No comments about Language And Travel Guide to Romania.

5 comments about Romanian Grammar (Hippocrene Language Studies).

1. Another silly language/grammar book... Who can make good use of it? Who wrote that?



2. I am using this booklet to help me study Romanian.
   Grammar is explained but, as a book for learning, it lacks a lot of text. I blame that on the publisher as well as another point of criticism: Romania had another spelling reform. Time to revise, Hippocrene!!
   For all the work done on this special language a 'well done' to Christina.



3. Grammar teachers were never known for their ability to communicate intelligently. So I wasn't expecting much. But actually this book is very useful for an intermediate Romanian language student such as myelf. I recommend it ...not that you have a lot of other choices in the US marketplace. -Christian



4. This book is very good accompanied with a more basic Romanian Learning book like: Teach Yourself Romanian Complete Course Audiopackage. It's definetly not a stand-alone learning tool.
   It has some very useful hints/tips for helping you learn, but overall it's more of a reference guide where you can easily look up verb conjugations and other grammar structures.



5. I have bought a small number of books to learn Romanian recently. Some are really useful, others won't help much.
   
   My conclusion is: buy a good full course book (the one from Assimil is great, and has an option with audio from the lessons spoken by native Romanians), this grammar, a good dictionary, and you will have everything needed to start learning Romanian by yourself.

5 comments about Colloquial Romanian: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series (Book Only)).

1. While there are not many books on the market to learn Romanian, Colloquial Romanian is one of the better ones. Grammar is easily explained, and one can learn much from the dialoques. New grammar is introduced inside the dialogues, so that one can understand the grammar easier. This is great book; however, one the best tools to learn a lanague is Pimsleur. I highly recommend Pimsleur language courses.



2. I was so excited to get this book and start on the task of learning some Romanian. However, I found it to be very unhelpful. There is almost no guidance on the tapes for pronounciation. The book does provide useful vocabulary and grammar lessons, but what good are they if no one will understand you when you speak?



3. Most of the Romanian language books I've purchased (college textbooks and travel guides) focus on the things you might need as a tourist. These books also favor a formal form of speech that you seldom hear when speaking with the average Romanian (though they'll certainly understand the formal version). When I saw the title of this book, I thought it might emphasize "conversational" Romanian, the kind friends might use. The fact that it didn't was a bit disappointing. Still, it is a good introduction to the language and will help me catch a train, stay at a hotel, find my way around, go shopping, or eat at a restaurant ... all very valuable lessons.



4. The book comprises a lot of useful vocabulary and grammar information. However, the authors should have spent time by adding the pronunciation of every word. They do explain how every letter is pronunced at the beginning of the book. Yet it is very difficult for a beginner to have to go back and remind himself the sound of every other letter in a word.



5. It is not often that, when a new edition of language course is published, it is actually much worse than the previous one. Unfortunately, this course is one of those exceptions. I'll briefly outline why you'd be much better off with the earlier edition of Colloquial Romanian by the same author.
   
   1. Help with pronunciation. In Romanian, any syllable of a word can be stressed. In almost all Romanian courses I've seen, this syllable is market to help the learner get the pronunciation right. It was marked in the earlier edition of Colloquial Romanian but for some strange reason it has been droppen in this edition.
   
   2. Vocabulary lists. In any good language course, each new chapter contains a vocabulary lists of all the new words in that chapter. That was the case in the previous edition, but not so in this one. There are still vocabulary lists in each chapter, but they are very short and arbitary.
   
   3. Grammar. In the earlier edition of Colloquial Romanian, the Romanian grammar was described in a detailed yet very user-friendly way. In the new edition, there aren't many explanations and they are likely to be confusing for the beginner.
   
   In short, this book is more mysterious than any detective store. I have no idea why the author decided to downgrade his own book to this extent. The one improvement made is that the conversations are more up to date and relevant in this course. If the author would have made those changes but kept the pronunciation help, stuck to complete vocabulary lists and maintained the same grammar explanations, this would have been the best Romanian course on the market. Now, it's not only a rather useless course, it's a course that's much worse than its own previous edition.

1 comments about Eastern European 12 Language Phrasebook (Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Estonian, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovenian and Ukrainian)(Phrasebooks S.).

