Dutch: Language 30 (Language/30)

Rating:
Summary: Dutch: Language/30
Review: The book that comes with the cassettes contains many helpful phrases (especially for the traveler), as well as some basic vocabulary. Upon review of the phrase book with my native Dutch friend, however, we found some of the phoenetic translations to be inaccurate and confusing. In a few cases, the pronunciation interpretation was exactly the same as the Dutch word which I didn't find very helpful. For instance, the word for "rice" is spelled "rijst" in Dutch and the pronunciation was given as "rijst". Hmmm... I need a little more of a road map. In another instance, "chocolate", spelled as "chocolade" is translated to be pronounced as "shoh-koh-lah", and according to my friend, the end part of the word is missing... it should be: "shoh-koh-lah-de". In all honesty, I haven't checked out the cassettes, but in my opinion, an easily understandable book is imperative since it is something that one would rely upon while "on the road"! I am in search of a better reference with more phrases and easily decipherable pronunciations.

Rating:
Summary: Not a bad value, but a bit tedious
Review: This set is a decent value. For your money, you get a fairly broad range of phrases and vocabulary. However, the organization of information assumes that you can keep interest listening to a bunch of discrete phrases repeated one after the other with no conversations or anything remotely natural. If you can, in fact, maintain interest while listening to these tapes repeatedly, then you'll do well with this set. If, on the other hand, you need something more dynamic, you might do well to look elsewhere.