Teach Yourself Serbo-Croat Complete Course (Teach Yourself)

Rating:
Summary: stress/accent mystery
Review: As a student of Russian and SC, I have to say that as to grammar etc., this book is quite good. I do have a problem with calling the book "TY Serbo-Croation" when it's mainly Croation with a few notes on Serbian. Prof. Magner's book covers the differences MUCH better. He also covers the accent/stress system much better. The TY book has no indications whatsoever as to which syllable to stress. In a language where stress is mobile (can be any syllable) this kind of lack of information is almost criminal.

Rating:
Summary: please discuss the book first, without primitive nationalism
Review: I am a bosnian of mixed ethnic origin and I feel quite offended by people who choose such a ridiculous and narrow-minded approach instead of discussing the book and its merits. considering the scarcity of books for learning this fairly exotic language in any of its varieties, this one does a fair job as far as colloquial language is concerned, yet if you learn serbo-croatian in order to read authors like krleza or andric, it won't do. oh yes-ask the reader below to translate anything from english into his native tongue in order to read it to bosnians or serbians or montenegrins. if you pay him enough, you'll see him changing his mind about the language in lightspeed and claiming how we all understand each other.

Rating:
Summary: Great book for beginners in Serbo-Croat
Review: This is a good first step for a beginner wanting to learn more Serbo-Croat than you'd find in a "phrasebook for travellers". The complicated grammatical structure is attacked in a very simple, approachable way. The book contains enough vocabulary for a wide variety of situations.

It would be impossible, I think, for a text like this to give equal consideration to all the varieties of Serbo-Croat. Much better to learn one dialect, as it's not too difficult to switch to another. This book teaches a Croatian dialect, and this is clearly explained at the beginning. I wanted to learn Bosnian, but this book was more than adequate for learning the rudiments of the language, despite the focus on a different dialect.

I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to start learning any dialect of Serbo-Croat. Having worked my way through it, I hope the author decides to write an "advanced Serbo-Croat" book to follow on from this one.