Customer Reviews

Complete Idiot's Guide To Learning German On Your Own

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Initially when I first bought this book, I worked my way through it for a while and then put it on hiatus. Later after quite some time had passed, I finally worked my way through the rest of it. I've been learning German for almost three years now, but I can't really recommend this book. My belief is that if you are a beginner, you need to buy a CD or cassette pack. You need to hear native speakers reciting the language and not just read and pronounce it from a book. I found this book to be okay, but it just wasn't that interesting. I never refer back it. Two sources I've learned a lot from are Basic German from Berlitz and Just Listen and Learn German.

I used this book to base my study of German on before Iactually took a class on it. My teacher was a native German speakerand to my suprise the majority of the pronunciations in the book are somewhat if not completely wrong! Also, the way this book is organized, it is more suited to a person taking a 1 week holiday to Germany then someone in search of full fluency in the language. One good thing about it is the humour and simplicity it gives the reader, but I beleive actually learning German was the original goal.

This book is not helpful. It teaches very little grammar and not in reasonable order. A textbook will be more useful to people who have some knowledge in German but want a better grasp in grammar. To a starter with no knowledge in German at all, this book is dangerous because of the many typos. There are much too many mis-pronounced or mis-spelled words, which may not arouse the suspicion of a starter, who, consequently, take them as they are without consulting a dictionary.

This book was crap! I bought it right before I moved to Germany and thought I could use it as a supplement to learn the language, but it only made what I heard from native speakers more confusing. Don't buy this waste of glue and trees. Or if you want, buy the book and learn case and gender incorrectly and learn how to conjugate verbs ONE way, then come too Germany and embarass yourself by sqwaking out the German you so diligently "learned" from this book. Then watch the confused Germans actually figure out that your attempting to speak GERMAN with them, then they'll just laugh at you. German is an incredibly difficult language to learn and the only way I would reccoment is private lessons and lots of study! Sie sollen nicht dieses buch kaufen!

While I have been drawn to the "...for Dummies" and the "Idiot's..." series for their combination of simplicity and humor, I found this book to be lacking when I read it after choosing it as a "first read" in preparation for self-study of German. It is quickly boring and nonengaging, throwing multiple poorly chosen tables in with a few fill-in-the blank exercises. I struggled to finish the book, turning to Berlitz's "Essential German" and "German in 10 minutes a day" instead, although my prime teacher has been the (highly recommended) Pimsleur series of tapes. I agree with most of the (negative) critiques below, and recommend a beginner to pass on this book, lest he/she give up on the language. Achtung, baby!

It is unfortunate that this website does not allow me to give this book "0" stars because I would. Having read "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Learning Italian On Your Own", I was astoundingly disappointed in this book. While the "Italian" book was very good, the "German" book is filled with numerous errors and omissions. Errors include incorrect translations, incorrect exercise answers, and incorrect pronunciation examples. For example on page 120, Bahnhof is translated as airport, when airport is in fact Flughafen. An important omission is any sort of English-German/German-English glossary (the "Italian" book includes an Italian-English/English-Italian Glossary). Another problem I have with the book is its length - 329 pages vs 432 pages for the "Italian" book. A 24% smaller book for the same price. This book has the appearance of being "rushed" to press since it doesn't appear to have been throroughly reviewed for accuracy.

I had considered buying the "French" book but will now avoid it like the plague. I have studied Spanish, Russian, French, German, Italian, Polish, Thai, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, and Japanese over the course of 25 years and I feel I have a pretty good understanding of what is required to learn a language and I must say I have never run across a more poorly executed language publication than "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Learning German On Your Own"

Don't wate your money on this book. It's hard to understand, and leaves a lot unclear. If you really want to learn German, get yourself an English-German dictionary and take a class at your local community college.

I found this book to be very much unhelpful to a person w/o some previous German experience.

In short: too much English -- most of it irrelevant -- and not enough Deutsch. Also it has errors. In the Chapter "The case of the Declining Noun" we are told that most German nouns are pluralized by adding er to the end.

I am just learning German and bought this book. A waste. I have found "German How to Speak and Write It" by Rosenberg a useful book.

There are much much better books out there. This book almost has no structure and no content, I don't know how they made it 400 pages. I got very annoyed with it. Just get anything else.