Customer Reviews

Colloquial Lithuanian: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have been studying Lithuanian twice a week with a professional instructor now for 3 months. I own this text, as well as the Beginner's Lithuanian text by Dambriunas. The Colloquial Lithuanian has very useful exercises, and emphasizes the conversational forms and expressions over the tradional academic style employed in Beginner's Lithuanian. However, be forewarned. This Colloquial Lithuanian text is absolutely inaccessable for beginners -- it does not lay out the fundamentals, but instead stresses memorization and modelling. This is good in a way, but not at all useful unless you know some fundamentals already. Similarly, the audio tapes of C.L. move at an advanced speed. As my professor says, C.L. is a "second-year" coursebook. We use it sometimes for exercises, but the B.L. text is much better.

By the way, the first reviewer should say "Vilniaus Universitetas" in the nominative, or "Vilniaus Universitete" in the locative. "Vilno Univeriteto" is simply wrong -- Beginner's Lithuanian can cure that mistake, Colloquial Lithuanian cannot.

This is the best guide (book plus tape) currently available for learning Lithuanian. My brother, who studied at Vilno Universiteto in 1994 - 1995 strongly recommended it to me, and wished he had had it available then. I had previously tried to learn using the Easy Way to Lithuanian book and tapes, and found this much better.

Of course, learning Lithuanian without living there or with a Lithuanian family member is basically impossible, but such is life.

Su Diev!

My mother, born in Lithuania, does not agree with some usage of words and phrasing, and basic pronunciations. Overall, a very useful book and cassette package.

I would be lying if I were to say that this book will make learning Lithuanian very easy. It cannot possibly do that.

Lithuanian language is very archaic, very peculiar and very complex. What's more, there are too few paralels with modern European languages: unless you have some kind of linguistic background, the task will probably seem overwhelming. It is not like learning French or Spanish if you are an English-speaker.

The book comes in Colloquial series (this is your first clue for not expecting too much); it has been reasonably well written and edited, especially considering relatively undeveloped tradition of Western-quality textbook writing in the Baltics.

Frankly, one can do much worse than buying this.

This book gives a fairly deep introduction to the oldest living Indo-European language, Lithuanian. Spoken in the Baltic state of Lithuania it has remained almost unaffected by the changes that have occured in other Indo-European languagea over the last 3.000 years. For a linguist, this makes Lithuanian a very interesting language indeed and this book is a good introduction to it. At times the grammar explanations could be somewhat more far-reaching, but most aspects of grammar are dealt with in a constructive way and the book gives a quite extensice vocabulary.

Any problem, everything in perfect conditions, just too much time waiting but it's because the item had to cross the Atlantic ocean.:)

This book is an excellent course. The book and audio guide are inseparable! However, be warned that the lithuanian language is not for the inexperienced in the world of linguistics.

Owned and tried to use this book to learn enough Lithuanian to "get by" when we visted this fall. It certainly is NOT a Berlitz type program and is not a good book or tape to use alone. It is almost impossible to learn to say, Hello, my name is.... using this program.

My husband speaks "child" Lithuanian learned at his Grandmothers knee and he could not use this program.

I did not find basic get-you-by Lithuanian that hard once I got in the country. Travelers can get by with basic language skills and most Lithuanians under 40 speak decent English. We got by but not thanks to this course.

Not for travelers. May be helpful addition for language students who already speak fairly fluent conversational Lithuanian and want to dig deeper.

This is the best guide (book plus tape) currently available for learning Lithuanian. My brother, who studied at Vilno Universiteto in 1994 - 1995 strongly recommended it to me, and wished he had had it available then. I had previously tried to learn using the Easy Way to Lithuanian book and tapes, and found this much better.

Of course, learning Lithuanian without living there or with a Lithuanian family member is basically impossible, but such is life.

Su Diev!