Customer Reviews

Spoken Urdu (Three Book Set) (Books I, II & III)

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This book set is considered by professional teachers in the field to be the ultimate Grammar written on the Urdu language. Urdu grammar is straightforward yet difficult to define in a comprehensive way as it has never been attempted in a linguistic fashion, as has been done for the Arabic language in English by Peter Abboud's outstanding "Elementary Modern Standard Arabic", Cambridge Publishers. So, if you want to understand the structure of the Urdu language, this is the book!

This is a serious investment of a course. The price is significant, and the course is rather old. It looks old - the English font looks like typescript. Why, then, do I recommend the prospective Urdu learner buy this book?

The answer is that it is perhaps the best language course I've seen. It works consistently and thoroughly. this is how it goes:

There are three volumes. Vol. 1 and 2 together make the full course, but one can make a lot of headway into the language with volume 1 alone. Each volume may be bought with six cassettes. Volume 3 contains the vocabulary and (I think - my copy's in storage) the index.

The method is simple and scientific. Text is initially introduced in transcription. The script is introduced in several chapters (the first is chapter 8) in a completely thorough manner, more throughly than I've seen it elsewhere. (This material is also sold separately as 'The Urdu Writing System'.) When you come to the script, you've already heard and assimilated a lot of Urdu, and the script comes more easily (though I have to admit to having learned Arabic long before reading these chapters). All the Urdu text is superbly written by an excellent calligrapher in the nasta'liq script (ta'liq or Farsi to Arabic-speakers).

The method. First one listens and reads through a conversation in Urdu, each sentence of which has new words introduced first. On the tape, each new word is repeated twice, and finally the sentence is is repeated, twice. And on to the next sentence.

Next, the words you've just been exposed to are discussed: how they're used, whether they're used in the same way in all dialects, etc. A bit of cultural information comes through here too.

Next, phonetic drills. Urdu, while simple gramatically, has some sound combinations that are VERY hard for the English speaker to hear, let alone imitate. These listening drills are very helpful.

Next, the grammar introduced in the conversation is discussed.

Next, additional vocabulary is added. (For example, a chapter introducing numbers 11-20 and days of the week includes those that haven't already appeared in the conversations.)

Next, drills. You are given a model sentence, and alter it.
e.g.:

---- I am ---------- going to --- the house ----- tomorrow.
---- you are ----------- " ---- the university ------ "
---- she is ------------ " ------- Peshawar --------- "
---- Mr. Rahim is ------ " ------ the office -------- "

This sounds boring. But it makes one learn structures, rather than words. That's its intention, and it works. And there are a lot of drills! Drills are more boring in class than on ones own, I find.

Next, some things for translation.

Finally, another, unbroken, conversation. This is different to but uses the same sort of structures and themes as the main conversation. On the tape, this 'conversation practice' follows an unbroken version of the main conversation.

The price is high, but fair, I think. The publisher - I bought the book direct from them - told me it was their best-selling course, and they've a lot of courses. The reason it sells well is its excellence.

The only negative I will bring in is that it is getting on in years - it's over 40 years old, and some of the material could do with an update. But I don't think there's a better course out there.