Customer Reviews

Creole Made Easy Pronunciation Guide

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Great cd's. The speaker is clear, the quality is good. The phrases are repeated to give you time to practice. A lot is covered in the 16 lessons, if you master them you will be able to converse on a simple level. Vocabulary is included in each lesson so you learn the vocab as you go along.
If you get the book as well, you won't have spent much and you will be much further along in your quest to learn creole. I rarely have to call for a translator now when dealing with my patients.

I recently took a trip to Haiti, and in preparation for the trip I used the Creole Made Easy materials, including the Pronunciation Guide cd, and the Workbook. I used all three of them together, so I'll review them together as well.

Creole Made Easy is an excellent introduction to the Haitian Creole language. It provides the basic building blocks in terms of grammar and sentence structure from which to go further. This book is not an "emergency Creole" book, and didn't have anything by way of greetings, phrases to use while traveling, etc. Being in Haiti, those things were very easy to pick up, especially with some of the basic grammar under my belt. The Workbook is split into two sections, the first with exercises that correspond to each of the 16 lessons in Creole Made Easy. The second half of the workbook has more practical lessons like: numbers/time, months/days/seasons/weather, colors, family/friends, marketplace/food, around the house, and health and medicine. Indispensable to learning any foreign language is listening to it, and the Pronunciation Guide cd was excellent in that regard. I found that it was great practice for listening to the native speakers (though even then, I was listening too slowly most of the time) and great for understanding how to pronounce all of those nasal sounds. There were a couple of moments of frustration in using Creole Made Easy: there were a couple of misspellings; sometimes a word or phrase was used seemingly out of nowhere and wasn't listed in the mini-dictionary in the back of the book; a couple times a grammatical structure or phrasing was used and I had no idea why it was used that way, and it wasn't explained. This happened very few times, and can sometimes be a good problem-solving exercise that you need good practice for when trying to have actual conversations with Haitian people.

Of the eight people who went with me on my trip to Haiti, I was one of two who used Creole Made Easy, and the only one who completed all 16 lessons. I think some of the others used the Pimsleur cds (not any books). I was by far the best Creole speaker/listener and felt like I was in a perfect position to learn exponentially more while I was there. I was told over and over again "ou pale Creole byen!" ("you speak Creole well!") which I shrugged off for awhile until it began to sink in that this was true. Also, I wish I would have brought Creole Made Easy along with me instead of the Hippocrene Haitian Creole/English dictionary, because I think the dictionary in the back had a better selection of words and phrases I wanted to say. The Hippocrene has no phrases at all, and often didn't have the words I was looking for. All this said, I would strongly recommend the Creole Made Easy materials to anyone interested in learning Haitian Creole.

Although, I think the subject matter of the tape is a bit dated or is more relegated to country living ~25 -40 years ago, Mr. Turnball's pronunciation is impeccable. His pronouncing of each syllable provided to us, the listener is with great patience. I know whereever he taught, he loved the art of teaching. Even though much of the CD and the corresponding book have pratice pieces about archaic Haiti rather than the present times, listening and repeating after Mr. Turnball will help you with the language even when the subject matter makes you laugh. Would I recommend the book, I'm not sure that I could recommend it to someone that has more than an inkling knowledge of the language, but if you are just starting out as I was a year and a half ago, the book and CD will get you ready for the Haitian Creole CD/book I subsequently purchased by Pimsleur a couple of months ago.

I keep this CD in my car and I downloaded it to my laptop so I can access it anytime. In the car I practice not only saying the words and sentences in Creole but I also practicing listening and understanding Creole. I feel having this CD gives me the daily exposure I need to become fluent in speaking and understanding Creole. I'm currently taking a Creole course and we are using the Creole Made Easy book and workbook by the same author as the CD. They are all 3 great. You will learn to speak Creole if you get all 3 items and spend time with them.

I was in Haiti for 8 days earlier this year, I wish I'd found this before I went. These CD's follow the book, Creole Made easy. YOU NEED THE BOOK! The CD's are clear and words are spoken distinctly.

I have a very firm belief that If you are going to spend any time, more than just a visit, in another country, you need to try to learn a little about that country and make an effort to learn their language. After mastering these 16 lessons you should be in a position to really refine your Creole while you are in Haiti.

I bought this book and audio CD set a couple months beforehand to help me get ready for a 3 week Missions Trip to Haiti in June 2011. The book has additional text to help explain what the CD's only pronounce. The audio of the CDs do not completely cover the topics and explanations in the text of the book. Wally Turnbull (the author of the book and voice on the audio CD's) is a very good and clear teacher. Except that he mispronounces the English word Machete. 8-) But I can deal with that! He speaks so slowly and deliberately, initially it was annoying to listen to. However, once I got used to that, it was great! After going through the book and listening to the CD's a bunch of times in my car (along with the 30 lesson Pimsleur Haitian Creole course), I was very well prepared for my trip. Of the team that went down to Haiti, I was by far the best prepared for the language. I was introduced as "this is Steve, he is almost Haitian" to the church congregation we were visiting. I had three Creole dictionaries with me. The small dictionary included in the back of the "Creole Made Easy" book was by FAR the most useful of the three. The other two had more words, but none of the three had "all" the words I needed to look up. That was irritating. The words I actually used were more often in the Create Made Easy book's dictionary than either of the other two books.

I highly recommend this book and the accompanying audio CDs! I am still listening to the CDs in the car and studying the book in the evenings while I prepare for my upcoming second of many future anticipated trips to Haiti!

The CD we received was great but we did not receive the book that is supposed to come with it.
That was disappointing.

The lessons are fairly easy to understand. Repetition is utilized for vocabulary retention. New words sometimes randomly appear in sentences which have you referencing to find their meaning. There are 16 lessons & I've completed half. I should've probably bought this sooner to prepare for my forthcoming trip.

This book is pretty sparse, and many of the vocabulary and phrases are simply not the way it would actually be said in Haiti. Still, it's okay as a quick primer.

This CD is great. I've been to Haiti, and as soon as I left, I knew I wanted to go back. But, this time I want to be able to talk to the people. I would recommend the book, with the same name, to go along with it. It makes more sense when you see it written.