<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Nonsense
Review: I am very upset with this book and especially with the cassettes, these are not even native estonian speakers!!! I was listening to some dialogues and they make stupid grammatical mistakes in very simple sentences.
If anybody can study from this book, I admire these people a lot!!!Any estonian national would be offended by the image that this book gives to the beautiful estonian language.
My Greek boyfriend says: olete jobud!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Useful new textbook of little-known language
Review: I've used this book to teach Estonian at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. It's not bad, but it doesn't explain the essential aspects of the fiendishly difficult 'lengths'of vowels and consonants. These lengths cannot be explained adequately without knowledge of the history of the Estonian language. Maybe a beginner's guidebook isn't the place for a detailed exposition, but when there are so few textbooks in English, more detail might have been expected.Why is it always assumed that a beginner's textbook cannot contain historical explanations?
Rating: 
Summary: Colloquial Estonian: A Complete Language Course by Moseley
Review: This book with accompanying cassettes is engaging fare for the casual linguist, but it is not the complete language course that it claims to be. In reality, it is a cursory overview, for it attempts to cover too much information at a superficial level and becomes fragmented. Moreover, it lacks sufficient examples to illustrate its grammatical explanations. Its most serious flaw is in its shallow treatment of Estonian phonology: First of all, In the pronunciation section, 180 sample words are shown in the text for the learner to practice. Of these, only one half are actually pronounced on the audiotape. Moreover, the order of the words on the audiotape does not agree with the order of the words in the text; rather, the tape skips right, left, up, down, and across section boundaries, making it impossible to find the words while they are being pronounced. Second, the fact that Estonian words have three degrees of syllabic intensity/length is totally ignored in the book. Intensity and length should be explained clearly and then demonstrated on the tape; then they should be indicated on words throughout the book by means of some form of written accent. Third, the fact that some Estonian words have palatalized consonants is virtually ignored. Palatalization also should be explained and illustrated with facial diagrams. Then, examples should be pronounced on the tape. Then, palatalization should be indicated on words throughout the book with small diacritical marks of some sort. In this way, a learner would have at least a chance of being exposed to accurate pronunciation. Presently, a learner using this course is cheated of this opportunity and will have no chance of striving for more than a seriously flawed accent.
<< 1 >>
| 
