Additional information
| ASIN | 159869989X |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Everything; 2nd ed. edition (18 November 2009) |
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 304 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 9781598699890 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1598699890 |
| Dimensions | 20.32 x 2.03 x 23.5 cm |
Cliente Amazon –
A concise and direct book.
I’m going to talk what I think about the book in 4 sections.1. What people talk about this book and what I think about their opinions.2. What I like in this book.3. What I dislike in this book.4. The CD.——1. My overall opinion about the comments——-Before purchasing the book I saw a lot of people complaining about the lack of a better dictionary, lack of plural forms in the dictionary, lack of a better CD, etc.Don’t be fooled, the book and the CD are both good material. I suppose most people who made these comments aren’t used to learning a language at all and are learning German as only their second language.German is being my third language and I already studied – but not as much as German, so I quit studying each of them – French, Russian and Spanish. For each of these languages I had no contact with a book as good as this one TO GET STARTED.About the lack of a list of plurals, I think this is not necessary, as the book is very detailed in how you can form plurals. After you study the entire book, you’ll be able to form the plurals yourself.The CD is good too, as I’ll point later.However, it may not be a good idea for you if you are already able to speak, think and understand some German.——2. What I liked.——Almost everything. Especially these:a. Comfortable Design – Good choice of the fonts and the design with ‘Dialog Boxes’ and ‘Signs’ makes the book comfortable to read, unlike many other books where you only see letters. The word tables are also organized and comfortable to read.Everything is in black and white and there are not many figures, though.b. Organization – The books is structured to get you started with the initial building blocks present in any language.First chapter provides a brief and interesting introduction to how German and English were born and how they are related.Then it will gradually introduce you to articles, nouns, gender, verbs, plurals. Nothing comes before you can handle it.c. Concise – The language used is simple and many comparisons are made between German and English. Each topic is explained with directeness, making it easy to understand the rules and underlying patterns present in German.d. Consistent guidelines – The author made an extensive effort to provide general guidelines on how to identify gender of the words and in how to conjugate verbs. For example, it teaches that nouns ended in -er, -el and -en are generally masculine. Also, nouns ended in -tion, -keit, -heit, -ung and -tät are always masculine. Even though there are many exceptions in German conjugation and gender patterns, these guidelines extremely useful.e. Explanations on how to order words in German are also good.f. In general the book is made for you to UNDERSTAND HOW GERMAN WORKS. This is an advantage for beginners, although I think it doesn’t leave enough phrases for you to learn after you read it, as I’ll point below.Basically this is what I liked it. I could probably write more, but I think this is enough.——3. What I disliked.—-a. The author tries to make German look simpler than it really is.He is constantly saying that something is easier in German than in English when it clearly is not.Now, I can take advantage of the fact that many of the Grammar rules found in Portuguese (my native language) apply to German, but still German grammar is very complex even compared to Portuguese’s. In other words, trying to make something so intricate as German grammar look very simple is not a good idea.b. Lack of a decent amount of phrases used in daily situationsThis one really disapointed me.As I said the book presents all the topics you need to know about German in a way anyone can understand it.But it only gives a few words/sentences for each example.So even though these are enough for you to understand the structure of the language, I advice you to choose another book to acquire vocabulary, because once you read it you won’t have much useful phrases for further studies.Be aware, though, that I’m talking about lack of phares. The book does contain a dictionary and a good list of verbs you can use to further studies, they can be found in the last pages of the book.c. The (written) pronunciation guide sucks, completely.German has many unique sounds.That’s why the author states right away that the pronunciation guidance is made of aproximations in these cases.Personally, I feel that any one who is not purchasing the version that comes with the CD included (*that’s very good*) will be in deep trouble. Some of the approximations could be more well represented in distinct forms than the ones found in the text, and a lot of them produce sounds very distinct from anything you will hear out there.If you choose to buy the book alone, be sure to check the pronunciation of each word in the charts on the internet, otherwise you’ll either end-up speaking crap German or having to re-learn how to pronounce these words.—–4. The CD—–Probably the best part of it.Pronunciation seems very correct, and the audio quality is good.In addition, I simply couldn’t get what people meant by saying the CD is “way too fast” – maybe they were talking about the disc spinning in the tray.In fact, I found out that it speaks in regular speed for single words. The author pronounce the words loud and clear, I would even say with emphasis. Plus, most of the words are spoken slower than one would normally speak in English. I mean. It’s not too slow, but it’s far from being anything one should consider “fast”.People having difficulties with this CD should get over it, as Germans speak three times faster in a normal conversation.That’s what I found, maybe I missed something, but I hope I could give you an idea of the quality of the material.
sebastian iulian –
Very good
Very good purchase ! Price was even better !
Reviewer99 –
Good complimentary book
This is more like the standard book pages your foreign language teacher used to xerox and give out to the class. It’s useful, but not nearly enough actual exercises in it.
J. Eno –
Excellent Introduction
I chose the Everything series as my entry point to the German language over other options, including the Dummies series, largely on the advice of reviews, and I was not disappointed. Beyond the high-school textbook quality illustrations on the cover and the two-tone black and green print (which I personally find attractive), you will find a well-organized text designed to bring the reader from essentially nothing to a basic understanding of the workings of the German language.It is important to note that my experience with this text has been colored by the fact that I have studied other languages before, and so knowing the basic ways and terminology of language study made me slightly more than a beginner when I picked up the book, although I had no prior experience with the formal study of German.If you have studied languages and are familiar with noun cases and verb tenses and such, you may find the ordering of chapters illogical at first, since they skip from one area of language to another, rather than focusing exclusively on nouns until they are covered and only then moving to verbs, as other language texts may do. However, I found when reading from cover to cover, the order of the chapters helped to break things up a bit, so as not to overwhelm the beginning student, although some (such as those on time and numbers) are modular enough to skip ahead to if need be. Also, the introductory section does its job well enough, with an overview of German pronunciation, which is helpful, although no substitute for hearing the language pronounced by native speakers–for this I recommend audio CD’s, unless you are fortunate enough to have access to German speakers. A few notes about the pronunciation guide: The author uses a home-grown, and I think sometimes inconsistent, method of phonetic transcription which is designed to be intuitive for a native English speaker. Also, phonetic spellings of words (placed in parentheses) cease after the first few chapters.One thing I especially appreciate about the book is the author’s friendly, encouraging tone. Swick has a way of disarming the language so that it does not seem too scary, and his writing projects a confidence that a beginning student should appreciate. The credentials on the back cover indicate the author knows what he’s talking about, and his explanations of the language show it, including sections on English grammar which precede explanations of their German equivalents.The vocabulary the book offers, including a decent German-English/English-German dictionary in the back, seem adequate for a beginning student, and the exercises at the end of each chapter are good, although I recommend buying a dedicated workbook, since you will not get near the practice you need with the few exercises this book offers.Despite a handful of sections on ordering at restaurants and the like, this is not a book of quick travel phrases. It is an introductory German grammar, which is effective for those who want to get a handle on how the language works and who want to begin a process of study to arrive at greater fluency.Overall, I found this an excellent introduction to German language study. I personally found it useful to augment this book with a good dictionary, such as the
Collins German Unabridged Dictionary 5th Edition (Harpercollins Unabridged Dictionaries)
, and a good intermediate/advanced grammar, such as
Hammer’s German Grammar and Usage
.
nisha chourasia –
Best book to learn german
This is the best guide to learn German fr beginners. It’s adequate and well explained . Everything is covered in details.