Dennis Deletant - Aliatul uitat, Have any of you read it?

I just found out that Deletant's wife is Romanian! Not very relevant for the book, but I guess that makes him even closer in spirit to us, Romanians. Not necessarily a good thing, though...

M,

I have been learning Romanian from a book written by him in the late 1980s that someone gave me. I have also been thinking about going to study Romanian language and history as a Masters degree at the university he teaches at in the UK (I think it is one of the few in the UK, if not the only one, that has a good teaching staff for Romanian and other Eastern European languages.)

He seems to have been teaching and studying Romanian language and culture as an academic for several decades now and so he may have a better knowledge of the grammar etc. of Romanian than a lot of Romanians. At least I have met people abroad whose interest is in English grammar, linguistics, literature etc. and they have known more about these things, and in more depth, than me, even though I am English myself.

The best way of finding out will be to read the book though and see what it is like.

Would you please name that particular book? You made me curious, especially because I'm a teacher of English

In the absence of a reply to MMM's question, I will suggest that the book is probably the same as one that I have:

"Colloquial Romanian" by Dennis Deletant,
first published in 1983 by Routledge & Paul,
reprinted in 1990 & 1991 by Routledge,
ISBN 0-415-05129-0.

It was also available with an accompanying audio cassette.

At the time of publication Deletant was Senior Lecturer in Romanian Studies at the School of Slavonic & East European Studies of the University of London.

This post has been edited by Tyke on April 26, 2009 03:57 pm

Tyke,

Yes, that is the book.

I did not reply because I have been away for a while without internet access.

I think that I noticed that Dennis Deletant had contributed to one of the later editions of the 'Teach Yourself Romanian' book as well.

An idea: why not invite Mr. Deletant here? If anyone has some sort of contact, even an indirect one, should drew his attention to this forum.

Gen. Dénes

Great idea, but I don't know anything about his current whereabouts!

Google is your friend!
http://www.ssees.ac.uk/prospect/deletant.htm

He has an impressive volume of work: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/research/publications...t&action=search

Radu

This post has been edited by Radub on April 29, 2009 08:54 am

Googling from Romania gave other results than googling from - let's say - Europe... Among the results, most of which in Romanian, I found little value.
Also, annoying as it may seem, Mr. Deletant appears to have also detractors in Romania:
http://blogideologic.wordpress.com/2008/09...t-un-agent-mi6/
What is "ideological blog", BTW?

Ah, well, of course he has detractors, especially in Romania, but that is nothing more than "tall poppy syndrome". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome

That blogger sees enemies everywhere. Ignore him.

Radu

This post has been edited by Radub on April 29, 2009 02:37 pm

Interesting thing - the tall poppy syndrome should have had a better name in Romanian, as it is very current in here. That ideologic dude is definitely NOT at home (plecat de-acasă)!

Nice detective job, Radub. I suggest one of the forum's owners write him a short e-mail inviting him here. You never know, after all he might be interested in what we are saying here...

Gen. Dénes

I heartily subscribe! ("Aprob pozitiv!")

Returning to the topic

Has anybody read Deletant 2004 book, Romania and the Warsawa Pact 1955-1989?
What is your opinion?
It was co-written by Mihail E Ionescu and Viorel Buta.

I, for one, haven't read it, as it exceeds my "share of interest" right now (i.e. ww2); but I like his style and hope that it'll be a good counterpart for M. Ionescu's military/bombastic phrasing...