Customer Reviews

Estonian Textbook: Grammar Exercises Conversation (Indiana University Uralic and Altaic, Vol 159)

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

 

 

Juhan Tuldava did a excellent job when compiling this Estonian Grammar Textbook. Many textbooks fail to have the methodical and logical methods that this textbook possesses. This book is good for both beginners and American-Estonian readers, as well as being a useful grammatical and educational tool for those who immigrated to the states as children and need some grammatical structure to their oral competence. Containing both colloquial expressions and language, pronunciation guides, Estonian-english dictionary, as well as guide to idiomatic and more formal language, this will give the reader a very firm understanding of the Estonian language. In every chapter this textbook includes grammatical concepts, a text to sharpen reading abilities, vocabulary lists of and average length of 50-100 words, expressions, and excercises to increase competence. The texts are often written in humorous terms and are enjoyable to read. Even for those with no interest in a thorough study of Estonian grammar will find they can expand their repertoire of conversational phrases and common sayings conveniently indexed. If you have any interest in learning more about the Estonian language indepedently or in a classroom setting, this is the ideal book to buy.

I can only agree with the other reviewers, this course is exceptionally good. Due to both a personal interest in languages and a work that include language coverage, I've gone through well over 300 language courses in my days. Even though it's a though race, I would say this is best language course ever written. The amount of vocabulary introduced to the learner exceeds most other course; after finishing this course you will know about twice as many words as after finishing the average Colloquial course and three times as many as after an average Teach Yourself course. The Estonian language, being one of the few languages in Europe not belonging to the Indo-European language family, has got a grammatical system that might seem daunting for English speakers - and for most other Europeans. Tuldava succesfully manages to introduce all of the Estonian grammar in this course, and he has split it up into the right portions of new grammar in each lesson. You constantly feel that you are progressing while never feeling overwhelmed. The lay-out is clear and userfriendly, the vocabulary lists of each lesson are put into two nice tables. And finally, there are many exercises AND answers to all the exercises (surprisingly enough, many authors of language courses ignore giving the answers to the exercises).

If there was a Nobel Prize for writing language courses, I believe it should go to Tuldava. Prospective authors of a language course would do well to use this course as their model.

After hearing good reviews from friends while studying in Tallinn, I finally found a copy of 'Estonian Textbook' on Amazon - it was sold out in all the bookstores I checked, including Raava Raamat (equivalent of Borders).

I'm impressed by the 'bite sized' lessons which don't take a lot of time or energy to complete, but contain a very detailed outline of grammar and a decent amount of vocabulary. The satisfaction of being able to understand the short reading passage at the end of a lesson without looking at the vocabulary alone is well worth the book's price tag.

Väga hea!

I agree with the other reviewers that this is the best and most approachable grammar of the Estonian language available for English speakers.

BUT... beware that some of the phrases, vocabularly and grammatical constructions are a bit old-fashioned. Furthermore, the book could be a bit better organized. Namely, some chapters in this book cover relatively trite grammatical concepts (e.g. the nominative plural), while others are more involved (the passive perfect and passive voice). Also, Tuldava introduces the singular and plural partitives fairly late and hence, doesn't include them in the earlier vocab lists (which I think is fairly inefficient).

Regarding those lists, each chapter presents the reader with very long vocabularly sections so that, in my opinion, if this is used as an exclusive text then it would quite easily overwhelm the learner with vocabularly.

So, this is a must-have for any English-speaking learner of Estonian, but mostly as a grammar reference to be used in conjunction with a more up-to-date text.

Unlike most of the previous reviews, I don't see the reason for the extremely positive ratings assigned to this course.

PROS:

- Grammar is presented in relatively small installments (40 chapters) and the presentation usually does not make a user feeling overwhelmed
- Vocabulary lists are extensive and each word includes all pertinent grammatical information (e.g. genitive and partitive endings for nouns; conjugation patterns for verbs). Under ideal conditions, one's command of Estonian vocabulary is definitely better after using this course when compared to the results obtained after completing "Colloquial Estonian" or "Teach Yourself Estonian"
- Answer key for almost all exercises
- Each chapter also includes a small list of idioms or phrases that would be used in specific situations (e.g. greetings, expressions of surprise, expressions used when discussing your views)

CONS:
- No audio included
- Inadequate amount of exercises to help with retention of material
- Vocabulary list at the end of the book is Estonian to English only.

Because of these cons, I cannot rate this course as 5 out of 5 and could not consider it as the best language course ever. However I agree that as a base, Tuldava's approach is sound. Self-instructional textbooks for other languages (e.g. "Colloquial Estonian", "Teach Yourself Slovene", "Colloquial Finnish") would have done well to have emulated the format of Tuldava's course. In addition, this book can also act as a serviceable reference manual on Estonian grammar (the only one that I know of is an old reference grammar of about 180 pages written by Robert T. Harms. It is now sold at an outrageously high price ($180) as a reprint from Routledge.)