Routledge Colloquials offer the widest available range of language-learning book and cassette packages. Beginner or intermediate, Colloquials guide the learner through his or her language of choice -- and the flexible format makes it possible to continue learning while jogging, driving to work, or relating at home.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By Sarah Davies
Format:Hardcover
This course is quite good: mostly clearly-presented, good accompanying audio, mostly not too dull (though some of the chapters are absolute shockers), and it largely gets the thumbs up from native speakers. I did find, though, that as it's trying to cover a lot of ground in a short space, it tends to move on quite fast without enough systematic practice of new structures or vocabulary, so after about five units I felt the need to buy an additional beginners book in Slovenia to help embed the basics.
If you have the choice of the complete course (ie with CDs/tapes) or just the book, get the complete course: since word-stress in Slovene isn't predictable, and the book doesn't use any symbols to show where the stress falls, you can end up sounding very funny indeed if you haven't heard the words for yourself.
If you have the choice of the complete course (ie with CDs/tapes) or just the book, get the complete course: since word-stress in Slovene isn't predictable, and the book doesn't use any symbols to show where the stress falls, you can end up sounding very funny indeed if you haven't heard the words for yourself.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.0 out of 5 stars
4 reviews
34 of 36 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
simply fantastic
28 Nov 1999
By Piffer Daniela
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
I started learning Slovene 3 years ago ( when I was 13)as self-taught girl and I have a lot of slovene books ( I mean grammar books)but I think this is the best one I own. Here there are 13 chapters and the book talk about an English man,Robert, who goes to Slovenia to work there for a year. Each chapter is about a different situation in Robert's life and at the end of each chapter there is the vocabulary, language points, civilization and grammar notes with a lot of examples and exercises.At the end of the book there are the translations of the dialogs, the solutions of the exercises and a 22-pages glossary. The cassettes are great too:they are very very useful for the pronounciation. The only problem (but it's only for the students who are not english)is that this book is written only in English so quite difficult. However this book is better done than any other Italian or German one.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Useless
8 May 2006
By Liam
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
I'm sad to say that this course will be of no use to those wanting to learn Slovene. The aim of this review is to illustrate its shortcomings and suggest improvements that could be made.
Problem 1 - no accents
This problem alone is enough to render the book almost useless. In Slovene, any syllable of a word may be stressed. Get it wrong and you may end up saying a completely different word. This is especially evident in the case of the letter 'e', representing different sounds in Slovene. Apart from being stressed or unstressed, it can be an open e or a closed e. It might also be a schwa sound, the sound found in words such as English 'the'. In other words, how will you pronounce the common word 'vecer' (evening)? There are eight(!) options available... And what about the word 'svet'? Is it the Slovene word for 'holy' or for 'advice'? Almost all courses and books on Slovene make use of accents to indicate the pronunciation, since it is impossible to predict. The only two exceptions are this book and Teach Yourself Slovene by the same author. I never thought I'd say a language course in which you will have to guess the pronunciation of each and every word.
Problem 2 - Very limited vocabulary
The reviewer Gwilym mentioned how very limited the vocabulary of this course is compared to Colloquial Czech. The same goes for almost all the Colloquial courses on Slavic languages. Colloquial Czech, Colloquial Ukrainian, Colloquial Bulgarian, Colloquial Slovak, Colloquial Russian are all excellent courses with a well-suited vocabulary. Colloquial Serbian is decent enough. Only Colloquial Polish and Colloquial Croatian are a bit off the mark and then Colloquial Slovene that cannot even be compared to the other courses.
So only 1 star to this course, that star is for a decent (but not great) explanation of the grammar. Two stars off for the very limited vocabulary and two more for the lack of accents.
I'm glad that Routledge offers many excellent courses in Slavic languages and I can only hope that they will one day publish a Slovene course worhty of their reputation.
Problem 1 - no accents
This problem alone is enough to render the book almost useless. In Slovene, any syllable of a word may be stressed. Get it wrong and you may end up saying a completely different word. This is especially evident in the case of the letter 'e', representing different sounds in Slovene. Apart from being stressed or unstressed, it can be an open e or a closed e. It might also be a schwa sound, the sound found in words such as English 'the'. In other words, how will you pronounce the common word 'vecer' (evening)? There are eight(!) options available... And what about the word 'svet'? Is it the Slovene word for 'holy' or for 'advice'? Almost all courses and books on Slovene make use of accents to indicate the pronunciation, since it is impossible to predict. The only two exceptions are this book and Teach Yourself Slovene by the same author. I never thought I'd say a language course in which you will have to guess the pronunciation of each and every word.
Problem 2 - Very limited vocabulary
The reviewer Gwilym mentioned how very limited the vocabulary of this course is compared to Colloquial Czech. The same goes for almost all the Colloquial courses on Slavic languages. Colloquial Czech, Colloquial Ukrainian, Colloquial Bulgarian, Colloquial Slovak, Colloquial Russian are all excellent courses with a well-suited vocabulary. Colloquial Serbian is decent enough. Only Colloquial Polish and Colloquial Croatian are a bit off the mark and then Colloquial Slovene that cannot even be compared to the other courses.
So only 1 star to this course, that star is for a decent (but not great) explanation of the grammar. Two stars off for the very limited vocabulary and two more for the lack of accents.
I'm glad that Routledge offers many excellent courses in Slavic languages and I can only hope that they will one day publish a Slovene course worhty of their reputation.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great course
2 Nov 2002
By A Customer
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
This language course is the best for the Slovene language that I know. The dialogues depict everyday situations and sound very natural.
The only little drawback is that there are no indications of pronounciation (accent). Therefor for correct pronouncion the cassettes are a must.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
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