AFFILIATE PRODUCTS Item ID: #716Shona-English/English-Shona Dictionary and Phrasebook (Dictionary and Phrasebooks)Product Information:
Item DescriptionShona, or ChiShona, a Bantu language spoken by eight million people in Zimbabwe and Mozambique, is the official and most widely-spoken language of Zimbabwe. Designed for the traveler, this compact guide provides the means for basic communication in Shona, featuring a two-way dictionary and phrasebook with practical and cultural information.
Item Reviews3 Responses to “Shona-English/English-Shona Dictionary and Phrasebook (Dictionary and Phrasebooks)”Leave a Reply |
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Until this book was published there was no decent introductory guide to learning Shona available outside Zimbabwe. I run a website teaching basic Shona ( http://www.shonalanguage.fsnet.co.uk ) and used to get large numbers of requests for such a book – now here it is!
For a very reasonable price, it provides: – pronunciation guide; – introduction to grammar; – basic but adequate vocabulary; – sections on various everyday tasks, each with a useful set of words and phrases;
If you are planning to visit Zimbabwe and are at all interested in learning Shona you should definitely buy this book.
My only slight criticism is that the Grammar section is quite dense, you may need to be familiar with some grammatical terms. On the other hand it is /much/ more accessible than earlier Shona grammar books available outside Zimbabwe.
Overall, a great buy.
This is a great book for anyone headed to Zimbabwe. I used it for a linguistics course and it proved very helpful. For those familiar with the Bantu languages of Africa, this language is not very difficult to learn. Trying to find a book on Shona is very difficult. Would be better if the author made this into a complete course in the language, rather than just a phrasebook for travellers.
As a person whose dearest friends speak Shona, I was looking for a tool to increase my skills to learn their first language. Shona is a difficult language in which syntex and variations of words are common. Even with this tool, most of the words they write to me are not included in the dictionary, and I still need to write friends for assistance with interpretations. With that said, at least it is a tool. Since Shona is not a widely used language, it is a real treat to have this tool!