An Introduction to Persian | 
 enlarge | Author: W. M. Thackston
Publisher: Ibex Publishers
Category: Book
List Price: $45.00
Buy New: $28.00
You Save: $17.00 (38%)
Rating:  22 reviews
Sales Rank: 352209
Media: Paperback
Edition: 3rd Rev
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.7 x 6 x 0.6
ISBN: 0936347295
Dewey Decimal Number: 491.5582421
EAN: 9780936347295
ASIN: 0936347295
Publication Date: May 1, 1993
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
A comprehensive grammar of modern, classical & colloquial Persian. Includes glossary. Accompanying set of tapes useful for pronunciation is available.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 17 more reviews...
 Introduction to Persian, Thackston - poor tool for language learning, but a decent reference October 3, 2007
irrgalaxies (Boulder, CO USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book was assigned to our beginning Persian class by a former student of Thackston, who clearly shares many of his thinking styles. The book is not, despite the title, an introduction to _learning_ the language. There are many technical terms from the very outset, and the book assumes knowledge of basic linguistics and grammar at a level appropriate for an upper-year linguistics or language undergraduate. It would be a useful reference as a grammar, but is poor on vocabulary and has little to no contextual situations. Thackston is also highly inconsistent with exercises; only some phrases are transliterated (which is odd, considering the book demands a level of competence with the Persian alphabet that makes those examples superfluous), and does not give answers to any of the various exercises he sets forth. I recognize that there are not many good Persian language instruction texts extant, but this does not help. A good and detailed reference, but not an easy read and extremely dry at many points. I don't recommend it unless you badly need to know Persian syntax/grammar or have already had a modicum of exposure to the writing and vocabulary.
 The best - but not very good September 12, 2007
Gwilym
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Unfortunately, good Persian courses are very hard to find. As for learning the grammar, this is the best course out there, and there are also other positive things to say about it. Apart from the grammar descriptions being exceptionally good, I especially liked that both the Persian letters and the Roman letters are used in this course. This should satisfy both those wanting to learn to read Persian and those more interested in first learning how to pronounce and speak.
The main problem, or perhaps the only problem, is the vocabulary. A course with 2000 words would have been excellent and 1500 words would still have been decent. Not even 1000 words means that you are left on your own too soon, without a sufficient basic vocabulary to move on. While I still recommend everybody to buy this book over Teach Yourself Persian (even smaller vocabulary, bad grammar explanations, no transliteration) and give it a slight edge over Colloquial Persian (more conversational). However, I hope a more extensive course will be published soon - one that features grammar explanations and transliterations as good as in this course but with at least twice the vocabulary found here.
 Your second book February 9, 2007
Dr. Robert C. Oswald (Canada)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is a more scholarly work than Mace, and I would suggest that it is only valuable for someone who wishes to speak grammatically perfect Farsi. It is well written, and possibly has the fewest errors of the range of books I have used. Its major downfall is the lack of keys for the exercises provided, which makes performing them into a very frustrating experience.
 Best for the intended purpose January 3, 2007
K G R (Arlington, VA USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Thackston's book is one of the best out there for learning Persian. Admittedly, there aren't too many books out there. This book is the best if you're taking a course in Persian, are a heritage speaker, or otherwise have an elementary grasp of the fundamentals. While Lambton's book is much more thorough, Thackston spares us the dense grammar as well as the use of superfluous, hyper-technical grammatical terms. He does cover some material so quickly, e.g. subjunctive, that the coverage appears cursory. But again, this should not be bought as a sole introduction to Persian. Also, the coverage of modern spoken Persian is weak. If you're interested in colloquial, Rafiee's book is the best. Nevertheless, overall, as your second book (or first if you can speak it already), Thackston is a must-have.
The Incoherence of Thackston July 6, 2006
sebastos (Toronto, Canada)
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
I am no stranger to technical language, nor do I detest grammatical terminology. I have spent my entire academic life learning or reading Latin, Greek, Syriac, Aramaic, Coptic, Arabic and Persian; I have, therefore, come accross many textbooks of varying usefulness and presentation. Let me say in the strongest possible terms that Thackston's text is the absolute worst text that I have ever used: the book is dry, lifeless, imprecise, and thoroughly frustrating. For reasons best known to himself, Thackston renames all the Persian verb tenses, invents new grammar terminology, attempts to illustrate grammatical concepts with seemingly contradictory examples (esp. the quibbling over the indefinite vs. definite nouns), and rushes through topics here and reintroduces them there (esp. the subjunctive). The book is not thoroughly cross-referenced, and it is written in one of the basest and most insipid forms of English that I have ever read. Is this the best that a Harvard professor can do? It seems that it is, for I also own Thackston's Syriac grammar, which is equally horrid. My entire class hated the book, as has every student of Persian to whom I have spoken at the University of Toronto. I may also point out that Thackston's frequent use of English transliterations without any Persian spelling is positively daft. As many others have mentioned, Thackston's text in comparison with Lambton's is as a candle next to the sun.
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