1. This guidebook is a handy, compact reference for simple survival and simple courtesy-based conversation. It is suited for the traveler who intends to visit the countries that feature these 12 languages, but not for the student who is trying to learn one particular language. Alternatively, the book will serve well the student of a language who needs a quick reference for simple phrases, should he stumble.
   
   The book features simple greetings and situational phrases, such as at the airport or the restaurant, along with a brief history of each language. It also has a section devoted to telling time, which I found lacking, since it did not cover all the times of the day (just the times within 9 o'clock, and how to say "noon," "afternoon," and "evening," for example). One of the book's strengths is its phonetic pronunciations for each translated phrase. Although I found some pronunciations were incorrect (in the Lithuanian section), it will help you in a bind.

3 comments about Berlitz Romanian: Phrase Book & dictionary (Berlitz Phrase Book).

1. This book may be helpful to the casual tourist, but it is NOT a dictionary. If you're trying to look up words, skip this altogether.



2. I got the book within several days and it was in excellent condition. I was very happy with it and used it a lot while in Romania. Romanian nationals were even impressed with the book!



3. The ROMANIAN PHRASE BOOK & DICTIONARY from Berlitz is a standard entry in this line from the publisher. It features phrases for every situation a tourist could imagine themselves in, colour-coded for quick access, with both the Romanian text and a phonetic transcription for English speakers. At the end one can find a small dictionary, and a brief grammar. Romanian is an exceedingly easy language, and someone with previous knowledge of a Romance language could pick it up in two weeks, but if for whatever reason you'll be dependent on a phrase book during your time there, this is certainly the best phrase book around.
   
   However, the phrase book does have some weaknesses. The information on Romanian culture often discusses matters limited to one particular region of this very diverse country without warning the reader that the words or concepts discussed aren't applicable for other parts of the country. The phonetic transcription is for speakers of British English, and were an American to unwittingly read from the transcription, being understood may be difficult. Editions of the book prior to the 2006 inexplicably continued to use the Communist-era orthography long after it was revised by a 1993 language reform. Finally, there are a few misprints, though I should think that these are not serious enough to deter communication.
   
   Nonetheless, in spite of these quirks the Berlitz is the phrase book to get for Romanian--certainly avoid at all costs the Hippocrene ones.

5 comments about Romanian-English, English-Romanian Dictionary (Hippocrene Standard Dictionary).

1. One of the letters in the Romanian alphabet is an "a" with a "^" over it. But this letter does not appear in this dictionary, and consequentially every word in which this letter appears is missing! Imagine a dictionary that is missing the letter "j" and every word that has the letter "j" in it.



2. Joe,

   There was an orthographic change in Romanian made by the Romanian Academy, I believe in the early 1990s, reverting to a system used before the communist takeover, if I'm not mistaken.

   The short answer is that "a" with the circumflex (^) over it is exactly the same letter/sound as "i" with the circumflex over it. (I don't have Miroiu's dictionary in front of me, but I'm guessing it uses the latter. Many communist-era texts, and some written by communist-educated emigres--not to mention some pre-20th century writings--do likewise.)

   For example, the word for "bread" will look like (as best an ASCII keyboard permits) "pa^ine" as well as "pi^ine". The change to "a^" does not affect the first letter of words that start with "i^", as in the word "i^nta^lnire / i^nti^lnire" or the preposition "i^n". The "a^" is now the orthographic rule taught in schools.

   As you learn Romanian, you'll get used to reading both, because you'll probably end up reading material from different historical periods. Basically, the shifts back and forth have to do with an enduring and rather politicized geographic-cultural debate over Romania's relationship to Latin, Rome and the West in general versus Slavic influences and the East.

   Frank




3. If your command of either one of thesse languages is above second grade do not bother to buy or even borrow this dictionary. It seems as if the author glanced quickly over the Andrei Bantas dictionary (the real one to be treasured) and put overnight a real cheap and dim paperback.



