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Colloquial Romanian: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series (Book Only)) | 
 enlarge | Authors: Ramona Gonczol-davies, Dennis Deletant
Publisher: Routledge
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $16.32
You Save: $9.63 (37%)
Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 246627
Media: Paperback
Edition: 3
Pages: 328
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.3 x 0.8
ISBN: 0415237831
Dewey Decimal Number: 459.82421
EAN: 9780415237833
ASIN: 0415237831
Publication Date: November 8, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The third edition of this popular course in Romanian for beginners has been completely revised and updated to make learning Romanian easier and more enjoyable than ever before. Written by experienced teachers of Romanian, this course offers a step-by-step approach to written and spoken Romanian. No previous knowledge of the language is assumed. Features include: lively dialogues reflecting life in contemporary Romania; texts introducing Romanian culture; lots of exercises with full answer key; extensive English-Romanian and Romanian-English glossaries. 120 minutes of audio material, recorded on both cassettes and CDs, are available to accompany the course. Recorded by native speakers, these will help you perfect your pronunciation and comprehension skills.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 A huge step backwards from the previous edition January 12, 2008
Gwilym
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
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.
 Solid vocabulary, seen one major problem though September 12, 2007
G. Snell
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
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.
Colloquial Doesn't Mean Conversational August 21, 2007
Roger Crowley (San Diego, CA USA)
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
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.
So disappointed... February 16, 2006
R. Gayley
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?
 Excellent introductory course January 21, 2006
LA
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is by far the best beginner's course out there. The book assumes no previous knowledge of Romanian and does a great job providing both essential vocabulary and fundamental language structures and functions. Hope the authors will write the intermmediate course in the near future.
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