Amazon.co.uk: Afrikaans (Teach Yourself Languages S.): Helena van Schalkwyk: Books

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Product Description

Synopsis
This book offers an introduction to Afrikaans for the student with no previous knowledge of the language, especially those who wish to study at home. Grammar, syntax and vocabulary are introduced in stages, and exercises are provided. There is also a guide to pronunciation.

Customer Reviews

3 Reviews

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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

A great start, 20 Feb 2003

By A Customer

This is very clear and well structured introduction. The big pluses for me include the gradual ramp up in difficulty and the varitry of grammatical exercises. I actually enjoyed it! It is a portable book, but you definetly need a dictionary if you are going to expand your vocabulary.
The major weakness is not having a CDROM or tape accompanying this. The pronumciation guide (half inched from Readers Digest) does not even start to cover the peculiarly gutteral Afrikaans, and after the first 5 or 6 chapters you feel as if you are developing bad habits that you have no way of correcting. I would recommend the book, but I would strongly suggest for you to get the CDROM on Teach Yourself Afrikaans (Don't touch the other one - TalkNow) which I have borrowed and is utter rubbish.

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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

Teaching Myself Afrikaans!, 2 Aug 1999

By A Customer

After scanning many book shops for an aid to learning Afrikaans I was very glad to purchase such an easily accessible book. The learning curve of the chapters is of a moderate pace and by about 15 chapters in you will, if you've followed the tests correctly, begin to easily recognise the Afrikaans instructions and text. My only gripe was that although the book only tries to give you a basic start within the language the pronunciation guide needs to be made a lot clearer. For the first couple of chapters the words are basic and quite easy, but after awhile you'll find yourself being a little uncertain as to whether or not what you think the word/sentence sounds like is actually what it should. The book has a fairly basic vocab section but no section giving Afrikaans verbs in a list, this would be really useful. Also the lack of maybe producing an accompanying audio cassette is a definite consideration. All in all the book does do what it claims and I have been able to complete most of the unit tests without much difficulty. I would recommend the book but would say that it needs to be used in conjuction with audio and a good English/Afrikaans dictionary to get the most benefit.

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Useful course, 9 Aug 2004

By A Customer

A very useful book, but itreally would help if there was a tape or CD included. An excellent introduction to Afrikaans for anyone moving to, or visiting South Africa.

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