Customer Reviews

Colloquial Estonian: A Complete Language Course (Book Only)

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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 of its complex morphology. 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. A "complete language course" would explain syllabic intensity/length clearly and then offer copious examples and contrasts on the audiotape; A "complete language course" would also indicate syllabic intensity/length on words throughout the book by means of written accents as reinforcement for the learner.

Third, the fact that some Estonian words have palatalized consonants is virtually ignored. A serious book would explain Palatalization and illustrate it with facial diagrams. Then, it would offer copious examples of the pronunciation of the palatals on tape in contrast with nonpalatals. Then, it would indicate palatalized consonants on words throughout the book with small diacritical marks of some sort. In this way, a learner would have 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 flawed accent.

I wouldn't really recommend this book to anyone. It is one of the shortest of all the courses in the Colloquial series. Given the fact that English is more closely related to almost any European languages that to Estonian, this book never stands a chance of teaching you Estonian. Parts of the pronunciation. especially concerning the difference between -b, d, g- , -p, t, k- and -pp, tt, kk, is never explained despite being crucial to the grammar of Estonian. Get this one wrong and you won't be understod. Due to the shortness of the book, the vocabulary you'll learn is not that extensive and the grammar explanations are too short for you to get a real understanding of Estonian grammar. As one of the best language courses in any language, the Estonian Textbook by Juhan Tuldava, is also available from Amazon, I would definiely recommend you to consider buying that course instead of this one.

Not a full enough introduction to the grammar of this beautiful and interesting Finno-Ugric language, nor a sufficiently extensive source of excercises to consolidate one's new-found skills, but, well....it's a start! The opening chapters on pronunciation are frustrating because the cassettes and text do not correspond precisely: material in the text is left out of the audio, and the description of length and palatalization is poor. The grammar is covered, but a little more depth would make the book much better (for instance more on partial and complete objects, and the cases they govern). The vocabulary and the context of the dialogue that runs through the chapters were the best part for me: good, basic and nearly all relevant to modern daily needs. The vocabulary list at the end of the book would be enhanced by giving a fuller list of declension endings for nouns: in addition to the nominative, genitive and partitive singulars which Moseley gives, the difficult partitive plural would allow the learner to construct all the other endings. Similarly, more sample verb conjugations would be helpful in the vocabulary list since so many are irregular. More positively, I did find Moseley's book a helpful tool when I used it with other learning materials, such as Tuldava's grammar book (ISBN 0-933070-34-9)and the excellent "E nagu Eesti" (ISBN 9985-71-053-3) with its cassette (ISBN 9985-71-089-4)(n.b. designed for use with a teacher).

This book, and the cassettes are a good way to begin a serious study of the language. The reader is immediately introduced to useful phrases and along the way some interesting aspects of Estonian that an intermediate or advanced student would appreciate. Not a bad book considering several other attempts which plunge the reader into advanced material. The speakers on the cassette sounded like real Estonians and not "foreign Estonians" i.e. "välis eestlased" with western accents so common in books/cassettes of this type. One might consider 'Estonian for beginners" put out by Estonian Learning Materials Council of Estonian Societies in Australia in 1984. This was my first look at the language and the casettes with it are good. Another excellent approach is "Estonian Textbook" by Juhan Tuldava.

If this was a drug or a food it would be recalled and you would get your money back. How they can charge this amount of money for such a product is beyond me. Lack of time is hardly an excuse because it's been in print for over ten years. Below is a copy of the letter I wrote to the publisher. They passed it on to the author who conceded all but one of my points and had the grace to ask for my money to be returned out of his royalties (which I have not yet received...).


I have recently purchased your book Colloquial Estonian. I have worked through the first five chapters and am concerned at what seem to be some rather serious shortcomings in the text, the main ones of which I have listed below:

Page 5 Letter š - no explanation of this is given at all. It is also mentioned on page 37 without explanation.

Page 16 Exercise 4 number eight. The answer in the back uses the word "ka". This has not been given yet. How can the student be expected to know this?

Page 18 and 20. There seem to be two forms natukene and natuke. Why is this difference not explained?

Page 22 Exercise 2 no. 2 the form Piretit is given in the answers in the back, this form is not explained.
Likewise the form teda in question 4 (which also uses the unexplained word ka).

