classroom use, was first published by the University of Washington Press in 1971. Slavica reprinted it in 1983 as a photocopy of the original with two pages of corrections.

As a part-time resident of Cluj-Napoca and fan of Romanian, I've examined nearly every textbook of the language ever published for speakers of English. Unfortunately the work of Augerot and Popescu is at the very bottom of the rankings. Each chapter, right from the very beginning, consists of an enormous number of stock phrases followed by exercises. But though the exercises assume some knowledge of Romanian grammar, such as how to conjugate verbs, the grammar behind the phrases is never given. This means that the lecturer is given the responsibility of explaining grammar, and the student cannot use the textbook as a reference when doing exercises at home.

While some classic Romanian literature is found towards the end of the book, far too many of the readings are dull Communist-era material, some of it quite nationalist (i.e. hyping a relationship between Romania and Ancient Rome). On the other hand, the readings are nicely glossed, meaning that the student of Romanian desperate for material might find the book useful, though certainly not as a primary textbook.

Finally, the book is horribly typeset, apparently on an early electronic system with some characters having to be written in by hand. One unfortunately expects that from Slavica publications, and it is a pity that the corrections could not be integrated into a new setting of the book, but had to be listed as a table of errata.

All in all, this is not a textbook I can recommend. If you have no prior experience with Romanian, Delatant's Teach Yourself Romanian is a good place to start. Once you've mastered the very basics and are looking for more rigorous material, Nandris' Colloquial Rumanian and Seiver's Introduction to Romanian are ideal places to go further.