4. Hippocrene's ROMANIAN-ENGLISH ENGLISH-ROMANIAN DICTIONARY, compiled by Mihai Miroiu is another shoddy offering from a company whose dictionaries are among the worst in the English-speaking world. All the downsides of a Hippocrene dictionary are here. The typesetting is poor, it was seemingly done in a word-processor and uses ugly standard computer fonts (and a conspicuous lack of italics), and to boot a good inch of the bottom of each page before the page number is empty. The dictionary is a simple one-to-one translation of each word, there's no definition of words when they occur in idiomatic contexts. And for a dictionary with so few definitions, it is seized too large for the pocket and is overpriced.
   
   Then there's some dictionary-specific quirks. Though Miroiu's dictionary was first published in 1996, it uses the pre-1993 (Communist-era) orthography that has long been abandoned by the Romanian public. Of course, anyone who works with Romanian will eventually read texts using the old orthography, but it's important for students to know about the various systems, and Miroiu doesn't even mention the existence of a new orthography. And though Hippocrene is an American publisher, the pronunciation of English words is given according to the Received Pronunciation, not General American.
   
   If you are an English-speaker learning Romanian, you'll need to obtain a dictionary from a Romanian publisher, since there's nothing too grand from English-language presses. Try the Theora dictionaries, which are much more useful and polished. There are also so-called "orthographical dictionaries" which are vital for students, as while they don't contain definitions, they show the formation of the genitive and the plural for nouns and the conjugation patterns of verbs. Hippocrene is a publisher that usually disappoints, and this dictionary is no exception.



5. Probably the best thing you'll get for this price in Amazon, which does not mean it's good. In fact it's very poor. I'll probably follow the suggestions I've been reading everywhere: Romanian dictionaries should be bought from Romanian editors.
   
   But since I had no English-Romanian/Romanian-English dictionary and this one's not too expensive, then it's ok.

5 comments about Romanian: Learn to Speak and Understand Romanian with Pimsleur Language Programs (Simon & Schuster's Pimsleur).

1. Wonderful, learning to speak Romanian just for fun. Even my 4 and 6 year olds are getting into it. I recommend Romanian (or another language by Pimsleur) as it seems to be a latin based language, I had years of Spanish in school, i can see the similarities there too. If you go to their website, you can hear the first chapter online. Buy from amazon if you can, it's the cheapest, trust me, i looked. Buna Ziua



2. Agree with most other reviewers here in that this program is too basic to justify the cost. If you've never heard Romanian or have absolutely no way to learn anything with audio, this would be good. However, it doesn't give you a wide enough range of phrases or understanding. At the end of this you basically know how to do only a few things:
   
   - ask where a street is
   - know how to say you want to eat, drink, or buy something
   - ask whether you understand english or romanian, and whether you are romanian or american
   - ask what time it is
   
   All this in 10 lessons is quite weak. However, it does make you learn what they give you well.
   
   I would have liked to seen a wider range of items and more practical phrases rather than spending so much time on saying you want to eat something. I was hoping to use this to prepare for a trip to Romania, but the phrases just aren't good enough.
   
   If this is all you can get a library, it's probably a good thing to pick up. However, if you're spending this money, I'd buy a better product.



3. I found the CD very helpful in learning to speak in phrases (instead of word-by-word, making me sound like a first grader). Many of the practice phrases run the syllables of separate words together much the same as native speakers do.
   
   I have only two problems. First, it's only an introductory level program. I wish there was a follow-on volume 2 to this language program. Now that I know how to catch a taxi or stumble around in a restaurant, I'd like to know how to talk to real people ... you know, converse with someone of whom I'm not asking directions.
   
   Second, many times I had to replay a phrase over and over again, trying to catch what they were saying. The accompanying manual (really, little more than a dozen-page brochure) is practically useless since it doesn't correspond to the CD very well (but on the other hand, I suppose it is trying to help me learn to speak, not read, Romanian). But when I can't make out what they're speaking, a little bit of written help in the form of the words being spoken would be nice. Many times they'd spend forever repeating a simple-to-catch phrase ("good morning") ... then breeze through a more difficult phrase without a single repetition ("I'd like something to eat") and without the phrase being spelled out in the accompanying brochure.
   
   But overall, this was more of the way ordinary Romanians speak and less of the textbook Romanian I've found elsewhere. When they come out with the next volume, I'll be sure to buy it too.



