Book Description
Learning Indonesian as easy as 1-2-3
With this book, Indonesian is attainable for any beginning student. You can use Teach Yourself Indonesian Complete Course at your own pace or as a supplement to formal courses. This complete course is based on the very latest learning methods and designed to be enjoyable and user-friendly.
Prepared by experts in the language, Teach Yourself Indonesian begins with the basics and gradually promotes you to a level of smooth and confident communication, including:
- Up-to-date, graded interactive dialogues
- Graded units of culture notes, grammar, and exercises
- Step-by-step guide to pronunciation
- Practical vocabulary
- Regular and irregular verb tables
- Plenty of practice exercises and answers
- Bilingual glossary
Package includes two 60-minute CDs and a book.
Customer Reviews:
Good product.......2007-08-01
I think it's a good item to start a self teaching or even as a support of a language course.
It's very useful to memorize the native pronunciation exactly.
Strongly recommended
3.5 stars: pros and cons of the Indonesian book/CD set.......2006-07-19
I'm a professional and personal linguist, and decided to teach myself Indonesian as my ninth language, mostly out of curiosity to learn something totally different. I've completed this book/CD lesson kit, having studied with it for about 3 months, and I'd like to offer some pros and cons for future students to make an informed decision (and thanks to previous reviewers whom I thought were quite accurate).
PROS:
-Set follows an expected progression of knowledge. You start with the main character Ken's arrival in Indonesia for an extended stay and progress up through working, eating, living, going out, shopping, hobbies and finally an excellent, useful final chapter revolving around a typical Indonesian phone call, complete with slangy, coloquial terms for common words. This is great, because so many language kits are afraid of slang...but think about how silly English would sound if you didn't learn ok, gonna, can't, won't, no way, what's up, etc.
-Speakers' voices are clear, and they speak at a fair pace throughout. That is, maybe not as rapid as two actual young people might talk in reality, but not sloooooooow either.
-Vocab lists offer lots of great words.
-Highly affordable price for a full kit that will essentially give you a strong baseline of the language.
CONS:
-A lot of these are linguistic peeves, please bear with me...First, the ONLY lesson on pronunciation you get is a blurb at the beginning that "Indonesian is USUALLY stressed on the penultimate (second-to-last) syllable." WOW! This is highly misguiding! First off, the speakers on the CDs do not sound like they're stressing the words there. In fact, about 75% of what they say is clearly stressed on the last syllable. After a little googling, I discovered the rule is actually: stressed on the penultimate syllable UNLESS that syllable contains the short-e sound. And indeed, about 60-70% of the words DO have that, so they really need to expand their explanations!
-Be careful American learners! The alphabet lesson equates Indonesian sounds to BRITISH English ones...make sure you know what those sound like! For instance, if they say that the A's in the word "bagaimana" sound like the -or at the end of the word "doctor" an American might get thrown for a loop, not realizing that the Brits pronounce doctor "dok-tuh." Also, some words in the vocab are British. Remember, a biscuit=cookie and smart=handsome.
-My biggest gripe is that they do not offer word-for-word pronunciations of the vocab. You just have to read them and figure it out from the dialogs! One extra CD would have allowed this important feature.
-The audio lessons are comprised of two things: dialogs (2 per chapter usually) and "Over to You". I personally hated the Over to You. It's an exercise that goes on and on repeating the same sentences over and over. In them, you listen to a speaker, and then the English guide says "Now you reply, blah blah, etc." But they do not give you a pause! You have to keep pausing it yourself if you need more than 3 seconds to reply (which learners WILL, trust me). This makes it impossible to listen to them in the car.
-As previously mentioned by reviewers, the book randomly chooses to omit vocab from the glossary, and leaves many words in the actual dialogs OUT of the vocab lists associated with them. But then it will sometimes give you the same vocab word in 3 consecutive lessons, as if you never learned them before. Bottom line: YOU DEFINITELY NEED A DICTIONARY.
Well, all in all, this was a positive experience for me. I believe the affordability of this kit combined with being a FAIR language kit makes this a pretty good buy. Note: if you go on eBay there is a seller who offers his own Australian company's Indonesian kit for about $25 US. I have that too and am using it now.
Better than Pimsleur.......2006-07-15
My wife and I are being transferred to Indonesia in a few months. One of the first things we did was purchase the Pimsleur and Teach Yourself audio cd sets to get a head start on language training.
I realize that every person absorbs this information differently, but I would not recommend the Pimsleur method. The conversations on the five discs provided - "I like the color of your baby kagaroo" (not really on the disc - though it may be buried somewhere in the 4th hour of useless conversations:-) were more like listening to a foreign radio station than actually being taught a language.
The ever more useful "Thank you very much.", "Where is the bathroom?", "Do you speak English?" found on the two "Teach Yourself" discs and accompanying paperback have proven to be much more learner friendly.
Regardless of your choice, I hope you have fun and enjoy the experience.
nice book, but about 20% of vocabulary unexplained.......2006-01-21
Like many in the teach-yourself series, this book is well thought out, presents a lot of manterial, and incudes 2 CDs. But like others in the series, it leaves many words unexplained. This happens not only inside the text, but also in the glossaries at the end.
