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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.
This book is best when teamed up with other texts or textbook, preferably in a formal course setting with an instructor to guide you. This says more about them than it does about Thackston's book. This is the best introductory Persian grammar book available in English. Some of the previous reviewers seem to not like having to look up the grammar terms.
And the same publisher does a bilingual edition of the entire Hafiz diwan. The appendix includes selections from modern and classical prose. There's another appendix on spoken Farsi.What more could you ask for. My main complaint about language books is that they either lose the forest for the trees or vice versa. Wow. There's plenty in here to satisfy the anal-retentive learner, if they so choose.By contrast, there's plenty of places (esp. With that said, I wish every language book were as detail-oriented as this one. regarding pronunciation and how it was taught) in Teach Yourself Farsi where I wished I could throw the book in the trash, but it was a library copy unfortunately.And here's a book worth buying.This book meticulously indicates stress and then leaves the marks behind so that one is forced to memorize it.
A good and detailed reference, but not an easy read and extremely dry at many points. 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. This book was assigned to our beginning Persian class by a former student of Thackston, who clearly shares many of his thinking styles. 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. 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. The book is not, despite the title, an introduction to _learning_ the language. It would be a useful reference as a grammar, but is poor on vocabulary and has little to no contextual situations.
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