Average customer rating:
- conversation content - ick
- Not for Beginners
- Utterly useless
- Perfect for Beginners
- Very good product
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Colloquial Czech: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series (Multimedia))
James Naughton
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0415161363 |
Book Description
This second edition of the popular
Colloquial Czech has been rewritten to bring it completely up to date. Written by an experienced teacher, the course offers a step-by-step approach to written and spoken Czech. No prior knowledge of the language is required. Czech is spoken by over 10 million people and is closely related to the other members of the Slavic family of languages but, unlike Russian, uses the Roman alphabet.
Customer Reviews:
conversation content - ick.......2007-05-07
I never finished the set. I speak Czech a bit and wanted to brush - up also wanted a set to introduce a friend to the language. We were both put off by the content of the "conversations". The comments about the women seemed very 1950's.
Not for Beginners.......2007-01-02
I don't understand the positive reviews given to this program. Yes, the book might be useful as a text, but the audio part of the program is next to useless for beginners. After the short audio introduction on pronunciation, the program proceeded to rattle off conversations which were unintelligible and impossible to imitate since there was no time for repetition. I tried to use the book to help, but found that the conversations did not follow the lessons presented there!
If you want to try and learn to read Czech, maybe this is OK, but if you want to learn to speak the language I highly recommend the Pimsleur beginning Czech. After Pimsleur I plan on getting the Foreign Service Institute Czech series.
Utterly useless.......2006-08-06
This "course" is utterly useless for the traveler who wants to learn enough of the language to get by on a trip to the Czech Republic.
There is no logic or relevance to the dialogues.(You could listen to all of Cassette One and never find out how to say "Where is the bathroom?")Even the most basic language instruction (listening and then repeating phrases)is beyond the scope of this bizarre hodgepodge. Not even worth one star.
Perfect for Beginners.......2006-02-04
After ressearching and reading review after review trying to find the very best "teach-yourself" Czech course, I stumbled upon this. This book is incredible. Everything you need to know to build a strong foundation in the language. The book includes two cassettes (who uses these still I do not know) and two cd's. I ripped the cd's onto my iPod, and can study just about anywhere :) The cd's have native and non-native speakers of Czech, so you can hear the language as it actually sounds. I have read several books on the Czech language, and not one comes close to being as comprehensive as this. A+. If you are relocating to Prague, as I am, or simply desire to learn a very confusing language with relative ease, buy this book. You will not regret it.
Very good product.......2005-12-30
I dont think this is the best language course pack, but it's the best you can do for teaching yourself Czech... let's face it, there really arent many options on Czech books. I think the learning process the book follows is excellent. It teaches you all the case forms and declinations, etc. Which a lot of language packs dont do.
The only negative thing about this book is that the audio cd's that go with it are too fast for complete beginners. In most language tapes, you get to listen to the dialog in slow speed so you can learn pronounciation, etc.... then the dialog is repeated at normal conversational pace. But on this cd, you can only listen at normal conversational pace, which is too fast to grasp things when you're just starting out. But if you can make it through about the 1st couple of chapters, you'll be fine and the speed wont be much of an issue anymore.
I'd definitely recommend this product for people wishing to learn Czech. Dont take a chance on the other Czech books, because I researched those and they all looked like crap. Unless you can get ahold of the books the universities use (which are hard to find and costly) then get the Colloquial Czech series.
Book Description
World-renowned artist brings the magic of Prague and its legends to life
In this allegorical tale, a man in a hot-air ballon is thrown off course in a violent storm, landing him in the city of his youth. He finds the way to his old home, but the house is dark, with three rusty padlocks on the door. A black cat with eyes of fire appears and leads him through Prague's silent streets and monuments in seach of the three golden keys that will open the door of his boyhood home and restore the city to life. In this reissue of one of his most personal works, Peter Sís recaptures the wonder of his own lost childhood in Prague and celebrates the city's wonderful cultural heritage, reborn after forty-five years of Communist rule. He wrote it for his young daughter, Madeleine, who is growing up in the New World, so that when she is old enough to understand it she will have a record of the strange and wonderful heritage that is her birthright. An utterly magical book on every level.
Customer Reviews:
The Three Golden Keys.......2007-07-27
Both my 6-year-old daughter and I love this book so much. Beautiful illustration as the other works of Peter sis, with a facinating story.
this book opened new doors to children's literature for my family.......2005-11-21
I bought this book for my daughter when she was only three. Yes, way too young in some ways, but it immediately became her favorite book because it can be read on so many levels and the pictures carried her imagination to new places. It's the story of a man who somehow magically goes back in time to his home in Prague when he was a child. This introduced a sense of history, of other places defined by their unique history, even a sense of old Europe, to my daughter. You can read the book on many levels because it has small, detailed stored written in boxes and these can be saved for when a child gets older. It's really a magical book for any age. We've gone on to be Peter Sis fans and enjoy all of his stories. Some of them are little masterpieces.