The CD dialogs try to make people speak, which is a pretty good idea. But while getting students to repeat 3-4 times various texts, the authors leave very important works inside exercises and leave it up to students to figure out pronunciation and meanings.
Only buy this book if you have an Indonesian-Malaysian dictionary and if you have access to someone who can help you pronounce the words and put the accents in the right place.
An Excellent Guide to the Indonesian Language.......2005-12-18
To reiterate what the previous reviewer had pointed out, the "Teach Yourself Indonesian Complete Course Audiopack" includes both the text book and compact discs; there is no need to purchase this item along with the "Teach Yourself Indonesian Complete Course."
I purchased the "Teach Yourself Indonesian Complete Course Audiopack" several days ago, and after having had the opportunity to peruse the material for a bit, I must say that I am very impressed with what I have seen thus far. The material is presented in such a way as to make learning Indonesian effective and effortless.
For example, each chapter begins with a dialogue in Indonesian that pertains to everyday activities, such as eating out or asking for directions. Below the dialogue is a box filled with pertinent vocabulary words from the preceding dialogue. Next is an English translation of the dialogue to ensure that the student fully understands the meaning of the Indonesian dialogue. Succeeding that is a section entitled, "How the language works." Here, grammatical concepts and contexts of the vocabulary words relevant to the dialogue are discussed. Finally, several exercises are included in each chapter to reinforce the lessons taught. Do not worry, the answers are in the back!
The compact discs mesh perfectly with the material in the chapters. Native Indonesian speakers act out the chapter dialogues, thus providing the student with the opportunity to practice their listening skills and learn how to properly speak Indonesian. The speakers on the compact discs clearly enunciate, and there is plenty of time for the student to practice their Indonesian out loud if desired.
Overall, the "Teach Yourself Indonesian Complete Course Audiopack" is a wonderful resource for anyone interested in learning Indonesian. As a student of Indonesian myself, I highly recommend this product for its exceptional effectiveness.
Book Description
Thriller in Manila? Teach yourself Tagalog!
With Teach Yourself it's possible for virtually anyone to learn and experience the languages of the world, from Afrikaans to Zulu; Ancient Greek to Modern Persian; Beginner's Latin to Biblical Hebrew. Follow any of the
Teach Yourself Language Courses Audiopackages at your own pace or use them as a supplement to formal courses. These complete courses are professionally designed for self-guided study, making them one of the most enjoyable and easy to use language courses you can find. Audiopackages include an instructional paperback book and two companion 60-minute audio CDs.
Prepared by experts in the language, each course begins with the basics and gradually promotes the student to a level of smooth and confident communication, including:
- Step-by-step guide to pronunciation and grammar
- Regular and irregular verb tables
- Plenty of practice exercises and answers
- Practical vocabulary and a bilingual glossary
- Clear, uncluttered, and user-friendly layout
- An exploration of the culture
- And much more
Customer Reviews:
Not for the Nervous?.......2007-01-18
The title of this book is too short to be true to its contents and approach. It should be called "Teach yourself Tagalog, with a lot of help from your Filipino friends and a bottle of tranquilizers".
To be fair, a lot of hard and productive thinking has plainly gone into the design of this course. The underlying learning objectives for each of the twenty units are sensibly chosen, and the progression from unit to unit is intelligently planned and well paced. The dialogues generally are excellent examples of how to make introductory material understandable to beginners while not compromising too much on truthfulness to the living language, and there is a good mixture of strictly language-focussed learning with bite-sized but nevertheless generally informative cultural snippets.
One pervasive problem, though, is that syllable stresses are never marked in the printed texts. This is a serious drawback for the solo learner. Although real-life Tagalog texts, apart from examples in dictionaries and grammars, do not mark stresses (or final glottal stops), such markings are essential in primers meant for self-instruction, because Tagalog has many forms whose meaning is drastically changed by different stresses or the presence or absence of a final glottal stop. Unless these things are plainly indicated on the printed page, the learner is all too liable get into the habit of pronouncing such words wrongly, with maybe unfortunate results.
The accompanying CDs are not likely to be of much help. It's surprising how many publishers of language teaching materials (the BBC being a notable exception) don't realise that speaking such dialogues convincingly requires professional voice-acting skills, which are sadly lacking to the speakers used here. They are obviously natives, but that's not enough.
An even more serious problem with this volume, however, is its disconcertingly neurotic and unfocussed approach to grammatical explanation. A good language teacher knows how to build the learner's confidence by revealing and explaining the more difficult aspects of the target language in a controlled and progressive way. But this is not the same as making repeated pre-emptive strikes against anticipated panic attacks, especially if the alleged grounds for panic often seem slender anyway. This little volume is dominated by the assumption that the would-be learner of Tagalog is of a highly nervous disposition and is likely to flee in terror and never come back if such shocking terms as "verb" or "consonant" are mentioned without the accompaniment of soothing noises and profuse apologies for touching on unpleasant topics.
