  | Easy Russian Phrase Book : Over 690 Basic Phrases for Everyday Use (Dover Easy Phrase Books)
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 If you're going to go through the trouble of buying a book.. | |
| Why not buy one that's worthwhile? I bought this and it's worth what it costs, i.e. not much. Spend a few more bucks and get the Lonely Planet Russian Phrasebook. It has a small dictionary, lots of phrases and traveling info. I can't even give it two stars for being so cheap. Don't waste your time. | |
 fun and funny little book. | |
| 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. | |
 How Can you Lose on a Buck Fifty Book? | |
| I confess that I have some previous experience with the Russian language and that had I not already known basic letter sounds and inflection I might not have gotten much from this book. Out of curiosity, I asked my 8 year old to try some of the words and short phrases and she did pretty well in sounding everything out. The best section of this book deals with food. In a situation when you have very little Russian but desperately need to tell the waiter "Without cheese, please" or something similar this book is aces. It also teaches everyday pleasantries for travellers but a person would need much more than is contained in this book to get around a Russian speaking country comfortably. Hey, for a dollar fifty cents, even if you only get a few phrases out of it, it's small and would be good to stuff in your briefcase or bag for quick reference in a pinch. Worst case scenario, you could point to the necessary words as they are well grouped according to the situation or topic at hand. | |
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