Teach Yourself Beginner's Spanish

Rating:
Summary: many author errors on a single page
Review: I just started reading Teach Yourself Books' Beginner's Spanish. I'm on page 5 on which the authors write:

"*ll*...is pronounced like the *lli* in *million*"

"*a* is nearer to southern English *cup* than *cap*"

"*o* as in *pot*-never as in *know* or *toe*"

That's too much bad information for one book, let alone one page. Authors (or at least editors) have a responsibility to check their facts. Anyone following these authors' advice would be unintelligible. I can't trust the rest of the book now and wish I could get my money back.

Rating:
Summary: BRITISH ENGLISH - CASTILIAN (SPAIN) SPANISH
Review: In regards to pronunciation confusion on page 5, one must remember that these are according to BRITISH pronunciations, and therefore 'pot' IS the correct pronunciation, and so on. One can look past this and learn useful vocabulary and phraseology, although it must be noted that it is teaching Spanish spoken in Spain. It is by no means the best cassette-and-book series, but for the price (less than $.....) it's quite a deal and a provides a solid base for the amateur language enthusiast. After all, if you want to master a language, enroll in classes...I would even use this book to teach my adult conversation class. De todos modos, es un buen libro.

Rating:
Summary: This book is Euro-Centric
Review: What I generally forget with most Teach Yourself books is that they are Euro-Centric. The authors are generally British, and speak with British accents, confusing an American when they speak of certain pronunciations.

This book was no exception. I bought this book, planning on brushing up some more with my "North American Spanish" (the type an American learns in School, which is essentially a mix of numerous dialects, and depends on who your teacher learned from). The problem is this book teaches hardcore Castillian Spanish, which sounds slightly different and doesn't have the traditional flow that an American is used to. Regardless, this book simplifies grammer greatly, and is able to explain some of the easiest concepts of survival Spanish with relative ease. This book is clearly for begginers though, because it only teaches Usted, which is the formal word for you, for most of the chapters only introducing the informal "tu" later. This seems rather absurd because they make it seem extremely informal, although this is just to cut down on the verb endings, but one needs to learn them all at once instead.

Besides all these mistakes though. The book does teach a begginer Spanish as it intended to, and can probubly do that rather quick.