Peter Sis takes a magical visit back to Prague, the city of his childhood.......2005-09-01
Peter Sis, who has written and illustrated the Caldecott Honor books "Tibet Through the Red Box" and "Starry Messenger: Galileo Galilei," wrote "The Three Golden Keys" for his daughter, Madeline. The book begins with a handwritten letter to Madeline, explaining that while she was born in New York, in the New World, he wants to share with her the mystery of Prague, the city in which he was raised. So he spins the story of how his hot-air balloon was blown off course in a violent storm and landed in the Prague of his childhood. There he finds his wa yto his old home, only to find the house dark and three rusty padlocks on the door. He knows that he must find the keys to unlock the locks to get inside. Fortunately his old black cat shows up and as the man follows her through the winter streets of his childhood, they are filled with memories.
Three times in this story, as the seasons change, the man comes to a special place from his childhood, and in each place an old Czech legend is revealed to the man and his cat. The first is the legend of the night Bruncvik, the second the story of the Golem, and the third the story of Mast Hanus and his astronomical clock. Attached to each legend is a golden key, and once the man has collected them the city comes alive and he goes to open the door to his house and see what magical things await him there. Just be forewarned that when you kids read this book that they might be disappointed that their parents were not born in a distant land (fortunately I am safe on that score, although I have never been back to the city of my birth, but I would like to go, although by something other than a hot-air balloon).
The cover illustration for "The Three Golden Keys" does not give you any real indication of the visual delights inside. My only real issue with this book is that the three legends are each told in a single double-page spread, with twenty-four illustrations (approximately one-inch by one-and-a-half-inches each) surrounding the text section, which has captions for each (unnumbered) drawing after an introduction, surrounding a giant drawing of a key. Given that the rest of the book consists of full-page or double-page illustrations rich in detail and full of color, the little comic strip versions of the legends suffer a bit in comparison, although they are as finely detailed as the rest of the art work. Besides, it would not bother me if this book was two or three times longer to work everything in because you are not going to get tired of Sis's artwork.
An Excellent Awakening to Prague!.......2000-04-18
This dark and intricately illustrated book is simply excellent. The art work in it is fantastic and it gives a magically haunting overview of growing up in Prague. It has a magic cat with glowing eyes that walks the young traveler through the streets of his homeland. The drawings are rich with story and intricate with legend. It is an intense book, and some of the legends are dark and spooky. I wouldn't recommend it for children under the age of six, but for children who are just awakening to legend, history, and fairy tale, this is a must. I personally think it is a must for adults as well - I keep my copy on the coffee table because, really, the art as well as the story is of that caliber and it makes a great coversation piece. The book also has a fascinating development story, as well. Peter Sis was apparently encouraged and motivated by Jackie Onasis, working at Double Day at the time, to produce this wonderful book for his young daughter. Sis wanted to produce a piece for his daughter so that she would always know where her daddy came from. Jackie O. helped make Sis' dream a reality. It really is a fine piece of art, history, and story.
Customer Reviews:
Highly recommendable.......2007-04-25
As I will be moving to Prague shortly, I decided to try to learn some Czech before I go, and thus chose to go with "Beginner's Czech". So far, I have not regretted this.
The book is divided into ten chapters, covering the basic grammatics and a variety of common situations (with the according vocabulary you'll need in such situations) - Introducing yourself, shopping, being a guest, asking for directions, etc.
The book is clearly aimed at people who are highly motivated for learning the Czech language, which in fact is quite difficult. For instance, right in the second chapter, you'll get the complete declension tables for all genders, including plurals (the Czech language has three genders and seven cases!) This can seem a bit much all at once, but I find it very handy when I want to look back at the tables when they are all at one place...
"Beginner's Czech" does include a chapter on pronounciation, but no cd. Personally, I find it a little hard to learn good pronounciation without actually hearing the sounds, so this is a small drawback. But then again, the book would probably have been more expensive with a cd. And anyway, there are some good places on the internet where you can check up on the pronounciation (for instance [...]).
Also, there are some of the exercises where it can be quite hard to actually understand why the declensions are the way they are (some kind of exeptions which aren't explained)
In spite of these very minor shortcomings, I strongly recommend this book to any motivated person looking to learn some Czech. It is a really good primer on the Czech language, and in any case, it's definitely worth the price..