Page 23 Exercise 3. You mention the two words teada and tunnen for to know. Your explanation leads one to believe that they are similar to savoir and connaitre in French. However, all the examples look like the connaitre meaning (i.e. to be acquainted with), and no proper explanation is given when to use teada and tunnen in this exercise.
Likewise in the answer to 4, it is not clear why the form teda is used here.

Page 24
Explanation of the illative case:
"The short form adds -sse to the genitive stem, but in this lesson we will only concern ourselves with the short form"
I'm not sure I understand this - is the first `short' a misprint for long?

Page 26 Exercise 6
The answer uses a new verb soita - how is the student expected to know this? Especially since he has already had one verb for to go and would normally expect to use that.
Further, the answers in the back use the long form of the illative which we have been told we will not be concerning ourselves with this lesson - if I have correctly understood the text on page 24.

Page 33 Exercise 1 question 4 nine glasses of milk. How is the student expected to find the partitive for milk?

Page 36 You use the term "weak grade" referring the student back to the introductory notes on pronunciation. I cannot find this term there.

Page 43 Exercise 1 no errors here, but it might have been an idea to give some times requiring the "pärast" form...

Page 47 Exercise 4 question 4 "ta on lubanud" - this form has not been explained.
Page 47 Exercise 5 question 4, answer in the back uses the word "kohta" - how is the student expected to know this word?

Pages 48 - 9
Language in action
How is the student expected to do these exercises? Presumably it means finding words for left, right north, south etc. How is he to know which cases they govern? This seems a totally unreasonable exercise (and no answers are given anyway).

Page 54
Ara minge! my understanding of your explanation of the polite imperative is that this form should come from the conjugated present tense not the infinitive. Either I don't understand something, or something has not been explained.

Page 55
Exercise 2 question 3. The answer in the back again uses a form the student has not had yet.

Page 57 Exercise 1
The instructions read: "Translate these questions into Estonian and answer them first positively, then negatively."
The answers you give in the back are merely negative and "positive" forms of the question and don't fit the models you have given of affirmative and negative answers.
Further in the answers section you give forms the student has not had!!
eg. 4 on teili linna naidanud
Question 3 prompts for plural `you' but the answer in the back is in the singular

Page 58 Exercise 4 question 3. vanem (older) - you don't give comparatives until the next chapter.

I have only reached this far in the book, but the quantity of inaccuracies seriously compromises its usefulness. What is the point of giving the student exercises that include material he has not had yet? I would remind you that the price of the book on its own is nearly twenty pounds, and with CDs and cassettes is nearly 40 pounds, and at these prices I believe the consumer is entitled to a properly thought out and proof read book. (Running headers might have been useful too).

Perhaps I should have judged the book by its cover, where on the back cover you misspell Tallinn (explanation of the cover photograph). I might also question the wisdom of choosing a Russian Orthodox church for the front cover.

I would appreciate hearing your comments and shall also draw these issues to the attention of my bookseller.

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!!!

A very frustrating book. No, there's not much in the way of English language Estonian textbooks to compare to, but as compared to textbooks for other languages, this doesn't stack up. The explanations are inadequate, and most passages are only partially translated. The tapes are very nice to have - similar resources on the internet are spoken much more quickly. On the whole, however, this book makes learning Estonian much more difficult and frustrating than it needs to be.

YEEEOWWW!!!! Can we say complicated, kids?! For my first visit to Estonia, I purchased this book with an intention to acquire a "get-by" knowledge of her language, and little did I know I was in for such a treat... The book does a good job in explaining the basics, but I really think that they try to cram too much into too little space. The first few chapters are straightforward, but require much revision to obtain a basic working knowledge of the language. After the beginning chapters, the content FLIES by and there is even more studiousness required to keep up, as more and more of the language and its inherent complexities becomes exposed. BEWARE, this language is not for the faint of heart. :) All in all, the book is very thorough and quite informative with regard to both grammar and vocabulary. The tapes are EXCELLENT, being both clear and varied in voice type.

Not a bad book. There are very few Estonian textbooks available, so if you want to learn the language then this is probably a good place to start. However, the explanations are brief and for a language with such complicated grammar, you really don't get enough practise which results in a lack of confidence when actually trying to use Estonian. But the tapes are good and you can really get a taste for the language from that alone. In short, too much information crammed into too short a space. Would be better with more exercises and explanations relating to the grammar.

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?