Teach Yourself Modern Persian/Farsi Complete Course Audiopack

I would recommend this book. It is not the only book you will need to learn Persian, but it is a great start. I am not a native speaker and have found this very useful. It makes it simple to teach yourself.

The books in the Teach Yourself series are very uneven in quality. I just surfed through the amazing Teach Yourself Afrikaans, an excellen language course. This one, sadly, is far from good. Believe it or not, Persian is one of the easiest languages you'll come across, the grammar is exceptionally easy. For that reason, the lack of indepth grammar in this course is no big problem. A far bigger problem is the very weak pronunciation section. Persian is an easy language to pronounce once you learn the rules, but you won't with this course. The worst problem is the vocabulary, you'll learn very few words. Having read and reviewed hundreds of language courses at a professional level, I've encountered very few with such a limited vocabulary. So, almost no help with the pronunciation, not much grammar and a far too limited vocabulary. What do you really learn with this course. Not much, hence the low rating. There are many courses that are better, such as Colloquial Persian, An Introduction to Persian or Modern Persian. Any of those three books will teach you far more than this one.

Book is 256 pages; not counting the 30-pages introduction.
The book has altogether 47 pages of vocabulary. Lots of scripts and exercises.

If you're not too thorough and meticuosly about it, you might not bother about the 'Better Together. Buy Together... ' revised 2. editions book suggestion !
This Amazon product link: Teach Yourself: Modern Persian (Teach Yourself) in fact points to the book's second edition,(July 1, 2004, 266 pages long). It's the revised book, only - * no CD's * !

You should read this other review 'Decent, but could be a lot
better, July 21, 2006' before you make up your mind, wether or
not this set will do for you (with or without the revised 2.
edition) ;; or if you in fact must have one of the many newer,
updated editions of this set!

For the price, it's a good deal if you get the CDs. But like all TY books, it goes very quickly, especially the second half. And it really focuses on grammar. There is surprisingly little about Iran or Persian culture, there is no color anywhere (and uninteresting layout in general), the images used are terrible (couldn't they afford actual pictures?), and there are mistakes in every chapter, although they're generally pretty small and easy to see. On the other hand, there isn't exactly much competition.

Vocabulary is also an issue - sometimes they give you tons of vocab to help with the readings and exercises, other times barely any. And short vowel markings are inconsistent, which is a little confusing for the beginner.

Overall, it's an okay book, but could be a lot better.

this book has been a welcome addition to take to my Persian - Farsi class