Colloquial Urdu
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Product Description
Product Description
ISBN 9780415135405 does not include CDs.
Colloquial Urdu is easy to use and completely up to date! Written by experienced teachers for self-study or class use, the course offers you a step by step approach to written and spoken Urdu. No prior knowledge of the language is required.
What makes Colloquial Urdu your best choice in personal language learning?
- interactive – lots of exercises for regular practice
- clear – concise grammar notes
- practical – useful vocabulary and pronunciation guide
- complete – including answer key and special reference section
By the end of this rewarding course you will be able to communicate confidently and effectively in Urdu in a broad range of everyday situations.
These CDs, recorded by native speakers, are an invaluable component of the Colloquial course. They feature dialogues and texts from the book, and lots of interactive exercises to help you perfect your pronunciation and listening skills.
Inside This Book
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The two best Urdu courses currently available are this one and 'Teach Yourself Complete Urdu'. They are both excellent, but in different ways, so I'll make some comparisons to help you choose. I'll refer to 'Teach Yourself Complete Urdu' as 'TY' and 'Colloquial Urdu' as 'CU'.
Audio material
-------------------
Both courses come with CDs containing recordings of the dialogues, and much additional audio material. Be careful when ordering - it's not always clear from the product information whether you're ordering the book, or the CDs, or the pack containing both.
The TY audio material is much better - the actors really do act, and the dialogues flow well. Some of the actors in CU speak in a halting, disconnected way, which makes it hard to get a grip on how a sentence should flow. If you decide to buy CU, beware - the old-style plastic presentation box packaging, containing book and CDs, is hopeless inadequate because the CDs become detached from their anchor points and rattle around in the packaging, which means that they can get so scratched as to be unplayable.
Dialogues
-------------
The TY dialogues are far more useful and practical, dealing with a wide range of everyday situations. The CU dialogues are good, but somewhat wayward in their choice of subject matter.
Writing Urdu
----------------
If you want to learn just to speak Urdu, without learning to write, then TY is not for you, because later lessons do not contain transliteration of the dialogues, and you are left to fend for yourself with the Urdu script. You would do better with CU, where everything in the lessons is in transliteration, and the Urdu script versions of the dialogues are in an appendix at the back (in ridiculously tiny font - anyone over 45 who doesn't have a recently prescribed pair of reading glasses will struggle to read them). The Urdu script in TY is also very small and sometimes indistinct. Both TY and CU have good sections on learning Urdu script, but in CU these sections are totally divorced from the main body of the course. You will get far more practice in the script, and become far more fluent in it, if you opt for TY.
Grammar explanations
------------------------------
TY is friendlier here, with easy to follow, full and lucid explanations of all grammatical points. CU is very good but uses some odd terminology and could be more lucid when explaining some of the more difficult points. TY provides fuller tabulation of grammatical forms in each lesson.
Transliteration
-------------------
I definitely prefer the CU transliteration system, but both are absolutely consistent and clear, and it's very much a personal matter - some people may prefer the TY system.
Summary
-------------
The choice of course depends very much on whether you want to learn the script. If you don't, if you just want to learn to speak Urdu, then CU is the best choice. If you want to learn the script, then go for TY. Both courses are excellent in their different ways, despite any caveats above.
Audio material
-------------------
Both courses come with CDs containing recordings of the dialogues, and much additional audio material. Be careful when ordering - it's not always clear from the product information whether you're ordering the book, or the CDs, or the pack containing both.
The TY audio material is much better - the actors really do act, and the dialogues flow well. Some of the actors in CU speak in a halting, disconnected way, which makes it hard to get a grip on how a sentence should flow. If you decide to buy CU, beware - the old-style plastic presentation box packaging, containing book and CDs, is hopeless inadequate because the CDs become detached from their anchor points and rattle around in the packaging, which means that they can get so scratched as to be unplayable.
Dialogues
-------------
The TY dialogues are far more useful and practical, dealing with a wide range of everyday situations. The CU dialogues are good, but somewhat wayward in their choice of subject matter.