Well worth the money for a beginner.......2006-01-21
As someone who is moving to Prague in the near future, I thought I would get a jump on the game by learning the basics of the Czech language in advance. This book is great for just that: learning the basics. Not a whole lot of help conversationally, but the book is rife with tables and charts indicating pronunciation, grammar, and definitions. Definitely worth the $10. Very handy for learning proper usage, and briefly covers a bit of Czech history in the beginning. 4 stars.
From a total novice........2001-10-22
I bought this preparation for learning Czech. While I've only skimmed through it so far, it seems to be more focused on grammar than the "Teach Yourself Czech" book. It's full of charts and tables, which is how I learned my first foreign language (Latin).
Book Description
b /b b i Colloquial Slovak /i /b is a practical course in everyday written and spoken Slovak requiring no prior knowledge of the language. This book is ideal for study independently or with a teacher. Cassettes recorded by native Slovak speakers are also available. br br i This /i i paperback in the Colloquial Language Learning Series is available individually here or as part of a cassette pack. To purchase the book /i b i and /i /b the cassettes, please refer to the cassette pack listing for this language. br br li This title available in eBook format. a href="http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/?isbn=020342915X" Click here for more information /a . br li Visit our eBookstore at: a href="http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/" www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk /a .
Customer Reviews:
Pretty Good.......2007-03-09
Generally a good book but some of the dialogue is clunky and not real world. Better than most other books for this topic.
Not the worst, but could have been better........2007-03-08
PROS:
- Useful and sometimes humourous dialogues
- Concise appendices showing nominal and adjectival declension and conjugational patterns of verbs
- Succint notes on grammar
- Recordings of dialogues and oral exercises are clear
- Widely-available and reasonably affordable.
- Answer key in the back of the book.
CONS:
- Not enough exercises (There are 16 chapters with each having between 4 to 7 sets of exercises. Each set has between 3 and 8 questions)
- Grammar notes are presented somewhat haphazardly in each chapter since their raison-d'etre are the dialogues (ex. You get an introduction to the dative and locative in chapter 4 or 5 just because the dialogue has a few sentences in the feminine dative/locative singular. However, you don't see it again in the notes until several chapters later. I would have preferred if the grammatical focus had been more complete. For example for the sake of completeness, I would have liked to have seen locative or dative in all of its forms (singular, plural, masculine, feminine and neuter) introduced in the same chapter)
As a first step for someone learning Slovak, this course does the job but the scarcity of exercises means that you won't get a lot of practice. One way to alleviate this problem is to also work on another beginners' course in Slovak such as "Slovencina pre cudzincov" by Dratva et al. or "Slovencina pre Vas" by Bohmerova. At the least you'll get more structured exposure to basic Slovak by virtue of using more courses.
Depending on your learning style, you may not be able to gain and retain enough knowledge from this course alone to communicate at more than a tourist's level in Slovakia. "Beginning Slovak" by Oscar Swan is more demanding but completing Swan's course will take you much further than Naughton's course. Indeed, completing Swan's course will get you to a level of someone who has completed a first-year course and part of a second-year course in Slovak. At best, completing Colloquial Slovak will get you at roughly the level of someone who has completed 75% of a first-year course in Slovak.
I learned Slovak from this book & CD!.......2006-03-20
After lots of study, I was able to speak with strangers when visiting Slovakia for the first time and also to email and chat with my Slovak friends.
Yes, the book contains irritating shortcomings e.g. the glossary is minimal, so please buy a dictionary; the index omits page numbers!; and more. Even so, Slovak is a relatively difficult language and just requires a lot of work to learn.
If you want to learn Slovak but like me, live far from a University program or native speakers, then this book is a great investment.
solid book.......2005-12-28
It's hard to find a university that offers Slovak and books are scarce too. This one is well orgranized and easy to use. If you finish the book, it is probably equivalent to taking three Slovak classes. I really like the book and think that it is very helpful.
a useful glimpse of a way different language.......2005-09-10
We used this book for several months prior to traveling in Slovakia to meet parents of our potntial son-in-law. It has a lot in it; it's dense. Much I found useful. I found I could make reasonable guesses at some billboard ads and the headlines of a couple of travel articles in a train magazine once we got there, though I only made it through ch. 6 our of 16. Tapes\CD useful too. Book is missing a number of basic traveler phrases, but the small Slovak dictionary was good for that. Though Naughton spends some time on points of tricky grammar--such as cases--which I was not going to bother with, he does not bog down in it. I gather Slovak has so much case agreement it could be overwhelming to manage, but this presentation is streamlined pretty well to get the potential consumer to useful sentence models on many topics. One could learn a great deal more than I did by doing more chapters, but I already got money's worth!