Now it's rather hard to write any effective language course, let alone one for a language as distant from European structures as Tagalog, while shielding the reader entirely from grammatical considerations (and therefore also grammatical terms of one sort or another); but at points when that necessity can't be avoided, the reader of this book is invariably reassured that there is "no need to panic" or be "bewildered", or they are urged to "try not to worry about" the point of grammar in question. The use of "try" here subliminally suggests that there are indeed grounds for anxiety, even though this particular phrase is used, for example, to soften the apparently crushing news that the plural form of a certain pronoun differs from the singular. But the reassurances are seldom followed by satisfactory explanations of the supposedly "frightening" items; instead, the recommended course is frequently to "ask your Filipino friends". Which for some learners a long way from the Philippines or from, say, a major healthcare centre, might well be something of a problem
In general, the grammatical explanations tend to make much ado about "explaining" things that will be perfectly plain to most people interested in learning a language anyway, or else they treat side issues at some length, while overlooking things the learner is more likely to find troublesome. For instance, in the first lesson, after a table of the main personal pronouns, we read the following "explanation":
Notice that "you" (singular) has two forms: ka and ikaw. The simple difference is that ka is always used as part of a sentence ... whereas ikaw can stand alone (without being used in a sentence).
Now that's true, but it's hardly what a learner most needs to know. Since, as this explanation correctly implies, both 'ikaw' and 'ka' can indeed "be used in a sentence", what the learner really wants to be told is which one of them to use in a given sentence (they are never interchangeable, and in some circumstances neither is used). On this matter, the authors are silent.
In lesson 2 we are introduced to the words "sino?" and "ano?". "Sino?", we are correctly told, means "who?" and is used to ask about persons, whereas "ano?" means "what?" and is used to ask about things. Since this is one of the rare occasions where there is a close match between English and Tagalog, that much should be plain sailing. But our ever-anxious guides feel it's necessary to remark "don't worry if this sounds daunting," which is more likely to give readers a disturbing sense that they must have somehow skipped a daunting bit without noticing it.
Yet in the very next lesson the authors broach a genuinely difficult point with no such show of concern, via a casual aside. After outlining the distinction between two Tagalog words for different types of negation, 'hindi' and 'wala', they continue, as though they were adding something perfectly obvious: "unlike 'hindi', 'wala' is followed by a ligatured pronoun". Now this really should be something to be worried about, because you will search in vain in earlier pages for any mention of a "ligatured pronoun", and such items are not likely to be in any learner's grammatical carry-on luggage. Our unfortunate learner is suddenly deprived of the assurances doled out so extensively and unnecessarily elsewhere, and left to work out the meaning from a couple of uncommented examples, before being puzzled still further by being told that "when followed by a noun, 'wala' takes a ligature". These two statements are more or less correct, though not particularly well expressed. But they presuppose that readers know what a ligature is in Tagalog (and other Philippine languages) and what "taking" one involves, and yet they are offered no explanation of the matter and are denied even the usual claim that they "need not worry", or can turn to those long-suffering "Filipino friends" for enlightenment.
The book's most serious shortcomings in grammatical explanation, however, concern what many believe to be the key to mastery of Tagalog: the verb system with its multiple voices (or, in an alternative terminology, "focus"). The authors' approach here is to pick on things that can be made to look, at a pinch, a little like the verb system of European languages and keep quiet about the rest. Many of the issues they leave untouched are, inevitably, exemplified in the dialogues, but they are left either completely unmentioned, or kept gingerly at bay via yet more referrals to those helpful friends.
Overall, for people who are lucky enough to have native-speaker friends or family, and want to have a go at understanding what they say in Tagalog and take a stab at talking back, without any particular ambition to get beyond basic oral communication, this volume is good enough. It could also provide a serviceable text book for, say, an adult evening class taken by a teacher who could substitute his or her own grammatical explanations for those in the text while drawing on the strengths of the general structure and dialogues. But for solo learners who do not have ready access to a patient native speaker or who want to go beyond everyday gist comprehension and formulaic utterances, this book might just do more harm than good, because it merely toys with the real areas of difficulty and manages to obfuscate rather than clarify them in the mind of any reader with an ambition to get beyond the basics.
There is, of course, nothing wrong with elementary language courses. But, like elementary schools, what they teach and how they teach it shouldn't hamper the progress of those who want to go on to more demanding levels. Sadly, anyone who got to the end of this course then wanted take their knowledge of this fascinating language still further might well find they needed to forget most of the grammatical explanations offered them here and start all over again. The Teach Yourself series contains a splendid counter-example of how to get beginners confidently started on a difficult language and at the same time equip them for much more advanced studies if they so choose, in the form of Teach Yourself Korean, by Mark Vincent and Yeon Jaehoon. But that's another language, and maybe, one day, another review.
Good Start.......2007-01-16
This is a really great book and it has a good basis for what a new learner of the language would need, especially someone who is planning on traveling to the Philippines. The only thing that I have a hard time with is how fast they speak on the CDs, but that does make it more like it would be like in a real life situation.
Good Introductory Book.......2006-08-11
Quite a good book to get you started learning your new language! The CDs are very helpful and really give you the edge to learning pronunciation. The only drawback to this book is that it is hard to know the pronunciation for the words not spoken on the CDs.
However, the explanations on the uses of the words and topics are quite helpful and easy to understand. Also there are some good explanations of Tagalog expressions, as well as some explanations of the Pilipino culture.
If you want lots of exercises you might want to get another book in adition to this one. However, they CDs make this book a very good tool in learning the language.
