Bulgarian : A Complete Course for Beginners (Book & Cassettes)

Rating:
Summary: A very good way to start.
Review: As a Russian and Serbian/Croatian linguist in the military, I would like to say that this book, the Teach Yourself Bulgarian, is a very good way to pick up the basics/fundamentals. You will need the tapes however, if you dont already have the sounds of the alphabet down. All of the Teach Yourself books are really good for beginners, and if you want to get the basics down solid, use this book. Because of these books, I was able to obtain proficiency in Serbian and Croatian, awarding me foreign language pay. What more can I say, really??

Rating:
Summary: pretty good
Review: i gave this book as a present to a friend of mine. he seems to be doing great with it. it seems this is a great book for people who know nothing of the language. some external help with pronounciation would be good though.

Rating:
Summary: below average "Teach Yourself"
Review: I'm pretty familiar with the Teach Yourself series, owning 9 of them. Of course, there are different authors for every language, so you can't judge them by the series. I find this one below average in some aspects. I find the grammatical elements are poorly explained, with the explanation (if any) usually coming a bit too far after the concept is introduced. This results in a fair degree of confusion, and I'm a fairly experienced language student, speaking 3 languages with a moderate level of fluency, and varying levels of familiarity with about 8 others, including Russian and Czech. I also have a Bulgarian friend who I get to help with pronunciation, etc., and he laughs at the book about 90% of the time. I do find that the attempts to make the book interesting and colloquial help keep the learner going. Once I got to the middle of the book, I felt that I had finally gotten enough basic grammar to have some idea of what they were trying to explain (or forgetting to explain). The book includes answers to the exercises, about half of which I found useful. There are examples of handwriting, which I think is really necessary if you are trying to learn the language to visit the country, since it differs markedly from typed, but they are small and a bit difficult to see. Overall I recommend this as a supplement to "Colloquial Bulgarian" by George D. Papantchev. Unfortunately, I have not yet encountered a self-teaching Bulgarian book yet that I would give 5 stars.

Rating:
Summary: A good contemporary book on conversational Bulgarian
Review: The book emphasizes conversation over grammer and is pretty easy to use independently. It can be purchased with or without the 2 tapes. The tapes are not as helpful as one would like. But the book is easy to use and has good exercises with answers. As one who has been to Bulgaria recently, I can attest to the fact that the language taught in the book is contemporary and useful.

Rating:
Summary: A good book
Review: This is a perfectly fine book for picking up Bulgarian. I found it very easy to get around and a very interesting language to learn. It was also fun to read through.