Free eBooks Colloquial Hindi: The Complete Course For Beginners (Colloquial Series) Available To Downloads

                
              
Free eBooks 
Colloquial Hindi: The Complete Course For Beginners (Colloquial Series) Available To Downloads
Colloquial Hindi provides a step-by-step course in Hindi as it is written and spoken today. Combining a user-friendly approach with a thorough treatment of the language, it equips learners with the essential skills needed to communicate confidently and effectively in Hindi in a broad range of situations. No prior knowledge of the language is required. Key features include: progressive coverage of speaking, listening, reading and writing skills  structured, jargon-free explanations of grammar  an extensive range of focused and stimulating exercises  realistic and entertaining dialogues covering a broad variety of scenarios  useful vocabulary lists throughout the text  an overview of the sounds and alphabet of Hindi  additional resources available at the back of the book, including a full answer key, a grammar summary, bilingual glossaries and English translations of dialogues.  Balanced, comprehensive and rewarding, Colloquial Hindi will be an indispensable resource both for independent learners and for students taking courses in Hindi. Accompanying audio material is available to purchase separately on two CDs or in MP3 format, or comes included in the great value Colloquial Hindi pack. Recorded by native speakers, the audio complements the book and will help enhance learners’ listening and speaking skills.  Course components: The complete course comprises the book and audio materials. These are available to purchase separately in paperback, ebook, CD and MP3 format. The paperback and CDs can also be purchased together in the great-value Colloquials pack.  Paperback: 978-0-415-41956-7 (please note this does not include the audio) CDs : 978-0-415-39528-1 Ebook: 978-0-203-43152-8 (available from http://ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/audio_viewbooks.aspx. Please note this does not include the audio)MP3s: 978-0-415-49823-4 (available to purchase from http://ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/audio_viewbooks.aspx)Pack : 978-0-415-39527-4 (paperback and CDs)
Series: Colloquial Series
Paperback: 360 pages
Publisher: Routledge; 2 edition (January 30, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0415419565
ISBN-13: 978-0415419567
Product Dimensions:  0.8 x 5.2 x 8.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces
Average Customer Review:  3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #1,180,396 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)   #254 in Books > Reference > Etiquette > Conversation   #3153 in Books > Reference > Foreign Language Study & Reference > Instruction   #3198 in Books > Children's Books > Education & Reference > Foreign Language Learning
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, Colloquial Urdu are all much shorter and more rudimentary than the average European language course. Unfortunately, Colloquial Hindi 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 Hindi. 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.
I just received my book and CD set and am enjoying working through the lessons with ease. So far what I've noticed is that the author has created realistic verbal exchanges that represent the etiquette present in the culture. Also, he has given examples of greetings that can vary between regions and/or religion. Addtionally, the accent being taught is that of "educated" Hindi; the accent college professors and newscasters use. Maybe now my Indian friends will understand me.I am no expert in the field of languages, but I've got to say that this course already has Pimsleur and Byki beat hands down and the CDs play just fine in my Macintosh! Love the light use of humor as well.
Rather a different approach than more textbooks - each chapter has a conversation, vocabulary key and translation, followed by cultural and grammatical notes. So you can't use this as a standalone textbook but it's good as a supplementary resource, particularly to familiarise yourself with colloquial Hindi conversations (as per the title).Unfortunately, with the conversations about something totally different each time, it means you can't hope to understand the conversations without checking the vocab every few words, with no progression between chapters.At the back there's a grammar section that just goes over all the grammar methodically and briefly, and this is an excellent reference resource. So is the glossary at the back, which groups vocabulary under topics, which makes it easy to pick one area of your life to practise with and learn words for that, then move onto another area. And then there's an alphabetical glossary as well.This book uses devanagari and a transliteration throughout, meaning you can choose not to learn devanagari if you want. There's a section at the start to teach you which you can skip if you want. Few textbooks offer this option.
This book does offer some assets that are helpful, particularly for a student just starting out. Its section on pronunciation is quite comprehensive (do get the CD that goes with) and it also has an excellent section in back that teaches how to actually handwrite the Hindi alphabet, which I have not seen in any other book. It isn't particularly difficult to write Devanagari, but trying to copy from only printed works does not work very well. Strangely enough, however, the author does not use Devanagari in the body of the book itself- the dialogues that go with each lesson are reproduced in the back of the book, but the exercises and grammatical asides are given only in a complex and cumbersome phonetic system that a learner is unlikely to use again after finishing the book. Devanagari is one of the most precise systems of writing ever devised, and although there are in the spoken language a few deviations from strict phonetic accuracy ('raheta', to live, is usually heard now as 'rehta') it would not use a huge amount of space to simply point them out as they occur. The book doesn't offer a great amount of vocabulary, either; Snell and Weightman's superior work 'Teach Yourself Hindi' is both a richer source of vocabulary and a deeper treatment of grammar.
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