Barron's Travelwise Croatian

Rating:
Summary: Far better than your standard phrasebook
Review: As others have mentioned, the cassette is superfluous if you can follow the easy instructions regarding Croatian orthography and pronunciation. In Croatian, similar to Spanish, is almost completely predictable if you know how a word is spelled. The only unpredictable aspect, which syllable the stress falls on the word, is shown using a small dot under the stressed vowel--literally the FIRST I've seen among such books, and very important. Why don't other phrasebooks or language guides provide this? Laziness, I suppose.

Another nice feature of the book is the excellent paper and binding quality. The paper doesn't yellow, the pages don't fall out, and it can withstand plenty of abuse if you're the type to whip out and stuff the guide in your backpack every once in a while, like me.

This book will not teach you the language in the way necessary if you want to be able to have rich conversations with Croats, but it is a fantastic tourist resource. The grammar section will help you understand the peculiarities of Croatian grammar, especially if you already know another Slavic language.


Rating:
Summary: Phrase book is solid, but the cassette is superfluous
Review: BARRON'S TRAVELWISE CROATIAN is an very helpful phrasebook with a clear layout, comprehensive list of phrases, and a concise overview of Croatian grammar and pronunciation that is nonetheless compact and lightweight. I brought it along on a trip to Zagreb this past summer and was very happy with it.

However, I would recommend buying the book alone, and not the book-and-cassette combination. Croatian pronunciation is much like Spanish or Italian, and the orthography is so simple that anyone should be able to read out loud words they've never encountered before. Cassettes for this language aren't necessary and only add to the cost, and they also add unnecessary bulk to one's suitcase.

This was my first purchase in Barron's Travelwise series of phrase books and I was quite impressed. I'd recommend this phrasebook above all others for anyone going to Croatia.

Rating:
Summary: Book yes, cassettes questionable
Review: There aren't many books available for those seeking to learn Croatian. I was certainly happy with the book. I also got the cassette, and I found it to be useless. It doesn't follow the book at all. In fact, it is a completely separate conversation, following a separate booklet included in the package. Cassettes are usually useful, especially when they follow the lesson plans in the text. Not in this case!

Rating:
Summary: a good phrasebook with a great grammar section
Review: This book is mostly designed as a standard travel phrasebook, with useful info for dealing with hotels, restaurants, travel, making conversation, and so on.

But amazingly enough it also has a great 20-30 grammar section at the back which is the best explanation for some of the things that have stumped me on Croatian grammar in other textbooks designed to teach the language... a great quick reference for stuff like when you use the different cases of nouns, which case goes with which preposition, what all the prepositions mean, how to construct past, present & future tense of verbs, how to conjugate many common verbs; and so on.

This book is great!