Urdu: An Essential Grammar (Routledge Grammars)

Rating:
Summary: good!
Review: A great book. It does what it says. Clear, easy to understand. It says that this book is not for complete beginners, but it could be, given only that said beginners are not complete idiots. I bought another book, a 'teach yourself' book, which I needn't have, given that this book suffices.

Rating:
Summary: Valuable Contribution to the Literature
Review: This book fills and important hole in the literature: a solid, up-to-date, in-print grammar of the Urdu language. I have used it to supplement my study of other Urdu texts.

I have a few minor quibbles with the book:

1) The Urdu transcription system is not given explicitly. Reference is made to R. S. McGregor's Urdu Study Materials, an out-of-print book published in India. While it may be readily available in major centers of learning or through interlibrary loan, I think that reference to an out-of print book for something as significant as the transcription system should be avoided. Perhaps in future editions the system should be included in the text.

2) Sections appear where reference is made to 'ko' marking objects and 'ko' marking subjects. I'm not sure that this is the best way to address the use of 'ko', since it is more a comment on peculiarities of English grammar than any feature of Urdu. In Russian there are similar impersonal structures that use dative objects for what we would consider subjects in the English translations. A simpler approach to the issue of 'ko' might be to say that it marks dative objects, which may, however, be translated into English by words having different grammatical roles in the corresponding English sentence.

Incidentally, I also have the "Teach Yourself Urdu" book and have found it of value, though not for its grammatical descriptions, which don't seem to me to be a distinguishing strength. I have collected the Urdu texts of the dialogues into a notebook that I find useful for rapid reading practice.

Rating:
Summary: Valuable Contribution to the Literature
Review: This book fills and important hole in the literature: a solid, up-to-date, in-print grammar of the Urdu language. I have used it to supplement my study of other Urdu texts.

I have a few minor quibbles with the book:

1) The Urdu transcription system is not given explicitly. Reference is made to R. S. McGregor's Urdu Study Materials, an out-of-print book published in India. While it may be readily available in major centers of learning or through interlibrary loan, I think that reference to an out-of print book for something as significant as the transcription system should be avoided. Perhaps in future editions the system should be included in the text.

2) Sections appear where reference is made to 'ko' marking objects and 'ko' marking subjects. I'm not sure that this is the best way to address the use of 'ko', since it is more a comment on peculiarities of English grammar than any feature of Urdu. In Russian there are similar impersonal structures that use dative objects for what we would consider subjects in the English translations. A simpler approach to the issue of 'ko' might be to say that it marks dative objects, which may, however, be translated into English by words having different grammatical roles in the corresponding English sentence.

Incidentally, I also have the "Teach Yourself Urdu" book and have found it of value, though not for its grammatical descriptions, which don't seem to me to be a distinguishing strength. I have collected the Urdu texts of the dialogues into a notebook that I find useful for rapid reading practice.