Average customer rating:
- Too Complicated and Random
- Second Place
- A good place to learn conversation
- Interesting, rough for a first-timer.
- Czech:a Complete Course for Beginners
|
Teach Yourself Czech: A Complete Course for Beginners(Teach Yourself)
David Short
Manufacturer: NTC/Contemporary Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
English (All)
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Czech
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ASIN: 0844237582 |
Customer Reviews:
Too Complicated and Random.......2004-08-24
I am struggling my way through the chapters, doing the exercises, and listening to the CDs. Much of it is getting through to me, but it is requiring the use of on-line dictionaries and a great deal of effort. The book tries to build on the skills learned from one chapter to the next, however it introduces too much too quickly and further complicates the plan by introducing too manny different words for the same things. My guess is that you should spend about 2 months going through the entire book...each week re-reading everything you have learned. I understand nothing comes easy, and anyone hoping for a quick and easy way to learn a new language is kidding themselves...but it would be more useful if this book did away with the excess vocabulary and made the CDs more slow and intelligible. Otherwise, like myself, one can grow bored and frustrated very quickly and lose interest in the entire endeavor. This book does one thing really well...it gives you a reality-Czech.
Second Place.......2002-03-16
There are pretty much two popular czech language book courses (not just phrase books). I reccomend the other one because it is easier to follow and learn from. Glossary in this book is also only czech-english.
A good place to learn conversation.......2001-06-20
There are two primary goals to master when trying to learn Czech. The first is attempting to learn all of the various rules for endings changes (and the numerous irregulars and exceptions). The second is building vocabulary and conversational ability. Short wisely leans toward the second goal and gently introduces the labyrinth of grammatical rules as needed. If the first goal is stressed, it is hard not to feel overwhelmed and give up.
Interesting, rough for a first-timer........2001-02-15
I'm learning with this book, and I do find it helpful and interesting. But I think the chapters introduce too many points at a time, and the exercises at the end of each chapter are not comprehensive enough to practice what was presented. I agree with other reviewers that the book relies a bit too much on intuition on the part of the reader.
The main thing I'm using it for is studying the conversation practices and comparing them with the tapes. I'd have to say that I've actually learned more Czech from a 40 year old copy of "Teach Yourself Czech" I found. Each chapter is only 2-3 pages long (there are lots of chapters) so you can digest things a bit at a time. So don't forget to look around some of your local used book stores!!
Czech:a Complete Course for Beginners.......2000-02-12
It depends on why you wish to learn Czech.If it's for a good grounding in grammar and to be able to read Czech literature, then this book is fine.If you're learning, as I am, for holiday purposes, then it's not much use.I shall be travelling alone, and I need to be able to ask about hotels, trains and buses,local sights,to order meals, to change money.This book is no use for that at all. The audio cassette is very difficult to follow at first, as the speech is so rapid. I know all the arguments for presenting it in this way, but when there are new and very difficult sounds to master we need more help.The r/s sound is a beast. I've got it, but no thanks to this course.
Product Description
Czech published teach yourself Czech book.
Book Description
This kit comes complete with its own wholly exclusive edition of the How to Draw Manga series, Mastering Manga Tools, as well as G-pen, Saji-pen, and Maru-pen nibs and holders, manga drawing paper, and tone sheets, which you can trim and etch to add exciting touches to your personal manga artwork. Use this kit to practice and turn yourself into a true manga artist.
Customer Reviews:
Well, it's an ALMOST Deluxe Kit... Pen nibs, but no ink???.......2005-09-05
This kit is pretty good, but it lacks a few pieces of equipment needed to be a great or "deluxe" kit. First off, the exclusive HTDM book is very good. It is a focused and condensed guide to the use of hardware, such as the pen and ink itself, tone, etc. as well as to some drawing techniques, such as perspective. However, the volume, like all the other books in the HTDM series, is not for the beginner. One must have some basic knowledge of how to draw before this book will help.
Also, it's great to have a book that tells you how to use manga tones, pen and ink. However, what good is such a book if the "Deluxe" kit does not include a burnisher (needed for applying tone) or ink (obvious necessity, isn't it?) I mean, I wouldn't ask for a full sized bottle of Japan's finest india ink, but a small sample of basic ink, drafting ink -- something with which we can practice using the pen nibs, would have been, well, a necessity.
One minor quibble, the pen holder is too small for those of us with larger hands than average. That's hardly a big deal, but it might matter to some.
All in all this kit is worth about 3.5 stars, I'd say. The book is useful, the paper is great, and gives a great feel for how the pen and ink work on the real thing. I haven't had an opportunity to use the tones, but the skyline print and a basic dot print were what my kit came with, and they look good.
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