Writing Urdu
----------------
If you want to learn just to speak Urdu, without learning to write, then TY is not for you, because later lessons do not contain transliteration of the dialogues, and you are left to fend for yourself with the Urdu script. You would do better with CU, where everything in the lessons is in transliteration, and the Urdu script versions of the dialogues are in an appendix at the back (in ridiculously tiny font - anyone over 45 who doesn't have a recently prescribed pair of reading glasses will struggle to read them). The Urdu script in TY is also very small and sometimes indistinct. Both TY and CU have good sections on learning Urdu script, but in CU these sections are totally divorced from the main body of the course. You will get far more practice in the script, and become far more fluent in it, if you opt for TY.
Grammar explanations
------------------------------
TY is friendlier here, with easy to follow, full and lucid explanations of all grammatical points. CU is very good but uses some odd terminology and could be more lucid when explaining some of the more difficult points. TY provides fuller tabulation of grammatical forms in each lesson.
Transliteration
-------------------
I definitely prefer the CU transliteration system, but both are absolutely consistent and clear, and it's very much a personal matter - some people may prefer the TY system.
Summary
-------------
The choice of course depends very much on whether you want to learn the script. If you don't, if you just want to learn to speak Urdu, then CU is the best choice. If you want to learn the script, then go for TY. Both courses are excellent in their different ways, despite any caveats above.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The two best Urdu courses currently available are this one and 'Teach Yourself Complete Urdu'. They are both excellent, but in different ways, so I'll make some comparisons to help you choose. I'll refer to 'Teach Yourself Complete Urdu' as 'TY' and 'Colloquial Urdu' as 'CU'.
Audio material
-------------------
Both courses come with CDs containing recordings of the dialogues, and much additional audio material. Be careful when ordering - it's not always clear from the product information whether you're ordering the book, or the CDs, or the pack containing both.
The TY audio material is much better - the actors really do act, and the dialogues flow well. Some of the actors in CU speak in a halting, disconnected way, which makes it hard to get a grip on how a sentence should flow. If you decide to buy CU, beware - the old-style plastic presentation box packaging, containing book and CDs, is hopeless inadequate because the CDs become detached from their anchor points and rattle around in the packaging, which means that they can get so scratched as to be unplayable.
Dialogues
-------------
The TY dialogues are far more useful and practical, dealing with a wide range of everyday situations. The CU dialogues are good, but somewhat wayward in their choice of subject matter.
Writing Urdu
----------------
If you want to learn just to speak Urdu, without learning to write, then TY is not for you, because later lessons do not contain transliteration of the dialogues, and you are left to fend for yourself with the Urdu script. You would do better with CU, where everything in the lessons is in transliteration, and the Urdu script versions of the dialogues are in an appendix at the back (in ridiculously tiny font - anyone over 45 who doesn't have a recently prescribed pair of reading glasses will struggle to read them). The Urdu script in TY is also very small and sometimes indistinct. Both TY and CU have good sections on learning Urdu script, but in CU these sections are totally divorced from the main body of the course. You will get far more practice in the script, and become far more fluent in it, if you opt for TY.
Grammar explanations
------------------------------
TY is friendlier here, with easy to follow, full and lucid explanations of all grammatical points. CU is very good but uses some odd terminology and could be more lucid when explaining some of the more difficult points. TY provides fuller tabulation of grammatical forms in each lesson.
Transliteration
-------------------
I definitely prefer the CU transliteration system, but both are absolutely consistent and clear, and it's very much a personal matter - some people may prefer the TY system.
Summary
-------------
The choice of course depends very much on whether you want to learn the script. If you don't, if you just want to learn to speak Urdu, then CU is the best choice. If you want to learn the script, then go for TY. Both courses are excellent in their different ways, despite any caveats above.
Audio material
-------------------
Both courses come with CDs containing recordings of the dialogues, and much additional audio material. Be careful when ordering - it's not always clear from the product information whether you're ordering the book, or the CDs, or the pack containing both.
The TY audio material is much better - the actors really do act, and the dialogues flow well. Some of the actors in CU speak in a halting, disconnected way, which makes it hard to get a grip on how a sentence should flow. If you decide to buy CU, beware - the old-style plastic presentation box packaging, containing book and CDs, is hopeless inadequate because the CDs become detached from their anchor points and rattle around in the packaging, which means that they can get so scratched as to be unplayable.
Dialogues
-------------
The TY dialogues are far more useful and practical, dealing with a wide range of everyday situations. The CU dialogues are good, but somewhat wayward in their choice of subject matter.
