Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent for the serious student, 20 Mar 2006
Thhis isn't for the casual learner or traveller wanting to learn some basic phrases.When I studied Hindi as part of my MA, this book was the coursebook. It is detailed, thorough, and good fun (especially towards the end, when you get to learn lyrics from Hindi film songs). You're expected to learn the script after the first few units - but this is tremendously helpful once you actually get out to India. The exercises are well thought out, and you get the answers at the back. If you complete the exercises, you're pretty much guaranteed an excellent understanding of "shuddh", or pure, Hindi - although NB that for most Indians Hindi is not their first language, and they speak a subset of what you'll learn here. It's so much fun being able to chat to Indians in Hindi - I can't emphasise enough how worthwhile it is. I've checked out many of the other books - this is definitely the most comprehensive and complete one, although you could also consider some of the online learning systems as an alternative.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The best available for committed students, 7 Feb 2006
Just want to disagree with the majority of reviews for this book, which seem to suggest that it's not very good. This is undoubtedly the best "teach yourself" guide I've used - and I think I have them all! The problem is, you need to know how to read and write hindi to get the most out of it. I'd therefore recommend this book to students who already have a basic grasp of script and grammar, and want to leap ahead in colloquial conversation. I studied Hindi for 6 months out in India - and this was the course book of choice, as the story format worked really well - and the grammar's pulled through the conversation to make it interesting and more accessible. This is a long-term friend rather than a quick-fix though - so only consider this if you're serious about learning the language and committing to the Devangari script.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent title, 7 May 2007
I recently purchased this book due to an upcoming trip to India that I plan. Initially, I mainly chose this over other similar titles due to it's good reviews. Until now I had never really worked with any books of this sort (self-teaching) and was rather wondering about the quality of it and whether or not I was going to be able to get something truly useful out of it.
Once the title arrived, I was very possitively surprised to find out how well organized and useful the layout was. I made considerable progress in understanding the basic structure of the language in less than 2 hours and even found myself capable of compiling simple yet very useful every-day sentences of my own with the vocabulary I was provided with. I expected to find a number of evident 'holes' in the covering of grammatical subjects (as it is common for books of this sort to offer a quick fix rather than a well explained base of information) although I was time and again proved wrong as the explanations were exceptionally thorough and most of the time I never even felt the need to review previous material, feeling confident of what was already covered so far and meeting the challenges ahead without frustration but with fruitful putting to practice of what I already knew in theory.
The book offers a large number of well-thought-out excercises, containing the answers in the back. It also has an apendix glossary of all the vocabulary entries it has provided throughout the courses and it has indexes for both English-Hindi and Hindi-English for easier reference. In the beginning of the book, before the courses themselves begin, the author takes the time to discuss the pronounciation and characteristics of each of the symbols of the Devanagari script (the script Hindi is written in). Also, he continues to offer transliteration in the romanized script for every Hindi word or text you find for about 5 full courses, allowing you to slowly familiarize yourself with the alphabet.
Overall, I think this book provides the English speaker with everything needed to easily, yet successfully progress and learn how to effortlessly read, speak and write Hindi, also accompanied by a very useful vocabulary covering pretty much most possible subjects of everyday conversation. I thoroughly reccomend it to you and am most satisfied with it personally.
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