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From:Joan Russell , McGraw-Hill ,
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See Product Page
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User Rating: Amazon Sales Rank:#24494 |
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 Asante sana (thankyou very much in Swahili!), 2008-11-18
I'm trying to learn Swahili as I'm going off to Tanzania for 3 months. "Teach yourself Swahili" is really helpful for learning the language. Both the CD and book parts are good and compliment one another. Apart from learning vocabulary, the book teaches how the language is put together and the audio dialogues are useful for putting this knowledge into understanding. The book also has useful bits of information saying that certain words are used in certain areas of Africa. I'd recommend this book to someone who wants to learn Swahili and is just beginning.
2 of 2 customers found the following review helpful:
 very thorough!, 2008-06-09
i liked this book. it wasn't quite as "simple" as the info suggested- but it was very thorough and i found myself learning swahili despite being more complicated than i had anticipated. it was broken up into easy to follow sections and there are lessons at the end of each section to do with answers in the back and that was helpful, too. the CD was nice for pronunciation clarification.
3 of 3 customers found the following review helpful:
 Sooooo confusing, 2008-05-16
I have studied 5 languages before this (Latin, Greek, French, Spanish and Italian) and I have been continually perplexed at the layout of this book. Swahili is fairly complicated, but the approach in this book makes it overwhelming. New concepts are introduced willy-nilly and in such a manner that as soon as you feel you are grasping something, they throw in an anomoly or a new concept. I never felt that I was able to close a chapter, confident that I had everything down. They also introduce concepts without explaining them until many chapters later... The dialogues at the beginning of each chapter are never translated and these anomolies become really frustrating - you try to translate something only to find that you haven't learned it yet (wish I'd known that one before I spent 20 minutes trying to look it up). Verb tenses are not introduced as such (past, present, future, past perfect) and they are not introduced in the infinitive which is possibly the most perplexing thing. You can't say much without a verb/tense. The CDs are useful for hearing Swahili, but once again, if you never get the translation, it is pretty hard to learn without sitting in front of the CD player with the book and your finger on the pause button (not useful in the car!) I would most definitely not recommend this series, although I definitely recommend learning Swahili. It is a really fun language to speak and anyone else who can speak it will be happy to chat with you whether in the US or Africa. (As a matter of interest, I was reading this book in a coffee shop the other day and someone who had studied the same book approached me. She agreed on everything I've said here - prompting me to spread the word).
2 of 2 customers found the following review helpful:
Swahili, 2008-05-03
This course is excellent. From the very outset it was teaching me vital communication skills for Swahili, and my Swahili friends are impressed how well I am speaking their language already. For the price, this course is excellent!
1 of 1 customers found the following review helpful:
I try to teach myself Kiswahili., 2008-01-09
Based upon my previous experiences in learning foreign languages, it is my starting point to have a correct pronunciation. That's why I bought this textbook with 2 CD. Now I am convinced that my choice is right. The only point to be improved is that there is no system for chosing any part of a given section( 1-33). Otherwise, it is perfect for me.
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