Different than the other verb conjugated books in that it claims to have a better selection of verbs and also to provide an contextual examples that demonstrate how the verbs are actually used. This is always useful!

This was a very good idea: Create a picture book of a thousand objects with their Russian names. What can go wrong?

The answer lies in the nature of the language. In Russian, each polysyllabic word has stress on one syllable. If you don't stress the syllables correctly, it is very hard to be understood. Imagine learning the English word "fundamentalism" with the wrong stress pattern, and you can imagine the problem: at best, you sound like Borat, at worst, your listener can't understand you.

And there is no reliable pattern for learning the stress of Russian syllables. You just have to memorize it on each word.

As you might have guessed the Russian words in this book do not have the stress pattern marked. You just have to guess. It's so frustrating. With just a little bit more effort, this book could have been made so much more useful.

Rating: (2 / 5)

As any student of Russian knows, the words are long and multi-syllabic. Stress is extremely important in Russian. Russians frequently do not understand me simply because I stress the wrong syllable. That stress is not indicated in this book is an unforgivable oversight. Who wants to look up every word in a dictionary? The other problem with this book is that there are far too many useless words. Who needs the word for a hand operated drill? These are definately not the first 1000 words you will need. Maybe 300-400 of these words are useful and should be in your initial vocabulary. The pictures are a nice learning tool although it's not always clear what the "answer" is from the picture. Knowing what I know now, I would not buy this book again.

Rating: (2 / 5)

it is the best thousand words book ever!!! it helped a girl from russia who didn't learn any english at all learn some very interesting vocasbulary in a week!!

Rating: (5 / 5)

This book is even better than I hoped for! I bought this book to help prepare our three kids (3, 7, 16) learn some Russian words for basic items while we await the homecoming of their soon-to-be 8 year old sister from Russia. We thought this would also be a great way for our new daughter to be able to point to items for us to give the English word or simply tell us what she needs - like a toothbrush. The layout is GREAT because each section is a huge picture scene of a certain place - like a bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, city - and all the essentials that fill these spaces. Each item has the written Russian word and pronunciation underneath. In the back of the book is an easy alphabet, number and pronunciation guide along with all the words alphabatized from the book. We bought TONS of other books and tapes from Amazon to help my husband and I learn a little Russian, but this is the only book we found that ALL our kids (and us) like and can easily use.

Rating: (5 / 5)

...the words are not stressed. For beginners who don't have a native Russian speaker around to pronounce the words for them, it is absolutely essential that each word show the vowel that is stressed. Normally, in textbooks for beginning Russian students, this is done by placing a stress mark over the stressed vowel. Unfortunately, this book does not do that. Like English, Russian words are pronounced quite differently depending on the placement of the primary stress. The reader of this book will not know, for example, how the word "aftobus" ("bus" in English) should be pronounced: AHf-to-boos, ahf-TO-boos, or ahf-to-BOOS. The correct pronunciation is ahf-TO-boos. No doubt most American speakers, analogizing from "automobile" (AW-tuh-muh-beel), would pronounce it AHf-to-boos. And is the word for "watch" pronounced "CHAH-see" or "chih-SEE"? The latter is closer to the correct pronunciation. But without a sress mark to show this, how is one to know? In addition, in conversation most speakers of Russian nowadays pronounce the consonant "shch" not as sh + ch (as in "freSH CHeese"), but as a fronted "shsh" (as in "I wiSH SHe wouldn't do that"). Although the concept of the dictionary is good, because of the lack of stress marks I don't think it's worth buying.

Rating: (2 / 5)

As a beginning student of Russian I thought this book might be a good vocabulary builder, and for the most part that is true. The illustrations aren't always sufficient to identify the word depicted, but there is an English translation in the back so that's only a minor annoyance. Another minor annoyance is that words are given in either singular or plural form, whereas it would have been nice if both were included.

However, I found two major shortcomings relating to pronunciation. One that has been mentioned in the other reviews is the lack of anything indicating stress, which could easily have been done with either accent marks on the word itself or by capitalizing the accented syllable in the phonetic rendering (PEESma).

The other major shortcoming is that certain vagaries of pronunciation aren't taken into account, such as the devoicing of a consonant at the end of a word (e.g. the word for iron would be more correctly rendered as "ootyook" rather than "ootyoog") and the assimilation of consonants when they occur together ("foodbol" rather than "footbol").

I still would recommend this book but I also recommend getting a good dictionary that shows word stress and making sure you learn the rules of pronunciation and take them into account.

Rating: (3 / 5)

Finally a language book that teaches practical vocabulary that isn't always found in the textbooks.

With large comic book style pages, vocabulary items are depicted in a color drawing that covers most of the page. On the page borders are small individual depictions of the vocabulary items with the name beneath it in Russian, there are no English translations (except in the glossary) because none are ever needed.

For example; the first page shows a color drawing of various rooms in a house. One room is the bath. The border of the page will have a picture of a toilet and its name beneath in Russian, then it is shown in the context of the bathroom without a label so the reader can self quiz.

An excellent resource!, good for beginner to intermediate level readers.

Rating: (5 / 5)

My husband is a native Russian speaker and speaks only this language to our 2 yr. old. This book has ended up being our son's FAVORITE book. He loves the illustrations (so do I) and will look at one page for a good 10 minutes. I helps me brush up on my Russian also.
I must add, however, that if you are a BEGINNER to the Russian language this book won't teach you how to correctly pronounce the words. Words are spelled out phoenetically but do not include any clues as to pronunciation.

Rating: (5 / 5)

The book is very colorful and active. The words are everyday words you use around the house. I think my kids will enjoy this book and we'll get alot of use out of it. The only draw back is the english words are in the back of the book. I thought it would be more useful to have the english and russian words written next to eachother. I'm going to pencil in the english next to the Russian for easy reference.

Rating: (4 / 5)

I got this book to begin my study of the Russian language. Although it's a wonderful book and taught me a LOT of vocabulary, there was one problem I found--the words are separated into groups and these groups are titled. However, the title is not translated into English. The first group in the entire book is pictured by a bathroom. The title, in phonetic English, is "doma." Doma means house in English. If I didn't already know that word, I would have gone around asking people where the house was. This happens all through the book. You get the idea.
Otherwise, though, a great book. I learned a lot, easily. Bright illustrations spread across pages and make it exciting to learn the words and be able to identify objects. A handy-dandy mini Russian-English dictionary can be found at the end of the book. All the words I found relevant and useful. (Not like the traveler dictionary I got later that taught me how to say "I've been run over by a car"!)I assure you, if you get this, you'll learn a lot and have fun doing it.

Recommended highly.

Rating: (4 / 5)