Customer Reviews

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Learning German (2nd Edition)

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

 

 

Other reviewers nailed this one- If you need to become fluent in "conversational German" overnight (read: Business trip), this is the perfect book for you. For people who really want to learn the language and/or culture... at least it's cheap.

Yes, the book has errors. Yes, it has some awkward presentation (it has exercises asking you to try to speak phrases before it introduces proper pronunciation!). Yes, it's more about giving you phrases like "Where's the Taxi" and "How's my hair" over anything truly fundamental... but that's not really what this book is about.

Get this book if:
-You're vacationing in Berlin 3 months from now and you want to be able to ask when your train is leaving without looking like a typically clueless tourist.
-A great-aunt you didn't even know you were related to recently passed away and the only stipulation on her inheritance is that you must know enough German to find your way to her estate.
-Your boss just told you that Hans from the Berlin office wants to talk to you- now.

Don't get this book if:
-You just found out your future mother-in-law is a German immigrant and you need to speak picture-perfect German to impress her.
-You plan on moving to or living in Germany for an extended period.
-...or if you have the time to "do things right".

If you need to learn German, and you need to learn it NOW, this is probably the best book I've ever seen for that purpose. If you're looking at a longer time frame or a situation where precision matters more than simply how fast you can assimilate the language, then you should at least pick up some supplements to help weed out where the errors are.

...and hey, it's a reasonably cheap book with a pretty reliable "cheat card" of phrases just behind the front cover. It's hard to argue with that.

This book has one *MAJOR* thing going for it that I had not seen in many other books related to learning German. This is that nearly every phrase/saying/word and sentence has the pronunciation of the German words in English phonetics. This is perhaps the most helpful and useful thing that an absolute beginner in learning German needs to have in order to get the pronunciation right (well...nearly right)and develop a feel for the actual sounds of the words. The book is definately aimed at people who have never studied a language before and has perhaps the best explanation of german grammar for such people. Having said that, it is probably not a good idea to base your German on this book, but used in conjunction with a good basic german grammar course book (such as a student of german would recieve) it provides an invaluable asset in this regard.

However, if the reader has never studied german before then they will be a bit daunted by the complexity of the sentences that they are given for examples and many of these examples will be overly complex. For people who have a basic to good knowlege of german then this book is very good and provides many useful phrases and excercises to increase your vocabulary and understanding.

Overall, a good book

I really had to pull some German skills together quickly (for business) and started the hunt for a book to help guide me. I read the reviews on Amazon and contatcted the author who did the second revision of this book, Lisa Graham. She directed me to the third edition (which was just printed) and told me the errors had been corrected and the book had been streamlined. An important point she made that this was a "functional book" to get one communicating on a daily living level and that this was not a substitute for a good text book and a directed course. Professor Graham should know as she teaches German at the University level. I really appreciated her advice - she even emailed after a few weeks to see how I was doing.

I got what I needed out of the book and was able to "function" well enough on a verbal level. I even talked my way out of a speeding ticket. I've handed out a couple of copies to coworkers who are facing the same challenge and have gotten good feedback from them.

I guess with any of these guides you have to have the right expectation going into it. I did and now highly recommend this book.

While this book contains lots of useful information, it is clear that it hasn't been proofread. If I hadn't had a native German-speaker going over it with me, I would have learned a great deal of incorrect words. We found errors throughout the book, some serious and some just obvious typos. I suggest the publisher hire a good German proofreader and reissue the book after a thorough edit. Also, while I realize that the tone of the text is meant to be fun and lively, I found it a bit silly and overly wordy. Less empty prattling would have left more room for additional information. I found German for Dummies to be a much better book.

I was shopping for German instruction books the other day at the book store and this was the first one I found. I had looked at German for Dummies as well, but wasn't as impressed. All of the other products were on CD, which I didn't bother with (unless it's one of those audio-only listening disks) since I'm more comfortable with books here. So I bought it. So far it's proving to be a great book, for the price. It's the same case with the Idiot's Guide to Spanish I bought a year back, so it looks like these people may have just earned themselves a new customer. And I say "for the price" because I tend to compare these products to Pimsleur's, which are, in my view, the best of the best in DIY language training. However, 690 dollars for their complete two box set (I wish I were kidding) seemed a little steep for me at the time, to say the least.

All errors aside, this book is great for me! The only way to get around the errors are to have a suplementary book and a supplementary class, but I really like the "We are Family" exerpts where they draw relations to German and English. This stuff goes really deep, as it often relates between Old and Middle english with German. Its nothing like most books that state, "Many words from German are in English like 'Kindergarten, and kaput!'" They explain, for example how the Old english the suffix "e" or "lic" was added to make adjectives; "friendly and homely" are modern remnants. This helps you understand the German suffix "lich," which is very similar to the Old English "lic". Very helpful, I think. Anyone with a slight knowledge of Old and Middle English will really appreciate it. It also gives a very rapid presentation to the Grammar unlike many textbooks where you don't understand why things change the way they do untill much learning. With this book you are almost never presented with something that isn't expained first or soon after. I like it because it expains the things that I won't get in the textbook for many weeks simply. For instance, it simply explains the contractions like zum (zu dem) which isn't explained in most text books until much later. You are always asking yourself "why does it change?" Now I know. This book is a great supplement for the beginner. I don't know much German yet, but I do recognize the errors. I do believe that for the most part the conceptual explanations are very good and helpful. Use this book to give yourself a broad, conceptual base to the detailed specifics you'll be learning in a textbook. This book is everything that a textbook lacks in terms of giving broad conceptual meaning to the strict memorization of a textbook.

From the beginning to the end this book if full of errors.For a beginner who wants to learn German grammar, I would strongly recommend another book by Hansen Dollenmayer called, "Neue Horizonte". This book is being taught at some colleges in California and is to my opinion and all of those in my class and the german speaking people I know, one of the best and complete books in learning German language.The price might be high but well worth it.

I have only gotten through several chapters in this book. I think the content is a little less dry than say take off in German by oxford press(which by the way is very good) and therefore I can read through the chapters more quickly. I do think that the solutions to the questions in this book should be correct however. There are numerous problems with the solutions. It seems this book was never proofed at all. In any case if you want to learn german I suggest you pass up this book.

I bought this book during my second year of studying German, and it was pretty useful as far as beginner's grammar goes, but as far as vocabulary, don't expect much. It is more a book for people who plan to go to Germany than anything else. I'm not sure about the 3rd edition, I have the 2nd edition, but there were often times when I even found mistakes and the pronounciation key, even though I didn't need it, tends to throw you off from the actual pronounciation. Some more helpful guides would be Themen Neu workbooks for English/French/... speakers. I found those while I was an exchange student in Berlin and they helped me a lot to build useful vocabulary and help out with my weak areas.

This book did help me learn some things and it helped me understand some other things that I didn't get before which is wht this book gets 1 star. However this book is full of mistakes like translations that I know to be wrong because I have studied some German before getting this book. When I find a bunch of mistakes it makes me wonder how many other mistakes are there that I'm not aware of so I lost my trust in this book and found a better one.

All the teach yourself books have a few mistakes here and there but this one has way too many so I would highly suggest that you find a better book than this one if you're looking to learn German, especialy for a begginer.