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However, it is not user-friendly. This passage is all too typical: "All conjunctions of concession, provision, and exception are followed by the subjunctive, present or past depending upon the temporal relationship to the main clause." There must be a simpler way to say that.Furthermore, there is no key to the exercises at the end of each chapter. This book seems to have it all. The discussion of grammar is heavy with jargon, often making it extremely difficult to follow. You may think that you have correctly translated from Persian to English, or vice versa, but using this book alone, you can't be certain. It covers thoroughly every important aspect of Persian grammar, and in the course of reading it you should accumulate a substantial Persian vocabulary. I got a lot out of it.
I own the 3rd edition and now the 4th edition of this book. Other books likes Lewis' Elementary Persian teach handwriting quite well as does the Routledge grammar of Persian. Both the printed script and nastaliq are used in this edition. The only thing I wish would NOT have changed was the teaching of the cursive/handwritten script.
Aside from the above on the script, the book appears to be the same, but with several revisions/improvements throughout. If you buy this 4th edition, you should purchase Teach Yourself Urdu Script, which gets into more detail about writing the nastaliq script. Teach Yourself Arabic Script is also a good book to acquire if you want to learn to use the handwritten style of Persian. For example, whereas some of the exercises in the 3rd edition did not provide adequate task instruction, this edition closes the gap and has additional exercises. I used that one along with Lewis' book.Overall, I am pleased with this new edition. Upon inspection and comparison of the 4th edition with the 3rd, I find improvements both in the area of description and new features.
If you prefer to write the way the printed word appears, then there are some good books on writing Arabic this way. Regarding answers to the exercises, the publisher has informed me that the key to the exercises will be released as a separate title soon. The script section has changed, and you are taught both scripts from the beginning. The 3rd edition has that, and while this new edition doesn't teach that, it would have been nice to have retained some of its elements.
This book is helpful however it is weak on verbs in that it does not show verbs linked to pronouns and is printed in an archaic format
I am continuing with Rosetta stone to develop conversational skills. With this book things have begun to change. It's given me an opportunity to explore this beautiful language. Before reading this book I did not have even a basic understanding of the structure of the persian language. I recommend this book for someone with a strong academic interest in the language. I admired its history and its contributions to south asian literary tradition and the influence upon south asian languages. Sure, I knew about the origins and the linguistic family of the language. But, I was nowhere near even having a rudimentary coversation in Farsi.
This is an extremely rigorous presentation and the material it offers is built up over the course of the lessons in a very systematic way.The book is highly biased toward the written language, and that needs no defense. So the author has certainly done what he can to smooth the way for learners to transition from reading to speaking and after completing the book none of the other available materials for spoken Persian are likely to be difficult- but a learner whose primary interest is speaking should probably try another source first- the best one I've seen is probably the Living Language course.The reason for only three stars is, as many other reviewers, both positive and negative, have noted, is the lack of an answer key for the exercises- at the very least, a self-contained work should provide one for the English-to-Persian translation exercises. It undeniably is extremely grammar oriented(get over it)., and contrary to what some other reviewers have said, it is not necessary to be a professional linguist to work with it and get benefit from it.
Although there is a literary flavor to the work, the author does give extensive supplementary vocabularies at the end of the lessons, many of which relate very naturally to everyday topics of conversation (food and clothing, to name just two). It isn't too difficult (most of the time) to puzzle out the meaning of the Persian-to-English exercises, but Persian syntax can get complicated and without someone to check them, a learner trying to translate into Persian can quickly wonder if he really knows what he is doing or if he has said what he meant to say. There is also an appendix in which the major differences between spoken and written Persian are explained.
This book has some very positive features. The spoken forms, are, of course, simpler: but they are also largely predictable from the written forms (and the converse does not apply). This book is a second edition, too- so the absence of a key is a flaw that should have been corrected by now.
The author was a great Persian scholar and also a very experienced teacher. Persian is a language where there is a real divergence between spoken and written, and in such cases a choice has to be made as to which to do first.
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