Reviews for The African bourgeoisie

The average rating for The African bourgeoisie based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-03-24 00:00:00 Laura Thickbroom READING BULGARIAN THROUGH RUSSIAN by Charles Gribble tries to teach the reader just that. Gribble assumes that you are already quite proficient with Russian and want to minimize the effort of learning enough Bulgarian to read various texts. He doesn't attempt to teach the reader to speak, but does say that it shouldn't be hard at all to move on to the spoken language. Gribble's method is to focus only on how Russian and Bulgarian are different. With regards to Bulgarian's collection of past tenses, which continues the complicated system of Common Slavonic which Russian and other Slavonic languages have drastically simplified, he does this by simply straightforwardly laying out verb tables. A knack for rote memorization will help greatly in making use of this book. Each chapter explains some features unique to Bulgarian, followed by reading exercises, which begin as mere "My house is big. The post office is there" sort of trifles but grow to substantial essays on Bulgarian culture, language, and literature by the end of the book. The work seems generally helpful, although I must admit I'm not the target audience; I've done a great deal of prior study of Bulgarian, I just discovered the book while exploring Slavica's catalogue. My biggest complaint is that the author does not try to show how the languages are both derived from Common Slavonic and have each made this or that innovation or kept this or that original feature. This makes the book a bit more accesible to a general audience, but for those inclined to historical linguists like myself reduces its efficiency. The author mentions nothing of comparative Slavonic linguistics until the essay "Bulgarski ezik" at the end of the book, where he repeats several common falsehoods, such as that Old Church Slavonic is "Old Bulgarian" (Cyril and Methodius' language was that of Thessaloniki, a city far south of the Kingdom of Bulgaria). And this is a Slavica book from the 80s, so don't expect superbly readable typesetting, but just ugly-but-functional word-processor output. In any event, if you possess decent Russian and have always been intrigued by that sexy and enigmatic South Slavonic language that is Bulgarian, this is a book worth picking up.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-04-15 00:00:00 Janet Torge I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!