Russian For Dummies (For Dummies (Language & Literature))

I have been studying the Russian language for about a year. Browsing Amazon one day for other products, I stumbled upon this book. I have studied other 'Dummy' books in the past (math & computers) and was very satisfied. I made a big mistake to purchase this one. Not recommended.

As previous reviews indicate, this book does not teach the Cyrillic (Russian) alphabet. This book has very few -literally, very few- words written in Russian. It stresses instruction on learning the 'transliteration' alphabet, which in my opinion, has no purpose at all, and only prolongs learning the Russian language. I do not care to learn this 'transliteration' language. All words and phrases taught in this book are written in the transliteration spelling, followed by actual pronunciation.

The actual (English alphabet) pronunciation is most valuable, but is considered a 'lesser' part of this book's instruction.

To effectively learn Russian, a person must first learn the Cyrillic alphabet. This book should have been written with actual Russian words and phrases, followed by the actual (English alphabet) pronunciation.

(The 'Rosetta Stone' technique is really the best way to learn a new language).

From my past experiences with another Dummies book for a school project, I did not expect this to be a good book. I bought it anyways because the price was cut extremely low.
There is a lesson that teaches you the cyrillic alphabet, but the rest of the book is in the latin alphabet. I believe they did this because they thought it would be easier to read or pronounce, but then they also have the correct pronunciation in brackets. If people are able to read the latin text then why do they need a pronounciation? They might as well have used the cyrillic alphabet instead of the latin. The text being inthe cyrillic alphabet would benefit the reader because they would be able to read in russian. If a russian learner does not know how to read the cyrrilic alphabet, how would they be able to go to a restuarant and order something off the menu, or go to the movies and know what type of movie they are watching? Not only that but they explained the russian alphabet different than what I learned in the past so I asked some native russians, and they said it was incorrect. So basically almost every pronounciation in brackets is incorrect.
But on the up side it has some extremely good grammar tables and that is why this book got two stars instead of one.

This book teaches you the basics of Russian in a useful way. You don't have to read straight through either. You can skip to the part you want, like writing letters. I don't think it will teach you Russian on it's own. I suggest investing in the Rosetta Stone Rosetta Stone V3: Russian, Level 1 program and use this book to complement it. The problem is that this book does not use the Cyrillic alphabet. It gives you the basics of the Cyrillic alphabet, but won't teach you to use it. So, you need to learn to read Russian in another book.

Overall: The book is fun and easy to read, it is chock full of great information, and the language CD is useful. However, you will need other assistance in learning Russian, especially for pronunciation.

I have been learning/speaking Russian for 10 years now and I saw the book at the bookstore to see if I could use it to improve things that I missed out from classes I took with Serafima Gettys (one of the co-authors) while she was at Stanford. (I took first year Russian from her).

The book seems to be targeting tourists rather than people who are into learning Russian for good. Does not teach any grammar, no cyrillic and not enough vocabulary. I think the book is mistargeted. For tourists, you need a book that is easy to carry around that have the key sentences or images to point to. Berlitz makes them, and a few other companies. Normally, the dummies series is supposed to help you learn the basics of the language, and here it's teaching no Cyrillic, so the reader will not have the opportunity to learn the language easily, and misses out there, then the lessons are not useful either. They're way too limited and confusing after they get a bit complex in the later chapters. It definitely needs a chapter in cyrillic, and needs some grammar.

I must say that I am not fond of the teaching style in the book. It's hard to read also. It could be fun reading in the toilet if you want though... Russian is the most difficult language among 7 languages I speak, so I highly recommend getting a serious book to teach you.

I like to content and would have used this book but...

When I visited Russia, I had two maps of Moscow one in Cyrillic and one in Latin letters. Which do you think I used? I used the Cyrillic. Not because I could read it, but I could look at the street sign and find out where i was standing. I could not say it but the letters matched and i knew where I was. The latin letter map was impossible for reading the street sign.

You can learn to speak Russian and not read the Cyrillic letters using audio lessons. You can not learn correctly speaking Russian using latin letters. The sounds do not always match the same letter. Until the book uses Cyrillic letters for Russian words, I can not recommend this work.

The author did much hard work of very good quality. Without the Cyrillic it is poor quality book to use for learning Russian.