I recommend buying the Hippocrene Standard Dictionary Tagalog-English/English-Tagalog by Carl R. Galves Rubino
Buy just the book, opt out of the cd.......2005-12-21
I think the book is available by itself. Buy just that. I am a native speaker and I bought this for a friend who wanted to learn Tagalog. I then listened to the CD and was appalled, APPALLED, at the butchery. The accents on the CD are ATROCIOUS and you would get laughed off the sidewalks of Manila if you spoke like the people on this CD; the women are shrill and campy and the men speak in an unnatural monotone. Buy the book, which in itself is a good introduction, but find a conversation partner to read the text to you.
Book Description
Learning Thai as easy as 1-2-3
With this book, Thai is attainable for any beginning student. You can use Teach Yourself Thai Complete Course at your own pace or as a supplement to formal courses. This complete course is based on the very latest learning methods and designed to be enjoyable and user-friendly.
Prepared by experts in the language, Teach Yourself Thai begins with the basics and gradually promotes you to a level of smooth and confident communication, including:
- Up-to-date, graded interactive dialogues
- Graded units of culture notes, grammar, and exercises
- Step-by-step guide to pronunciation
- Practical vocabulary
- Regular and irregular verb tables
- Plenty of practice exercises and answers
- Bilingual glossary
Package includes two 60-minute CDs and a book.
Customer Reviews:
For quick learners.......2006-11-30
This program does move very quickly, but one is NOT expected to play the CD straight through for each lesson... there is a lot of reading material between the initial dialogue and the exercises. The writing aspect of the course is GREAT... Thai is not a difficult language to read, and I'm disappointed at how few courses there are that teach you that aspect of it. The tones are covered in the very beginning of the lessons, and they are clearly marked on the transliterations.
As it says right on the front of the book, it "progresses quickly beyond the basics". Therefore, this course might not be the best for those that have a hard time learning new languages (particularly people unfamiliar with tonal languages). But for those who already speak other tonal languages, or are at least familiar with how they work, or even have some thai friends to help you out, this course is very good.
definitely NOT for beginners.......2006-07-28
We tried this out and had great difficulty. The lessons presuppose some knowledge of the language, it seems, as the lessons cruise along way too fast. First given a scenario, then a dialogue, then asked questions....can't possibly keep up. Both of us speak several languages, and learn quickly, but this course didn't help us at all to pick up Thai.
A great package for intermediate users.......2006-03-03
This is a great product for those that already have some background in Thai speaking, and are trying to brush up on the language. This course might be a little more difficult for someone that is just beginning to learn the language. As a beginner myself, I found it very difficult to keep up with the dialogue, but could find it useful for people that already know the basics of Thai.
Good introduction for the vacationer.......2006-02-23
I bought this book to learn a little Thai before taking a vacation in Thailand. A great introduction to the Thai alphabet! Also, I found the phrases and topics covered very useful for my trip. If you are looking to do something besides vacationing, then you might look elsewhere, but this was perfect for our needs. I loved having the CD with the book. They absolutely would not be useful one without the other. Being able to see what I was saying and listen to how to say it was very helpful.
Teach Yourself Thai Complete Audio-pack.......2006-02-18
The book/CD's are quite good. It is an introduction to the Thai language, similar to another pack which I already own.
My only disappointment is that the item was represented to me as an intermediate learning guide to the Thai language. This was via a communication from Amazon saying that as I had purchased Thai for Beginners by Becker, I might find this publication helpful.
I therefore find that I have purchased an item which is of no use to me.
Book Description
Learning Indonesian as easy as 1-2-3
With this book, Indonesian is attainable for any beginning student. You can use Teach Yourself Indonesian Complete Course at your own pace or as a supplement to formal courses. This complete course is based on the very latest learning methods and designed to be enjoyable and user-friendly.
Prepared by experts in the language, Teach Yourself Indonesian begins with the basics and gradually promotes you to a level of smooth and confident communication, including:
- Up-to-date, graded interactive dialogues
- Graded units of culture notes, grammar, and exercises
- Step-by-step guide to pronunciation
- Practical vocabulary
- Regular and irregular verb tables
- Plenty of practice exercises and answers
- Bilingual glossary
Customer Reviews:
A good conversational course with some minor flaws.......2006-04-26
I'm half way through this course and it's pretty easy to use, and the topics and dialogues are relevant and interesting. There is material on the cd's to help you get accustomed to hearing spoken Indonesian, which is great if you live somewhere with very few Indonesian people like I do.
I have two minor criticisms:
1) During the dialog practice there is often not a long enough pause on the cd to allow you to finish saying your part of the exchange. This is not a big deal if you have an ipod and can easily pause and rewind with little trouble. But it's a bit of a hassle when you're using a home stereo and you have to pause it.
2) Sometimes the dialogues contain a couple of words that are not in the vocabulary key for that dialogue, and sometimes not even in the glossary at the back of the book. That has caught me off-guard a few times when I didn't have my dictionary with me.
But all in this is the best introductory course I've seen, and a much more interesting way to start off than using Yohanna Johns's "Bahasa Indonesia" (which looks better for long term serious study).
Great book!.......2006-03-12
This book is very easy to use, being well laid out and organized and introducing vocabulary in manageable pieces throughout each chapter. Another nice thing is that the book alternates 50-50 between formal situations and casual situations so you can become familiar with both styles of the language. So far the book is fun and motivating and makes me want to study much more than my other books do.
