"If you can read Cyrillic, and know basics of pronounciation and a little grammar, this book is great! A fellow reviewer commented that you can't lose by buying a book for $1.50 or $2.00, and I agree, as long as you fulfill the few basic conditions above.This book is packed with ""690 basic phrases for everyday use."" There's very short mundane and useful phrases like ""Please speak slowly"", ""I am an engineer"", ""Wait a moment!"", ""Please show me the way --"", ""Send my regards to your aunt and uncle"" to longer, more useless phrases like ""You indicate the amount of insurance on the form. What does it contain?"" (Useless unless you work in the Russian insurance business, of course.) Each phrase is written in English, cyrillic, and then a phonetic english representation of the cyrillic. It's not too bad, if you follow just the phonetic representations, but preferably you should go pick up some pronounciation from a recording or a friend or a teacher who speaks russian. When you're at the stage of knowing a little Russian, having a small book like this to read through helps build vocabulary and idiomatic knowledge. Caveat Emptor: it's totally worthless by itself! The inside of the book says that this was originally a manual accompanying a Dover recording called ""Listen & Learn Russian."" Of course, leave it to Dover to squeeze a buck out of a now-defunct recording." |