Writing Urdu
----------------
If you want to learn just to speak Urdu, without learning to write, then TY is not for you, because later lessons do not contain transliteration of the dialogues, and you are left to fend for yourself with the Urdu script. You would do better with CU, where everything in the lessons is in transliteration, and the Urdu script versions of the dialogues are in an appendix at the back (in ridiculously tiny font - anyone over 45 who doesn't have a recently prescribed pair of reading glasses will struggle to read them). The Urdu script in TY is also very small and sometimes indistinct. Both TY and CU have good sections on learning Urdu script, but in CU these sections are totally divorced from the main body of the course. You will get far more practice in the script, and become far more fluent in it, if you opt for TY.
Grammar explanations
------------------------------
TY is friendlier here, with easy to follow, full and lucid explanations of all grammatical points. CU is very good but uses some odd terminology and could be more lucid when explaining some of the more difficult points. TY provides fuller tabulation of grammatical forms in each lesson.
Transliteration
-------------------
I definitely prefer the CU transliteration system, but both are absolutely consistent and clear, and it's very much a personal matter - some people may prefer the TY system.
Summary
-------------
The choice of course depends very much on whether you want to learn the script. If you don't, if you just want to learn to speak Urdu, then CU is the best choice. If you want to learn the script, then go for TY. Both courses are excellent in their different ways, despite any caveats above.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3 reviews
19 of 20 people found the following review helpful
hmmmm...
12 Nov 2003
Format:Paperback
This book is fine, a pretty hum-drum outfit like any other 'teach yourself' book. It's pretty good. However, I'm writing this review to let people know that the 'handwriting units' are utterly useless, unless you actually wanted to learn an incomplete alphabet in a childish scrawl. Also, the printed nasta'liq is very tiny, spidery and hard to read. If you have no previous knowledge of Arabic or a derived script, I cannot imagine how you will manage.
I recommend 'Urdu Grammar' by Ruth Laila Schmidt.
I recommend 'Urdu Grammar' by Ruth Laila Schmidt.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
disappointing
12 May 2009
Format:Paperback
This book is really a knock-off of the author's 'Colloquial Hindi'. Of course the two languages do share a vast vocabulary and grammar in common, but what it really means here is that if you already have one of these books (the Hindi would be the better one to get) you really don't need the other. The dialogues, grammar and exercises are all in a phonetic transcription and only the dialogues (in the back of the book) are given in the nastaliq script. The printing of this beautiful and ornately detailed script is so tiny that it is literally necessary to use a magnifying lens to read it.
Far too little of everything
25 Aug 2011
Format:Paperback
While the Colloquial course enjoy a good reputation for its courses in European languages, the courses for Asian languages are almost all of far lower quality. The Arabic courses, Colloquial Persian, Colloquial Tamil, Colloquial Punjabi, Colloquial Vietnamese, and Colloquial Hindi are all much shorter and more rudimentary than the average European language course. Unfortunately, Colloquial Urdu is no exception.
The main problem with this course is simple, far too little content. This leads to two consequences:
a. the grammar descriptions are too short. Colloquial courses for almost all European languages include a complete overview of the main grammatical points (of course not always in great detail, but still) but this course gives offers very little for those interested in Urdu.
b. the vocabulary is a joke. For most other Colloquial courses, the vocabulary you learn in the course is somewhere around 1400-1600 words. Many courses include over 2000 words (Colloquial Italian, Icelandic, Albanian, Czech, Russian, Spanish of Latin America and probably others as well). This course, in sharp contrast, doesn't even include 800 words, and that's far too little for a course calling itself a "complete" language course.
So only half of the vocabulary found in other Colloquial courses and hardly any help at all with the grammar. That's not good enough.
The main problem with this course is simple, far too little content. This leads to two consequences:
a. the grammar descriptions are too short. Colloquial courses for almost all European languages include a complete overview of the main grammatical points (of course not always in great detail, but still) but this course gives offers very little for those interested in Urdu.
b. the vocabulary is a joke. For most other Colloquial courses, the vocabulary you learn in the course is somewhere around 1400-1600 words. Many courses include over 2000 words (Colloquial Italian, Icelandic, Albanian, Czech, Russian, Spanish of Latin America and probably others as well). This course, in sharp contrast, doesn't even include 800 words, and that's far too little for a course calling itself a "complete" language course.
So only half of the vocabulary found in other Colloquial courses and hardly any help at all with the grammar. That's not good enough.
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