Customer Reviews

Spanish For Dummies Audio Set

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I use this in the car I wanted an audio set that would let me learn Spanish while driving. This set is OK but the editing could have been better. The set has a female speaker giving the word or phrase in English and a male speaker giving it in Spanish. The Male speaker gives the word or phrase twice with a pause between allowing you enough time to practice. However I found that many of the words are repeated on all 3 disks they also give you a phrase to say before giving some of the words to learn. They do not mention any thing on how phrases are formed in Spanish or that there are male & female words in Spanish. This is going to be confusing for anyone just starting to speak Spanish. I only paid $11.00 for the set and I would not recommend paying any more for it.

These cds and the book that goes along are for the most part, very good. There are some markdowns though. First thing I noticed, parts of the book don't go along with the audio. The book with either have extra words or they book will have words that the audio doesn't say. So that can be a little confusing at times. There are also some (in my opinion) very useless words/phrases.

Its not all bad though....I think its a great starting point.

This is an excellent way to learn Spanish. The CD's were easy to follow and to understand. Great to listen to while driving. After listening to them a few times, I went to the Dominican and was able to converse quite well with the staff at our Spanish-speaking resort.

I'm a little surprised by the positive reviews. The teaching methodology behind this set isn't at all intuitive, and it takes multiple listens to catch on to everything but the most basic words. But that's a minor problem when you consider "Spanish for Dummies" doesn't even begin to explain the most basic grammar; the audio often times doesn't match what's written in the accompanying booklet; and the guy pronouncing the words uses a unique (and fairly inconsistent) dialect that directly contradicts my understanding of universal pronunciation (I realized this when I posed a couple questions to a Spanish linguist, who inferred the voice on the audio CD was likely an American who learned Spanish from a Puerto Rican). Not that there's anything wrong with Puerto Rican Spanish -- but I'd like to learn a fairly universal (or at least CONSISTENT) pronunciation that abides by the basic rule that Spanish is a phonetic language.

Here's an example of what I mean: the audio CD rolls the "r" in the middle of the word, "viernes" (Friday). A single r should only rolled when it's at the beginning of a word; if you needed a rolled "r" elsewhere in the word, it's spelled with an "rr" (e.g. carro). When I traveled to Latin America I rolled my "r" when saying "viernes" (among other words) and got a lot of strange looks before the proper pronunciation was kindly explained to me.

This set is recommended only if you need a very basic, and not intuitive, introduction to Spanish. If you do buy it, please be aware of the following problems:

---Make sure you read the book when listening to the words; they don't always match. Keep a dictionary handy to determine the proper word.
---He says "fui" instead of "fue" and vice versa (this REALLY messed up my understanding of past tense)
---He sometimes rolls a single "r" in the middle of words but shouldn't
---He often aspirates, rather than rolls, the double "rr" (should always be rolled)
---He says "jo" instead of "yo"; both are accepted pronunciations, but be aware that "jo" is only in a handful of countries... "yo" is more universal
---He sometimes (but not always) pronounces "ll" as a "j" sound; again, this is OK in some countries by the "y" sound is more universal.

But, again, I wouldn't mind the dialectical pronunciations if they were at least consistent. As it was, even with my nascent understanding of Spanish I was able to detect the inconsistencies. Could be very confusing if you travel to a Spanish-speaking country and this set is your only introduction to the language.

Pretty good for those of us who studied Spanish in junior high and high schools. It will help you make small talk with your Spanish speaking friends and customers.

Great place to start and refresh your Beginning Spanish. You will need to get an advanced spanish cd to learn more and start speaking sentences, etc. Good for the price.

What this is, is pages and pages of phrases and word lists. There is absolutely no grammar and no explanation (just translation). If what you're looking to do is learn off by heart loads of words and phrases like a parrot, this is the book for you. (If that works for you I'm happy for you, but personally I would find it the slowest and most difficult possible way to learn a language.)

If you want dialogues, listening practice, grammar explanation, and some idea of how to put together new sentences then choose any other course! For example "Bueno Entonces" (By "General Linguistics") (as fun as watching a movie) or the "Living Language" books (which also has English/Spanish CDs to listen to in your car) (the older editions are quite good and reasonably priced). The Hugo "In three months" series is also good and reasonably priced (though you need to sit down with your book in order to use it).

I live in Miami and took 3 years of Spanish in high school (5 years ago), but started to forget some of it, so I thought I would buy this to help me practice and remember. If you live in an area where you hear basic spanish words often like store, mother, father, cousin, and already know how to say how are you or ask how much is something, etc. then don't buy this item. I bought it based on the reviews of others, but this audiobook is very basic and for me it was a waste of money. I don't recommend it if you already have a really basic knowledge of spanish. It doesn't help you with the grammer of spanish either, for example some of the words that you practice are gender oriented, and depending who you talk to, the word would have a different ending, but the audiobook doesn't really teach you that.

This is a great learning tool. I took a trip to Puerto Rico in May. My Spanish skills were okay, but I knew enough to get around thanks to the audio book. Great buy.

Product was good. May be better or more useful if you are taking a Spanish class along with this product. Also the longer sentences are hard to repeat or remember if you are just using the CDs alone. The book provided with the CDs is useful. Otherwise a good product.