4. I've become a big fan of the Pimsleur Method. Of four language important language skills, (1) Listening, (2) Speaking, (3) Reading, and (4) Writing, the Pimsleur Method's conversational approach concentrates almost exclusively on Listening and Speaking. This is perfect for me as I hope to beginning communicating right away with native speakers, and take up reading and writing later on.
   
   I mainly listen to the CDs as I'm driving. I've tried some other popular methods which require a computer. I prefer Pimsleur as I'm trying to spend less time staring at my computer screen.



5. The Tricky Parts Are:
   
   although by American standards, Romanian is spoken by a comparatively small group in a distinct geographic region, yet, like American English, there are WIDE divergences in pronunciation, and especially grammar and vocabulary. Think British or Australian English vocabulary vs. American, and India pronunciation vs. Savannah South. It's OK, and it helps, but if like me you end up there, you could end up saying something pretty embarassing. Fortunately, the Romanians have a sense of humor.

5 comments about Teach Yourself Romanian Complete Course Audiopackage.

1. I thought this course was overall pretty good. I took so much time to keep listening over and over again! It was very challenging to learn; however, learning any language is difficult.



2. When I first started learning Romanian on my own, I thought this book was very useful, and I'd still say it is if you just want to memorize a bunch of phrases without learning why they're constructed the way they are or how to contruct original sentences. But after taking two years of college Romanian, I'm horrified by this book's lack of grammar explanation (Romanian grammar is quite complex and requires clear explanations for English speakers). The book helps you memorize common sentences, but in fails to prepare you to speak Romanian outside of a script. Also, there are so many typos I want to scream. Typos in the English text, in the Romanian text, in the dialogues, even in the exercise answer keys. I can't recommend it.



3. This teaching method is not very user friendly - it focuses on vocabulary and verb tenses rather than conversation. I much prefer the Pimsleur method.



4. Well, I started this self-learning course in Rumanian and I am hooked form the begining, but trapped and cannot go through at the 5th lesson, when it comes to speak about the Rumanian conjugation in Present Simple. There is no proper method for memorizing this four kind of verbs according to their ending and as the dialogues and the book is going through the estimated learning of the present to present you the other tenses, I am trapped asnd cannot pass that chapter. What should I do? I have reviewerd other chapters forward and I have observed that there is a good way for explaining the other tenses, but not the main one, the Present!



5. When I decided to learn a little bit about Romanian, I had a hard time finding good resources. I was very apprenhensive about getting this book because I've used other books in the "Teach Yourself" series, and they are for the most part very mediocre. And most of them don't even teach the language in a logical order.
   
   This book, however, does teach Romanian in a logical manner. (If you're wondering what I mean by logical order, here's why: I have "Teach Yourself Hindi," and it's extremely hard to learn the language because it teaches things at random.)
   
   I would recommend using this book with "Romanian Dictionary & Phrasebook" by Mihai Miroiu. You should also practice your pronunciation with a native speaker.
   
   Brandon Simpson

5 comments about Romanian English, English Romanian: Dictionary & Phrasebook (Hippocrene Dictionary and Phrasebooks).

1. After living several years in Romania and studying the language and doing my best to get by each day, I have waded through many Romanian language texts and found most to be cumbersome and trying at the very best. I have encountered a number that were not written by native speakers of Romanian and thus contained numerous grammatical and spelling mistakes which could badly mislead an unsuspecting beginner. Most of the dictionaries I have seen are written for a speaker of Romanian who is studying English rather than vice versa and this makes a big difference when it comes to interpreting the definitions given. Many dictionaries are full of terms that are not applicable to everyday conversation and activity but were added just to impress the buyer with the broad scope (however irrelevant)of the text.
   
   I cannot comment on how easy to understand the grammar and pronounciation guides are in this particular book because I found this book only after I already had a thorough understanding of those two things. I can say, however, that the phrases in this book are very accurate and very natural to Romanian conversation and will come in handy to any traveller whether you are in Romania for business or pleasure. I have shown this book to my Romanian friends for further confirmation and they have agreed with me in full. I still refer to this book myself from time to time when I am writing emails or letters and can't think of exactly the right way to put something. The dictionary may be small, but I think it is more than enough to provide an adequate beginner's vocabulary which you can build on as you learn more. For serious study of the language, this book is only a basic introduction and can never take the place of a real live instructor. But if you just want to know the basics before you step off the plane in Otopeni, I advise you to pick up a copy of this one.
   
