Basic Persian (Routledge Grammar Workbooks)

I have been learning Persian through Rosetta Stone, but it was clear early on that I was going to need some supplemental literature to go along with my learning. Rosetta Stone is great, but it's really focused on listening and speaking, and I was confused both by the alphabet/script and by the grammar (Persian is an SOV language -- quite different from English). For help with the alphabet, I picked up the book Persian Script Hacking (also sold on Amazon) which I highly recommend. For help with understanding the grammar and *why* sentences are worded the way they are, I purchased this book.It is a fantastic supplement. I wouldn't want to use it on its own (you really need to *hear* Persian to properly learn concepts like the e-glide), but it does a great job of explaining everything in depth. I feel like the book is a perfect balance between not assuming you're a Linguistics expert, but also not explaining it to you like you're stupid. I really appreciate how it presents synonyms in Persian and denotes how some are commonly used, some are rarely used, and some are only used in written (and not verbal) conversation. I'm halfway through the text now, and I feel like this book is class textbook material. I'm writing this in 2023 and the book was just published 3 years ago, which I think is important because it ensures you're learning the modern way to say things. Highly recommend!

I have recently finished the entire Rosetta Stone (R.S.) Persian (Farsi) course levels 1-12. There is NO WAY I could have completed R.S. without this grammar book! Basic Persian covers all the grammar subjects you need to know for first-year college or for the Rosetta Stone course. It does not overload you with every microscopic grammar rule, so you won't get bogged down with all the exceptions that will confuse you and hinder your progress. The grammar was clear, and helped me understand R.S. because R.S. does not really teach any grammar. You will learn the main concepts in a manner that is very clear and easy to absorb. No jargon or overly technical text is included: just what you actually need to know as a beginner! Additionally, this book has a streamlined list of vocabulary for each section, and many of the words appear on Rosetta Stone. So if you took the time to memorize all of the vocabulary presented in this book, you would be set up for success in your next endeavors.Although I never did any of the exercises in this book, I did scan them. They appear to be very good for the serious learner. Emotionally, I was very happy and grateful to have stumbled across this resource. I was able to learn something from each chapter without feeling overwhelmed or confused. I am very thankful that Saeed Yousef and Hayedeh Toarabi have brought this gem into the world!!!

Finding books to help me learn Farsi has been very difficult. I would much prefer to learn with good books instead of computers, but it seems the reviews are very mixed on most books on Amazon. Plus, books without CDs are basically worthless for learning how to speak. So I settled on computer-based learning and bought this book to fill in the technical details that language websites seem to leave out. I still feel this book doesn't go deep enough on a few topics, but it is generally good...good enough I also bought the "intermediate" level follow-up.

I'm really relating to this grammar. It is really helping to accelerate my understanding of Persian. It's well organized and the vocabulary and phonetic pronunciation is very helpful. I know a good bit of Arabic and it's very easy to mispronounce the Persian words, so the phonetic spelling is a real benefit. I find that knowing some Turkish and Arabic really helps as there are many loan words. Also, since Persian is an Indo-European language, you will also find much vocabulary that is easy to retain mnemonically.

This is an excellent book. And the second edition builds on all that was great about the first!

The main downside of the kindle version is the typesetting of the vocabulary. The lists of words are images. It is uncomfortable, almost practically unreadable on Kindle Paperwhite and sometimes one has to guess if there are two dots or one dot attached to a character.

This Basic Persian grammar and workbook is one of the best introduction to Persian I've seen. After an introduction to the alphabet, each chapter discuss different basic aspects of Persian grammar. A big advantage is that every new word used in a chapter is introduced at the start of the chapter, written both in the Persian alphabet and romanization to make sure you learn the pronunciation. Every chapter finishes by a number of exercises to practice the grammar points introduced in the chapter.The authors do a very good job of explaining Persian grammar, and I never felt overwhelmed while at the same time feeling that I learnt a lot. I also liked that I learnt the pronunciation of each word in romanized form, yet also learnt to read the Persian alphabet. I've looked at many Persian resources, and this is one I would definitely recommend!

This may be a good book for improving my Persian, but there's no way I can tell from the "Look Inside" feature because the choice of pages is completely useless : Try as you may ( whether you look under "surprise me," "first pages", table of contents" or whatever ), only pages of the glossary ( i.e. vocab list entries ) appear, and NOT ONE SINGLE PAGE of actual grammar, exercises, etc. can be seen ---It's so important to see at least a page or two of the "real book" in order to know if it's what you need ( especially when the book + shipping costs about 40$ , as in this case), so I sure wish this "Look inside" feature could be reworked to give us a bit of real insight into the book , instead of just a bunch of vocab listings ( with all the chapter headings, etc. disabled !? ) -Without this, I assume that most interested people ( like me) will have to just steer clear of the book ...... -:(