Customer Reviews

Pimsleur Croatian: Learn to Speak and Understand Croatian with Pimsleur Language Programs

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

 

 

I find the teaching format very convincing in theory and in application. The regular reinforcement of material already covered is very supportive of remembering what you've learned. The voice quality of the narrator and the two Croatian speakers is very clear and pleasing in quality,and the pauses needed between verbal entries needed for the learner to absorbe and repeat the stimulus words and phrases are just about right. The speakers are excellent in pronouncing words and syllables clearly and repeatedly so that proper linguistic inflections are practiced and remembered.
What I find missing and I know would help me a lot is a printed transcript of the CD oral content. This would allow the learner to study what has been covered when it is inconvenient to play the CD as well as to see how the words and phrases look and are spelled. I believe very strongly in multisensory learning,which is not provided with this program.
I also wish the CD allowed me to skip back to phrases that require more repetition than some others without jumping all the way back to the beginning of the lesson.

I've just begun using this guide to learn Croatian. My family speaks a heavy Istrian dialect and the "pure" language sounds almost nothing like it, so I am starting from scratch. The lessons start off at a very basic level, and gradually build up by adding a new word or phrase. Then, it will take you back to previous lessons to refresh your memory, while incorporating them into new lessons (essentially, none of the older lessons that are taught will be forgotten). The instructors' pronunciation is very clear and easy to imitate, as they sound out the syllables of each word. The narrator occasionally includes a fact about sentence structure that is helpful.

Despite the fact that this really should have included a guide so that we could learn the written part, it is definitely a great place to begin learning this very difficult language. I also hope the company will release additional volumes, since it is extremely hard to find Croatian language lessons out there.

This is the best way to learn a language from the beginning. This method allows you to retain the most info. The only bad thing is that its only 10 lessons. This isn't a popular language so they didn't come out with a volumn 2.

Effective October 2008, there will be three levels of the Pimsleur Croatian Language Program available.
1) Basic Croatian which covers lessons 1-10 on 5 CDs. This level lists for $24.95. See ISBN-10: 0-7435-6206-2.
2) Conversational Croatian which covers lessons 1-16 on 8 CDs. This level lists for $49.95. See ISBN-10: 0-7435-6205-4.
3) Comprehensive Croatian which covers lessons 1-30 on 16 CDs. This level lists for $345.00. See ISNB-10: 0-7435-6204-6.
All three levels start with the same lesson 1, so if you buy a Basic or Conversational Croatian course, and then a higher one, the lessons overlap.
Amazon is accepting pre-release orders for these courses and is offering a 5% discount off their already discounted price.

This course presents information slowly and in a repetitive fashion - bad for entertainment but absolutely fantastic for learning. Every lesson revisits all of the previous material and encourages you to use it in mix-and match situations to give you a great functional overview. If you diligently follow the whole set of lessons, at the end you will have a pretty good command of about a dozen phrases.

But you do not get the tools to move beyond those phrases. There is no discussion of how to swap in new words, and there are major gaps in useful information. Further, some of the lessons are actively not useful - the amount of time spent practicing the sentence "I speak and understand Croatian very well" seems ill spent, whereas sentences like "where is the bathroom" and "My name is ____" are conspicuously absent.

Overall, the course TEACHES the material extremely well; the SELECTION of the material, however, is somewhat disappointing.

The speaking part is great to listen to in the car and the reading portion was also good. What I found entertaining is that some of it seemed geared towards picking up women (with some failed attempts; she says "you speak croatian very well" and the man responds "i don't understand" to which she says "goodbye" and he says "goodbye" :) ).

I went to Croatia not too long ago and asked Croatians how to pronounce some basic phrases. They mostly pronounce them the same as Pimsleur.

I am just getting started and already see how well this system works. I am looking forward to the next lesson.

I am very pleased with this cd-set. I spend a lot of time driving around so I have been listening to the lessons on the go. I especially appreciate the methods of introducing new material while reviewing old. The lesson plans flow very well, and it is an efficient method. No wasted time on vocabulary you might not often use, and it's amazing how well you learn conversational language by listening only. I would like to see a little more reading material, or perhaps a separate set devoted to reading the language. But the little vocabulary/pronunciation booklet is still very helpful. I am anxious to see how useful this is when I travel to Medjugorje this summer!

I really like the format of this program but as one of the reviews before says it needs an improvement on content of what you learn. It is definitely geared toward picking up someone. And for example you learn how to ask the time but only learn how to say 1,2,3,4,5,8,9...what happened to 6,7,10,11,12? I would like to try the comprehensive version but wow! that's a price jump.

super smooth set of teaching methods. this set really helped me to speak basic balk serbo- croatian language. i highly recommend it for the price and user friendly method of teaching. i`m off to zagreb to drink a pivo!!