An Exceptional Guide to the Indonesian Language.......2005-12-18
To reiterate what a previous reviewer had pointed out, the "Teach Yourself Indonesian Complete Course" includes just the textbook, whereas the "Teach Yourself Indonesian Complete Course Audiopack" includes both the text book and compact discs. Contrary to what Amazon.com suggests, you need to only buy the "Teach Yourself Indonesian Complete Course Audiopack" to get the full benefits of the program.
I purchased the "Teach Yourself Indonesian Complete Course Audiopack" several days ago, and after having had the opportunity to peruse the material for a bit, I must say that I am very impressed with what I have seen thus far. The material is presented in such a way as to make learning Indonesian effectively and effortless.
For example, each chapter begins with a dialogue in Indonesian that pertains to everyday activities, such as eating out or asking for directions. Below the dialogue is a box filled with pertinent vocabulary words from the preceding dialogue. Next is an English translation of the dialogue to ensure that the student fully understands the meaning of the Indonesian dialogue. Succeeding that is a section entitled, "How the language works." Here, grammatical concepts and contexts of the vocabulary words relevant to the dialogue are discussed. Finally, several exercises are included in each chapter to reinforce the lessons taught. Do not worry, the answers are in the back!
The compact discs mesh perfectly with the material in the chapters. Native Indonesian speakers act out the chapter dialogues, thus providing the student with the opportunity to practice their listening skills and learn how to properly speak Indonesian. The speakers on the compact discs clearly enunciate so there is plenty of time for the student to practice their Indonesian out loud if desired.
Overall, the "Teach Yourself Indonesian Complete Course Audiopack" is a wonderful resource for anyone interested in learning Indonesian. As a student of Indonesian myself, I highly recommend this product for its exceptional effectiveness.
Exellent Way to Learn Indonesian.......2005-06-20
This book is very detail & percise. It makes it easy to learn the language with ease. It is written with a manner that is simple to follow. Authors took there time to make sure all of the contents was clear & correct. Step by step instructions to make it easy to learn & understand. I give this book 5 stars & I recommend it to anyone who want to learn Indonesian language very fast & correct.
Real Indonesian and real good!.......2005-02-05
You know, I have been to Indonesia quite a few times, usually on surfing trips with the gang and you get to pick up a few things from what you learn in a phrase book or from the people you hang around in bars with. Well last year I went home with an Indoneisan wife so I decided to go to our local community center to learn a bit of the lingo and this is what they were using. The teacher loved this course in fact she could not praise it enought for its real language and authenticity. I ordered the Cds to go with it to study at home and I'm telling you these make a great course even better. The speaking exercises the get you to memorise and then use a conversation are great. They are real tough going at first but the results you get are great. Thoroughly recommended for anyone going to Indonesia. Grabbing my surf board now...
Book Description
Functional and fun, each course offers full pronunciation guides, grammar summaries, dialogues, cultural notes, vocabulary charts, and irregular verb tables.
Customer Reviews:
Great course.......2007-08-14
I think this is a very good course. The way it combines listening comprehension (CD) with grammar and vocabulary (book) works very well for me.
One of the Best for Learning Basic Cantonese.......2007-04-20
As a Mandarin speaker I found this course extremely easy to use. It is organized very well mixing grammar, vocab and culture sections together. Before I used this, I really struggled to pick up Cantonese tones, because there are more than there are in Mandarin. But after using this I have pretty well got the hang of it after only a week or two. The romanization used here is also the standard used in moat other texts (not that there are many). For the price, there is nothing better, and this will give you a good speaking foundation. Also, the Hong Kong characters are included which helps so you can practice with a native having them read the dialogue with you! These people thought of everything! This is the best Teach Yourself I have used.
For a more thourough but more expensive course, try Dana Bourgeries (Sp? I cant spell french sorry) Cantonese course which is all on cd for the computer.
Nothing better.......2006-12-27
This is the greatest book in the world for learning Cantonese. It not only teaches you how to speak Cantonese, but how to read Chinese. No other book or course can do this. I'm not too fond of the romanization, but seeing as no romanization is based on English, this is at least one of the better (more readable) romanizations. The lessons are logically arranged, and the quizzes are perfectly placed throughout the text, and are worded to actually make you think about what you think you learned. I actually used this book to teach myself beginning/intermediate Cantonese. It took me one year of concentrated effort using mostly this book and occasional attempted conversations with Chinese waitresses. I only wish they had a more advanced follow-up course, covering the all important colloquial expressions -- by that I mean, when you make up new, never-before-heard sentences on your own, even though every word is pronounced perfectly, people can't seem to understand what you are trying to say. That's because, just like in English, there are certain ways to phrase things, and although there can be two or more ways to say something, the unfamiliar constructions will tend to be misunderstood more often than not.
Not too shabby........2006-07-06
This course definitely has its shortcomings (not enough examples, not enough English translation in the audio), but overall it's a good course. The romanization method has been improved since the cassette version and is now the best I've seen. They've also included an English-Cantonese dictionary in the new version. There is a lot of material here and you'll do well if you have a native speaker to practice with.
