Customer Reviews

Colloquial Bulgarian: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series, Book and Cassettes)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
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The "Colloquial" series of language tutorials vary in quality depending on language and author. I have to say that Colloquial Bulgarian is one of the better products in the line. Among the more beneficial features of the book is a complete sample of hand written Cyrillic characters (which can vary dramatically from typeset letters.) A very comprehensive grammar/syntax summary is included in the back of the book for those of us who need a review - in addition to the lengthy explanations in the middle chapters. Many language books which deal with non-english characters tend to introduce the reader to the language by spelling foreign words phonetically using English letters for the first few chapters. This course does NOT do this! You are forced to learn the Cyrillic characters and how they are pronounced right off the bat (which is good! You will have to do it at some point - better sooner than later!) The glossary is quite lacking, as is the case with most language tutorials so be sure to pick up a good b-e e-b dictionary. Finally, the tapes... The tapes are well done. The Bulgarian parts are spoken by the author and his family, but amazingly, the quality is very professional. They speak slowly and clearly in the earlier chapters and more quickly and conversationally in later chapters. The English is read by an extremely nervous sounding Victorian Brit who is nonetheless quite pleasant to listen to. The author is native Bulgarian. While in posession of a masterful level of prowess where English syntax is concerned, his English sentences seem stilted and frequently redundant (e.g. the nervous Brit's scripting on the tape.) As an English speaker this won't matter too terribly much as you will get the meaning I'm sure. Enjoy!

I am French, I speak English, Spanish and Dutch and I had only 5 month to learn the language (as I was bestman for the wedding of my friends in Sofia).

So I work a lot in a short period of time to be able to express myself in a decent Bulgarian and to understand Bulgarian people as much as possible.

I gave four stars for the following reasons:
- the combination book+tapes is effective (tapes are complementary)
- the book is written in cyrillic
- the progression is good for someone interested in learning the language seriously (not always easy though)
- exercices are well-done, lexic at the end is really helpful

I did not want to give it five stars because:
- the text written at the end of each chapter went too far on some topics (would have preferred to get a wider range of basic words/expressions)
- overtime you get bored with the lesson scheme, it's hard to stay motivated
- when I was in Bulgaria, I could not read newspapers which had small Cyrillic letters (capital and small cyrillic letters are different, the book only uses the capital ones).

A few advices for people who wish to study the language with this book:
- you will need a Bulgarian teacher/friend to help you (I could not have gone through this book without the help of my bulgarian friend)
- get a dictionary, a phrase book (for basic words/expressions)
- tapes will not help you much to understand Bularian. I listened to the Bulgarian National Radio (on the internet), bought some DVD in Bulgarian, bought Bulgarian music (and printed the lyrics too)
- optionnally get an extra grammar book with more details and examples

Fabrice

This book/tape course has pretty much everything you will need to get to an intermediate level of proficiency. The examples of handwriting are large enough to be useful, with a couple of examples sprinkled in later chapters. One thing I like is that the dialogs at the beginning of each chapter don't have the stress accents indicated. Although this is more difficult for the student, it is the only way you will see Bulgarian written. The accents are, of course, indicated in the vocabulary sections immediately following. You have to work to remember them earlier. I don't believe that most learners will be able to use the tape semi-independently of the book, at least not for the first several chapters. The tape is well done for what it is. I do find the voice of the British English-speaking narrator to be rather annoying (the previous reviewer said it very well). Although, like all of the "Colloquial" and "Teach Yourself" series they are written by British English speakers, I found the English to be more international than most language books in these series, other than the occasional spelling of 'colour'. I find the book's grammar sections explain the often rather complex Bulgarian grammar adequately, with only a few points not totally clear. The layout of the grammar itself seems quite logical, however. The glossary at the back of the book is two-way (also English-Bulgarian), a rarity in language books. The grammatical summary at the end is useful as well. Unfortunately, I find the book a bit dry; even as language books go, it's a little on the dull side. I'd normally give a book like this only 3 stars but the fact that this book is my first choice for a beginner to Bulgarian and there is so little competition gets it bumped up a notch.