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people found this helpful, as of 2023
ranked #223,813 most helpful
out of 571,544,897 reviews
★☆☆☆☆
Ce livre, c'est nul (This book is the pits)
Like an pre-adolescent, FRENCH FOR DUMMIES can't make up its mind what it wants to be when it grows up. It wants to be more than phrase book, but it (by its own admission) it does not want to be a text book. In the end, it falls short on both counts.
It opts for quick answers and shortcuts, so much so that students wanting to do more than repeat stock phrases will be sorely dissapointed. Yes, you could spend the asking price for the book, then set about memorizing the dialogues, but what for? You could tell a doctor, "I have an upset stomach" (J'ai mal au cur), but not "I am having chest pain."
In the end, the wise reader would do well either to go about seriously learning the language (and for that I would recommend the text that accompanies the PBS series French in Action) or buy an inexpensive phrase book or two. (Or three... Anyone traveling to Paris ought to order WICKED FRENCH a tongue-in-cheek phrase book so that when you are being ignored by the haughty staff at a cafe can ask a waiter "C'est vrai que vous avez honte de votre menu?" (Is it true that you are ashamed of your menu.) Not exactly the type of phrases found in Berlitz's phrase book.
But please, pass on this one.