Accurate romanization of Chinese Characters..........2005-07-20
The authors have a unique romanization scheme to help pronounce Chinese characters in Cantonese with the Roman alphabet letters. Don't look for any Madarin here. In my opinion, their scheme seems more accurate than the Yale Romanization system.
Without an accompanying cassette tape or CD for this book to actually pronounce the Chinese characters in Cantonese, I think it will be very difficult, if not impossible, for someone who does not speak Cantonese at all to ever speak the language right. When I bought this book from Amazon, it did not come with the cassette tape(s).
For me, I can speak Cantonese a little. This helps greatly with this book! Very "broken" or "choppy", but with good pronounciation. My main problem is that I don't know how to associate the sounds with the actual Chinese charaters itself. I bought this book hoping to learn to READ Chinese characters.
The book is excellent for someone who speaks "broken" or "choppy" Cantonese and needs to refresh or improve speaking Cantonese fluently. Most important, you can learn to READ Chinese characters and pronounce each one of them. Progress for me is slow, but the book is all worth it.
It is a delight to try to pronounce the romanization word of a Chinese character and can't get it right. Then, because you forget its pronounciation, the romanization of it reminds you quite accurately. It is so funny and accurate that the romanization of Chinese characters can work...
Book Description
Thriller in Manila? Teach yourself Tagalog!
With Teach Yourself it's possible for virtually anyone to learn and experience the languages of the world, from Afrikaans to Zulu; Ancient Greek to Modern Persian; Beginner's Latin to Biblical Hebrew. Follow any of the
Teach Yourself Language Courses at your own pace or use them as a supplement to formal courses. These complete courses are professionally designed for self-guided study, making them one of the most enjoyable and easy to use language courses you can find.
Prepared by experts in the language, each course begins with the basics and gradually promotes the student to a level of smooth and confident communication, including:
- Step-by-step guide to pronunciation and grammar
- Regular and irregular verb tables
- Plenty of practice exercises and answers
- Practical vocabulary and a bilingual glossary
- Clear, uncluttered, and user-friendly layout
- An exploration of the culture
- And much more
Customer Reviews:
Wrong wrong wrong.......2004-03-12
May be a good book but this ISBN is not shipped with cd's as stated here and the shipped copy was published in 2003.
McGraw-Hill sent me an email saying that this ISBN is shipped with two cd's and cost $24.95 which is what Amazon says is the retail price.
I recommend you buy from McGraw and get the cd's.
Book Description
Speak with a Sikh. Teach yourself Panjabi!
With Teach Yourself it's possible for virtually anyone to learn and experience the languages of the world, from Afrikaans to Zulu; Ancient Greek to Modern Persian; Beginner's Latin to Biblical Hebrew. Follow any of the
Teach Yourself Language Courses Audiopackages at your own pace or use them as a supplement to formal courses. These complete courses are professionally designed for self-guided study, making them one of the most enjoyable and easy to use language courses you can find. Audiopackages include an instructional paperback book and two companion 60-minute audio CDs.
Prepared by experts in the language, each course begins with the basics and gradually promotes the student to a level of smooth and confident communication, including:
- Step-by-step guide to pronunciation and grammar
- Regular and irregular verb tables
- Plenty of practice exercises and answers
- Practical vocabulary and a bilingual glossary
- Clear, uncluttered, and user-friendly layout
- An exploration of the culture
- And much more
Customer Reviews:
It's terrible.......2007-04-18
The reading exercises, at the crucial beginning, do not match the order of the text that you would expect to follow accordingly. It is not user friendly. It is absolutely terrible if you want to learn to speak the language. It may only be useful if you are in a classroom with a professor.
Learning a new language is not easy. .......2007-03-10
This is not for the faint of heart. I recommend this book to you if you will devote time to learning the language, in all it's glory. (That means, the good, the bad, the easy, and the tough.) This book is wonderful because it teaches everything in the language and how to build sentences CORRECTLY! The hardest thing for me was learning the way in which the sentence is built. This book does a very good job in explaining (even if you do have to go back and read it 10 times) and not only that, but it's the only teach yourself course I've seen that has ample testing at the end of the chapter (although it's not extremely extensive testing). I recommend buying this book with the CD'S since a) it's only a few more dollars and b) when you're driving in your car you can learn the punjabi script (the letters) and exactly how it sounds. You're at a loss without the CD'S since you have no idea how to SAY it even if you can READ it.
Now aside from this book, if you're really interested in learning Punjabi, consider learning Spanish first. There is a reason for this, and it is that scientists have found that people who speak Spanish learn Punjabi easier than English, and those who speak Punjabi learn Spanish easier than English. So therefore those that know English would do better to learn the easier New Language first (Spanish), then dive into the murky waters of Punjabi.
If you are interested in Punjabi for when you get to India, I highly highly highly advise you to learn Hindi as well. No way, you say? Too much work? Well, most of northern India speaks Hindi, not Punjabi. Not only that, but why not do it? You can have bragging rights for speaking three languages- since Hindi and Punjabi are extremely close. Mainly the differences are a few words (like te (the Punjabi word 'and') and aur (the hindi word for 'and'). And you'll open new worlds with being able to read signs in both Hindi and Punjabi. (And everyone will be saying, "Decko! veh GOREE larkee hai!" 'Look that's a white girl!' because you will surprise the crap out of them with your knowledge!)
