Spoken World: Farsi Bilingual, Unabridged Edition

As anyone who has tried to learn Farsi knows, finding a good Farsi textbook is impossible- because there isn't one! Some quality textbooks have come out of Iran, but the level of English in those books is low, making them intimidating for people who are not yet comfortable with holding something from Iran. The government made some courses back in the 60s which are available for free, but they don't have audio. Yale University Press also published a course, but the audio component is extremely inadequate.Honestly, you will not be able to find a better book than this one in terms of overall quality of production. The audio component of the book is well worth the cost of the entire package, since finding quality, transcribed Farsi conversations is almost impossible.With that said, it is a sad compliment to pay. The book is littered with errors. The Tehrani pronunciation of "-un" for "-an" is frequent and irregularly scattered throughout the book with no explanation- often in parentheses beside the formal Dari pronunciation. The colloquial, spoken versions of verbs are incorrectly listed in the tables.In addition, this book is impossible for beginners to understand. The first conversation is a complete conversation in fluent Farsi, instead of the usual "hello, how are you" we expect in language courses. It jumps right in, using compound verbs, the plural "ishun" form for 3rd person singular, multiple verb tenses, and turns of phrase which are not explained in the vocabulary- all in the first lesson! HA! It's laughable.I recommend John Mace's classic introduction to Modern Persian as the real "course book" with which one learns Farsi. Get an old copy from the 1980s and work through some of the grammar. When you have worked through a few chapters of John Mace, order this course to work on your pronunciation. However, don't expect to learn any grammar from this poorly organized, error-ridden, scatter brained book. I think of it as a vocabulary builder and fluency trainer. One of my exercises in working through it is to find the errors on each page and correct them, and also to try to figure out the complicated speech patterns used in each lesson which are left unexplained.Also...this might be me but...why did they get the Irani version of Barry White to be the male voice? The female voice is also not very welcoming. I have heard Persians sound very nice and open, and the language sounds like French when spoken rapidly. Maybe the audio needed to be "scary" sounding for political reasons...anyway, that's just a conspiracy theory.As I said in the title, it's confusing and convoluted, but the audio element beats every alternative by almost 2 stars!

I cannot vouch for another (text) book but there are better Farsi courses online! Free! (or you can donate). This book is very disorganized, there are a lot of typos in it (did someone edit/proofread it?) and the dialogues are ..well, most language books have silly dialogues. There is no index, either. I would never recommend this book to someone wishing to learn Farsi. I hope this series' other books are better! Vocabulary words are not in the 'dictionary' in back, some words are introduced not at all and are not in the dictionary, some are introduced 2x, I don't want to go on and on but this is not a good book.

The book follows the tried and true Living Language format, which which I studied Italian, Spanish, French and Hindi. The only problem I notice (I am on chapter 5) is that the female dialogue participant's voice is so deep it is difficult to differentiate the female. It sounds like a man's voice.

Very well thought and well written book. I am almost done going through it. Every lesson gives 50-70 new words, new grammar, and also some interesting facts about Iran. I liked this formate. In average one lesson to go through it took me one month. I was almost a beginner - I think it would help if you know already the alphabet, though if you are a hard worker all the necessary information about the letters is in the book.

Excellent resource. Very complete. I really love the fact that there are two sets of CDs, one which you use with the written material, the other you use with just the audio to reinforce what you are learning. You will learn the Persian alphabet and the written system as well, not just conversational skills. In my opinion one of the best, clearest, and most useful systems for learning Farsi. A very good buy, excellent value.

These courses are, in my opinion, awful. This one presents, among other things handy words and phrases without much else. It's nearly impossible to dig out what's important about verb tense and endings, the masculine, feminine and neuter words and other language-critical information for learning a language. I really wish I hadn't purchased this course. I also purchased the Living Language Russian course and find it has the same issues that make using these courses to learn a new language nearly impossible (just my opinion).

Has grammatical error, and misspellings in farsi. but it is a great resource.

Great course for the beginner learning Farsi. Living Language offers the best products in foreign language courses in my opinion.

Unless you have a Persian background you will find it difficult to learn. for none speaking Persian learner the language cd and the book do not go hand in hand. You will get confused and lose interest in wanting to learn Farsi. An expensive way to learn a language and lose interest.

I am a Pakistani born in Tehran, we left Iran when I was very young and we spoke Urdu at home so my farsi is very weak and this has been quite helpful. However it doesn't just teach words/phrases it tells you about culture,dialect, etc. I personally like that because it gives me insight on the dialect that my family speaks for example in Iran we change the aa sound to oo so khaane becomes khoone. This tells you when to change the aa to oo and dialectal differences like other books will just mention the word badamjaan (eggplant) and this will give the insight that in such and such place it's pronounced badamjoon, with Iranian farsi it can get complicated for example iran is iroon, badamjan is badamjoon, jaan is joon but abadaan is not abadoon so I like the insights in this book about culture/dialect, etc.

I am not entirely pleased with this course but that has more to do with personal preferences than the course itself. Firstly, I agree with another review that Colloquial Persian is a better option for a total beginner. I am using this course at the same time but I know that I will have more use for it after I have completed the Colloquial one.One of the annoyances is that the CDs MUST be used in conjunction with the book. I have copied them to my iPod but unless I have reviewed the vocabulary in advance, it isn't necessarily helpful to simply listen to the recordings. The English is not repeated after the words (a feature I like with the Colloquial Persian). I also don't like the fact that when the American "character" (Jim) is speaking, he uses an American accent. This may be understandable but I only want to hear native Iranians speaking Persian - I am trying to develop a good accent, not imitate a foreigner!Another issue is that not all of the Persian text has been transliterated. That's fine, as I intend to read Persian but it is my specific goal for the first 3 months to ONLY concentrate on the spoken language and developing my listening skills. I also don't like the particular transliteration system that has been used. (However, this is a personal preference and certainly doesn't detract from the value of the course).I would recommend this course but only if you are seriously interested in Persian and not simply trying to learn enough to cope on holiday in Iran. If the latter is your goal, then Colloquial Persian would be much more useful.

Quite advanced

This was bought to furthewr my studies and it seem very comprehensive but will not use for a while untilI have practiced my basic course more as I feel I am not quite up to this standard yet.