   But a couple more words of advice if you are planning a trip to Romania: Do NOT trust guide books or cab drivers. ;)



2. If you're looking for a comprehensive English-Romanian dictionary, look no further! This is one.
   
   However, if you're a little more picky, and you actually want to be able find the translations for common words, you might want to look elsewhere. This book is sorely lacking.



3. Although it may seem funny, I bought this book to improve my English (I am a native speaker of Romanian) and found it helpful. However, if you want more than elementary Romanian I would suggest to buy some English-Romanian/ Romanian-English dictionaries, phrase books, and grammar books published in Romania which are far more complete and accurate (there are now many Romanian online bookstores, just google "editura").



4. I started using this dictionary believing it to be a simple and straightforward way of learning some simple words in Romanian.
   
   However, having learned a number of nouns I then discovered that many of them were old words, no longer used. If you want to learn Romanian that most Romanians will understand then don't use this book.
   
   Nu bine!



5. This was the only book we took on a recent visit to Romania. We thought that it would work very well as it seemed comprehensive and slim for travel. When we actually tried to use it everyday it was better than nothing but practically useless. Many of the words that should have been in the translation part could only be found in the phrasebook part. Not at all useful when struggling to put a sentence together. This happened so often that we just left it behind in the hotel rather than continue on with it. I think that for what it purported itself to be, it is a total failure.

5 comments about Romanian Made Nice & Easy (REA) (Languages Made Nice & Easy).

1. i bought this book because my girlfriend's family is from romania and she speaks the language. i wanted to learn the language so her family would see me trying to fit in and... well, let me fit in. after i got the book, i pulled out my phone and sent a text in romanian. she replied back in romanian. the only problem with the book is it does'nt go very deep. it's pretty short. i'd love it if the same people wrote something bigger in the same format. the pronunciation guides were great. if you're just looking at getting started at learning romanian, or you just want to impress a romanian/american girl (cuz they're so hot) buy the book.



2. This book can give English natives who do not master phonetic transcription of any kind a very useful idea of how to pronounce Romanian by reading and not listening--as close as native English speakers can get it. As long as students of Romanian possess no theoretical basis such as phonetic transcription (either American or European) which can help with reading a foreign language, and want to get a crash course in everyday phrases, this book provides an almost ideal approach to the learning of spoken Romanian--it is "nice and easy", as promised.
   
   To those who want to learn it for more serious purposes, though--such as getting a better grasp of the language, writing correctly, or even taking academic courses in Romanian--I would suggest them to supplement with more serious books, such as the Teach Yourself Romanian Complete Course, for example.



3. well i am not done with it yet but from where i'm at it is really helpful and easy to use as is stated in the name.



4. I have bought a small set of books to learn the Romanian language and this seems to be the least useful of them.
   
   It's not a book that will teach you the language - it will only provide you phrases that will be useful if you want to spend some days in Romania and be minimally understood. If you really want to learn the language by yourself, it should be really a better idea to buy some method (I particularly like the one from Assimil, which has an option with audio from the lessons spoken by native Romanians), a Romanian grammar (the one from Christina Hoffman is very helpful) and a good dictionary. This one is just for tourists.



5. OK, they do try to give me a clue to how the words sound when spoken by giving me a pseudo-phonetic hint. But many times, the hint would have me saying the words incorrectly. I know this because my wife is Romanian and I've tried to say a few of the phrases the way the hint implies ... only to be laughed at.
   
   Teaching me to say the words incorrectly doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in the book. But I guess it was based on the language courses for the U.S. Foreign Service Personnel. It's just a good thing that many of the Romanians these government employees will face know English.
   
   For example, to say "I'd like to eat," the book tells me to say "ahsh vree-AH sa ma-NUNK." Well, I'd be closer to how the Romanians say it if that last word had been "ma-NINK."
   
   But overall, it's a half-way decent traveler's Romanian. And I can tell them I'm an American ... though, using the pronunciation in this book as a guide, I don't think they'll have any trouble guessing that I am.