And one more reason to learn Hindi as well? There are a whole heck of a lot more book that teach Hindi. It's a much more well-known language than Punjabi is. It's awful to want to learn so much but have noone and nothing to teach you. Good luck and I hope you do great in this language!
it's ok.......2007-02-03
There are a few problems, which some of the other reviewers mentioned -- like that the content is somewhat disorganized, and that the Roman transliteration is eventually phased out completely to use only Gurmukhi (my fiance, who is Punjabi, told me just to focus on learning how to speak it but I explained to him that I had to learn Gurmukhi in order to finish the book).
They mention the tonality of Punjabi in a somewhat passing fashion; that should be given more attention. As a linguist especially I understand just how important this aspect is in a tonal language -- it's very important to grasp it at some level, at least, if you don't want to become completely frustrated.
But despite the drawbacks I wasn't disappointed like some of the other reviewers here. The book is chock-full of information; the main problem, as I mentioned before, is that it's somewhat poorly organized. I did like the CDs; there are so few resources available, offline at least, for listening to Punjabi that I found them very useful.
Overall I would say that if you would like to learn Punjabi, go ahead and make the purchase.
Please don't buy this if you're a beginner.......2006-03-10
This book is extremely difficult to follow if you are an absolute beginner. If you have prior knowledge of the punjabi language, then it's useful. But, if you're like me, then this book will be a complete waste of time and money. The dictionary is written in Gurmukhi, so you can't even look up a word in english to find the phonetic pronunciation in punjabi. I regret making this purchase.
Not very good.......2006-02-17
It looks like this course was initially written by someone who knows the language and then reworked by someone who does not. It is not consistent, there are overlaps, and contradictions. It is very difficult to follow and has left me with too many unanswered questions. I am now using another book, actually two other courses. I would not recommend this course to anyone.
Book Description
Checking into Ho Chi Min City? Teach yourself Vietnamese!
With Teach Yourself it's possible for virtually anyone to learn and experience the languages of the world, from Afrikaans to Zulu; Ancient Greek to Modern Persian; Beginner's Latin to Biblical Hebrew. Follow any of the
Teach Yourself Language Courses Audiopackages at your own pace or use them as a supplement to formal courses. These complete courses are professionally designed for self-guided study, making them one of the most enjoyable and easy to use language courses you can find. Audiopackages include an instructional paperback book and two companion 60-minute audio CDs.
Prepared by experts in the language, each course begins with the basics and gradually promotes the student to a level of smooth and confident communication, including:
- Step-by-step guide to pronunciation and grammar
- Regular and irregular verb tables
- Plenty of practice exercises and answers
- Practical vocabulary and a bilingual glossary
- Clear, uncluttered, and user-friendly layout
- An exploration of the culture
- And much more
Customer Reviews:
Not for beginers.......2007-08-24
I speak English, German and a bit of Spanish. I am engaged to marry a Vietnamese woman. I bought this course when we first started dating to try and pick up a few phrases. I found that it is not made for a total beginner. It is a great supplement to the basic Pimsleur course, but do not expect to learn much from this course alone.
Teach Yourself Vietmnamese.......2007-04-24
CD starts off very advanced. Daunting. I'll set this packet aside until I have mastered other the self-help materials I ordered.
Teach Youself Vietnamese.......2007-03-11
I found this book very frustrating to use. The vocabulary was not reviewed prior to the very quick paced converstions, so it was hard to work on proper pronunciation. The chapters did not have very practical topics (You are a secretary, aren't you?, Do you want to see a photograph of my family?, Do you still work in a hotel? Do you still have a temperature?). I found Vietnamese for Beginners by Jake Catlett and Huong Nguyen to be much more worthwhile. It has a lot of practical vocabulary which is slowly pronounced prior to the conversations. In addition, the chapters teach things I can actually see myself needing to know (Greetings, yes/no questions, common nouns, countries, action verbs, days of the week/month/year, food/drink, time, daily habits, clothing, colors,etc.)when we visit the country.
underrated.......2006-06-26
this actually was the first book i started with in 2000 and to be fair i would say it is a very good course. It isnt a complete course as it advertises itself to be but then again no vietnamese language course is "complete". The pronuciation section on the CD is very good like the other post said you have to go through it hundreds of times before you pick it up but the is the sacrifice you have to make towards mastery of the tones. As an introduction to the language it is good, just realize that it is supplemental and you should be getting your hands on every course you can buy borrow or find in order to study viet.
Poorly designed and proofread course.......2006-05-26
With its prohibitive tone distinctions, large number of vocals and alien consonants, Vietnamese is one of the most difficult languages to learn in the world. Unfortunately, this course does a very poor job with conveying how the language is to be spoken, and similar to many other DIY language courses, the exercises at the end of each lesson are thrown in haphazardly and have little relation to the lesson they accompany.
The course begins with an introduction to the tones. They are not given names (low falling, glottal stop, mid rising, et.c.) on the cd or any explanation of their differences. In fact, at first listen they sound pretty much the same and only after rewinding the tape or skipping back on the cd hundreds of times will you eventually nail them. Next comes a list of the vietnamese vocals, consonants and diphtongs. On the CD, they are spoken in sequence (fast!) by a number of native speakers of different age and sex. This is actually a good way of getting the gist of the relative pitch of the tones, but for the actual pronounciation, just saying a bunch of morphs in sequence does little for someone without a trained ear. No examples are given of similar sounds in languages more commonly known to the average user of the course (like English, German or French).
