14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brings an impossible language within reach., October 20, 2005
This review is from: Colloquial Hungarian: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series) (Paperback)
I studied from Erika Solyom's book while studying in Budapest, Hungary. For me, learning the Hungarian language seemed to be a very intimidating task, but Colloquial Hungarian made the process much easier, even fun. The characters, dialogues, cultural items and poetry included in the book expose the reader to Hungarian culture which helped me have a deeper understanding of the Hungarian lanuage. I strongly recommend this book.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good, but not for a total novice., January 3, 2008
This review is from: Colloquial Hungarian: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series) (Paperback)
This is a great beginner's book, but not a novice's book. Its teaching is clear and the examples are excellent. Despite claiming to be for beginners, it starts at a little higher level than does Pontifex's book, and goes a little further. As a complete novice you may, therefore, wish to read Pentifex's book first. For example, this book goes as far as detailing the hat/het and the at/tat/et/tet grammars. The grammar does not go as far as Whitney's 1964 gem.
The book gives complete translations for the readings in the first 3 or 4 chapters, after which the pace is stepped-up considerably and no translations are given. The exercises are not as many or as varied in style as Pontifex's.
The quality of the explanation of concepts is second-to-none, but like many other books this suffers from giving a reading that introduces a new concept before that concept is explained. I personally don't like this style, as it may leave the read going around in circles trying to understand (or trying to remember their non-existent understanding of) the grammar. It also suffers from introducing words that exemplify a concept but are not particularly useful in everyday (NB. "Colloquial Hungarian") conversation, such as "parrot".
After the readings a useful, alphabetical glossary is given, but like so many other books it assumes that the reader has a perfect memory and does not remind him of words mentioned in previous glossaries. This means that lots of flicking to the dictionary is necessary for those with imperfect (or otherwise full) minds.
At the end is a good dictionary (but unlike Whitney's dictionary it is not integrated with an index), full conjugation tables of the big seven irregular verbs, tables of examples of irregular (e.g. vowel-dropping) nouns in various cases, etc.
The book has optional audio CDs but I do not own these.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Newman ur, we hardly knew Ud., June 15, 2007
This review is from: Colloquial Hungarian: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series) (Paperback)
I was fortunate to have Erika Solyom as my professor. I believe Colloquial Hungarian is the best book on the market to teach the difficult language of Hungarian: it is easy to follow, uses relevant and sensible dialogs and life situations, and uses cultural elements in an accessible plot. The book is very dense, covering most grammatical rules found in the Hungarian language; however, this allows the book to accomplish both depth and breadth. The reader is able to set his or her own pace and learn what they find relevant. Realistically, I would say, to have a very comprehensible/survival understanding, one should complete chapters one through five in about one semester (fifteen weeks). Though dense, the book is geared for self-paced education with constant review and digestion. Hungarian is not a language to be learned in a matter of weeks (as the Hungarians will proudly point out). However, Colloquial Hungarian gives a great overview and insight into the fascinating language.
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