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Romanian
Romanian, because of its closeness to other Romance languages, is relatively easy to learn for the student with some knowledge of French or Italian. This book provides a carefully graded series of lessons covering the vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar of Romanian. Many helpful examples and exercises are to be found throughout the course, which also includes a section specially compiled for the tourist. A word list and an English-Romanian vocabulary are also included.
428 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1970
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March 30, 2012
Occasionally picking up decades-old Teach Yourself volumes is worthwhile. For Romanian, the currently available TY course by Dennis Deletant and Yvonne Alexandrescu is quite decent for learning everyday spoken language, but going back to Seiver's 1953 Romanian textbook is helpful for learning the sort of language one meets in classic Romanian literature.
Thus I had a look at the 1970 edition of Teach Yourself Romanian. V. Stefanescu-Draganesti was a noted teacher of Romanian as a foreign language, while Martin Murrell was a British Council lecturer. Unfortunately, this book does no more than teach the spoken language like the currently available edition by Deletant and Alexandrescu, but fails miserably. In spite of over 400 pages, Stefanescu-Draganesti and Murrell don't teach more than the very basics of Romanian. The authors also can't seem to decide whether they want to write as a dialogue-based course or a reference grammar These 400 pages are unusually densely typeset, making it hard to locate useful information, so it doesn't work well as a reference grammar. And as a dialogue-based course, you have to deal with dialogues like this (which I've translated from Romanian):
P: I'm worried, Ana. I went shopping and got tripped up by numbers. I saw that I cannot count in Romanian and I've decided to learn how to count. Help me!
A: I'll help. Please, count from one to ten, because you know that.
P: Oh, yes, I know that. One, two, three, four, five, six seven, eight, nine, ten.
A: Very good. Now you say eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty.
P: Wait a second, let me write those down. Thanks. It's not hard, but it's not easier either.
Besides the fact that it's unlikely for a learner to be able to produce such complicated sentences before he learns basic numbers, this kind of conversation is unlikely to come up between the learner and locals. Want to learn useful everyday things like going to the post office or bank, visiting a doctor or searching for a flat? This course isn't going to be much help.
Sure, it's possible that someone could learn something from this textbook, but the competition is a much better choice.
Thus I had a look at the 1970 edition of Teach Yourself Romanian. V. Stefanescu-Draganesti was a noted teacher of Romanian as a foreign language, while Martin Murrell was a British Council lecturer. Unfortunately, this book does no more than teach the spoken language like the currently available edition by Deletant and Alexandrescu, but fails miserably. In spite of over 400 pages, Stefanescu-Draganesti and Murrell don't teach more than the very basics of Romanian. The authors also can't seem to decide whether they want to write as a dialogue-based course or a reference grammar These 400 pages are unusually densely typeset, making it hard to locate useful information, so it doesn't work well as a reference grammar. And as a dialogue-based course, you have to deal with dialogues like this (which I've translated from Romanian):
P: I'm worried, Ana. I went shopping and got tripped up by numbers. I saw that I cannot count in Romanian and I've decided to learn how to count. Help me!
A: I'll help. Please, count from one to ten, because you know that.
P: Oh, yes, I know that. One, two, three, four, five, six seven, eight, nine, ten.
A: Very good. Now you say eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty.
P: Wait a second, let me write those down. Thanks. It's not hard, but it's not easier either.
Besides the fact that it's unlikely for a learner to be able to produce such complicated sentences before he learns basic numbers, this kind of conversation is unlikely to come up between the learner and locals. Want to learn useful everyday things like going to the post office or bank, visiting a doctor or searching for a flat? This course isn't going to be much help.
Sure, it's possible that someone could learn something from this textbook, but the competition is a much better choice.
Displaying 1 of 1 review