Once (or rather, if) you have gotten past the gruelling 10-minute introduction track, you go on to the dialogues themselves. The speakers all speak in a normal conversational tempo, which in vietnamese terms means faster than you can possibly pick up the distinctions. Only by deliberate analysis of individual words using a computer and headphones will you come anywhere near learning the language. Subsequent dialogues only get worse, and sometimes use words and phrases not in the vocabulary provided for each lesson or the dictionary at the back of the book. There is a lot of background noise on the recordings, using headphones you can hear typing, muffled voices, computer fans, et.c. At the end of each dialogue, you'll be asked to answer some questions ("how did the speaker introduce Ms. Phuong?"), but the time given you to answer the questions is next to none and it is downright impossible for someone just learning the language to mimic the native speakers using the recordings provided.
The exercises at the back of each lesson seem to have been tacked on without much effort. They use little of the vocabulary of each lesson and give little insight into the grammar. The solutions for the exercises at the back of the book are poorly organized and hard to read, and sometimes don't match the exercises at all.
All in all, this was a poor purchase and I felt I gained little for the hard work I put into it. As a student of mandarin and someone fairly good at mimicking speech patterns, accents and languages, I still found it next to impossible to understand and learn Vietnamese from this course. My verdict: do not buy.
Customer Reviews:
The new Teach Yourself Indonesian.......2003-10-21
The reviewer before me is obviously unaware that there is already a new version of Teach Yourself Indonesian but you can only get it through Amazon.co.uk. (ISBN: 0340847549) That's where I got mine. I have the old one too, which is very outdated. I was diescouraged to use the old one for this reason. The new one is great! It had a totally dialogue based approach, realy clear explanations for the grammar and notes about culture, language and some really useful info on how to get the most out of learning languages! I am only part of the way through it, but I am enjoying it a lot, well as much as anyone can enjoy a language book...! What strikes me most is how immediately useful the language in this book is. Also, my Indonesian Indonesian friend who is helping me to work through the dilaogues and say them properly said the language in the book was so realistic. There's even a section on Jakarta slang in one of the units! By the way, if you don't have an Indonesian on hand to study with you should definitely consider getting tapes with the book Even though the book itself is completely self contained, and you can learn Indonesian from that alone, you need to hear a language spoken as a real boost to learning. Can't wait to try out my Indonesian next time I go out there...
lousy.......2001-08-18
I'm amazed that this skimpy and superficial work didn't go out of print years ago, on merit. Oh well, I can say "The snake is poisonous." I wish I could say "The book is worthless." Then I would have learned something I could use.
A good grammar book for beginners.......2000-10-21
I read this book because my boyfriend wanted to learn my language. I have to say that the book will really be helpful for beginners because the grammar sections (around chapter 4 to 10) is very clear and easy to understand. However, as an Indonesian, I must say that many of the words in the dictionary/vocabulary section are quite outdated - modern Indonesian hardly recognize some of the words anymore ;-) and some grammar explanations can be a little bit too simplified.
A good, academic approach for the serious student........2000-10-21
This is a traditional style language learning manual. If you like an academic approach to learning then you will like this but I am not sure that it is well suited to those who wish to gain a useful knowledge in a short time for a trip. I do think that it is good for presenting grammar and structure to students who are serious about learning the language properly, maybe to read books and newspapers rather than to say just "Hello" and "Do you sell disposable razors". That this is an older text is apparant from reading the first couple of chapters which present words such as "hunter", "poisonous" and "tiger", which, although not immediately useful, are in keeping with the type of language learning approach of 20-30 years ago (ie with the focus being on grammar rather than vocabulary). A modern approach begins with useful expressions and high frequency words in keeping with current language trends. I personally like this book and the way it presents structure in a no nonsense academic way, but I am a linguist. For the non-linguist it may seem a little dull or hard-going. There is a high degree of straight learning (ie with no games or "fun" activities) that needs to go on to progress through each chapter which means that the responsibility to learn is entirely with the student. Explanations are full and clear but not unnecessarily overblown. The pronunciation section in chapter one is also very clear. I think that this would be great used in conjunction with a phrase book with tapes to get grammar as well as vocabulary. But if you want an immediate knowledge for use on your trip, you may be disappointed with this book.
A Good Intro to Indonesian.......1999-09-17
Indonesian is among the world's easiest languages to learn, with phonetic pronunciation, no tenses or pluralization, no gender, and a very simple grammar. I found i was able to begin writing ,speaking in Indonesian quickly, thus making u want to learn at a faster rate. This book focuses on vocabulary, grammar structure, i felt it was easy to follow. I only wished it had more games and reading passages.
If u decide to buy this book, it is also good to get a modern dictionary, for updated words and phrases.
Average customer rating:
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Teach Yourself Vietnamese (Teach Yourself Complete Courses)
Dana Healy
Manufacturer: Teach Yourself Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD
 Phrasebooks - General
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ASIN: 034086043X |
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