Customer Reviews

Tamil for Beginners: Reading and Writing

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

 

 

I highly recommend this book to anyone trying to learn Tamil, especially since any books about Tamil, much less one as well-written as this one, are very hard to find outside of India. Nice aspects include: explanation of alphabet, lengthy and quite useful vocabulary lists, fun easy-to-read stories in Tamil, and lessons that are easy to follow and not too overwhelming. My only hesitations are that the grammar section is not always totally clear (though better than anything else I've seen) and that there isn't anything about spoken Tamil variations, but these are small complaints. Mrs. Hart teaches Tamil at UC Berkeley and this book is her text. I had the pleasure of studying Tamil with her for a year and I made fast progress. I wish the same to anyone else who tries to learn this beautiful and often underappreciated language.

This is an excellent book. After years of trying to make sense of the confusing "learn Tamil in 30 days" or similar books one can get in India, I found this book to be very helpful. The only book I have found which comes close to it is the "Microwave Approach" (only sold in India, I believe), which puts more emphasis on the spoken version but leaves out most of the written elements. As to what the other reviewer has said -- my copy of this book has a small section detailing the differences between written and spoken Tamil, but maybe they've changed it since then!

I'm a native speaker of Tamil. I got this book because I never formally studied in school and my vocaublary is very limited.

The introduction goes over the vowels, consonants and how to write conjunct characters. There are a few typos but it's written in a way that would suffice for most people. I was able get along with this book but it occured to my that if you don't already know some Tamil you would be very frustrated.

This is what I mean... Every lesson follows the same format: a conversation (in Tamil), a vocabulary section (with English meanings of Tamil words) and exercises. There is little or no grammar in each lesson. For that you'll have to look at part 2 of the book. Consider Lesson 1 for example. It begins with a conversation written in Tamil with no phonetic translations. (You are expected to have leaned to read the charactes by now.) There is no translation of these sentences to Englist either. You'll have to do that yourself using the vocubalary section. But before looking up a word, you'll first locate and remove from the words any suffixes such as the ingerrogative suffix -a (for yes/no questions) or the suffix -um which means 'and'. the rules for adding the suffixes are not explained. Needless to say you have to figure out lots of rules yourself just to understand a simple conversation. The excercises in lesson 1 want you to convert a few sentences into the negative and to form yes/no questions but the lesson doesn't teach you that. It doesn't even teac hteach youthat the word order is Sub-Obj-Verb, which you need to know to do the exercises.

I wonder if this book was originally written for native speakers to be used in Indian schools. Well, it's pretty unfortunate that this is considered the best book around. Excatly who benefits from this book? You might.. if you already speak the language somewhat and can read the script. Otherwise, if you have studied several foreign languages extensively, have a good background in linguistics and would like to take the challenge of learning a new language on your own.

I've used this book for self-study, but in conjunction with a set of a dozen audio cassettes. I acquired these directly from the publisher, UC Berkeley Langauge Center. I can't imagine using this book without the audio component. Compared to the excellent Asher Colloquial Tamil, the Hart audio does use a very slow pace of speaking, and this is really helpful for the beginning foreigner, the intended audience of this book (Asher's audio is absolutely much more realistic yet uses too much English and is a little too fast at the beginning, I'd say.) As noted, the Hart book is Brahmin Tamil, and the book doesn't tell you that.

Finding a good book on Tamil is very difficult. I haven't made my made through this whole book, but it is clearly written and strikes a good balance between teaching formal and informal Tamil. It is far superior to anything else I have found. Now, if only volume 1 were also available!

Quality materials on Tamil are hard to find. This is definitely a resource worth having. The book begins with the script, (and the author thoughtfully provides handwritten examples), so that a learner can master the basics of writing before moving into speaking, and avoiding the bother of learning a transcription native speakers can't read and that he/she will never use again. The lessons begin with simple conversations on everyday topics and move on to conversations on more difficult and abstract ideas. Each lesson contains extensive lists of useful vocabulary that can quite readily be plugged into the sentence patterns already learned. To get the most of this book, however, one should also obtain the audio and the accompanying grammar manual (both should be available from Cal Berkeley).
The tapes that I obtained were of excellent quality, but the speech is quite slow compared to the astounding rate of speed at which native speakers actually talk; The CDs that accompany Asher's 'Colloquial Tamil', which is also excellent, give the learner a much more realistic picture of what he will encounter when he actually starts to participate in the wonderful world of spoken Tamil. A minus is that there is no answer key for the exercises, which are good and reflect the material presented- this is where knowing a native speaker would come in very handy.

Referring to Vols. 1 and 2

As a tamilian-american born and raised in the US, I was looking for a self-study book for learning to read and write tamil as well as for improving my spoken tamil and vocabulary. I am fairly fluent in colloquial tamil. Therefore, I was also particular that the book did not solely focus on the more authentic tamil currently found on TV news and other media. For my purposes, this book is superb! It provides crystal clear explanations of the types of letters and their sounds. The rules to combine letters (sounds) are also very clearly explained. There are, of course, some typos and certain exceptions to some of the rules are missing. However, these are very few in number. Ms. Hart has done an amazing job of distilling the structure of the language into a relatively small set of rules that, for the most part, capture all there is to know in order to be intelligible. In my experience, native speakers rarely have enough grasp to accomplish this, regardless of the language.

The section on grammar rules is quite comprehensive but may require the reader to be familiar with some grammatical terminology not often stressed in American schools. Some of this terminology may have only been introduced to the typical american student when he/she first takes a foreign language and usually this terminology is not emphasized. However, refamiliarizing oneself with this is not too difficult.

The dictionaries at the end do contain many commonly used words and can prove useful.

All in all, the book certainly is excellent in helping me accomplish my goals. Highly recommended!!!

This book is more suitable for young Tamil children who already speak colloquial Tamil (their mother tongue) and need to learn the written Tamil (also known as Classical Tamil, which was last time updated in the 13th century). It's not really suitable for foreigners who want to be fluent in colloquial Chennai Tamil (the variant used in Kollywood).
On the other hand, it's a good book for those interested in Southern Tamil (including Jaffna Tamil), because their speech is closer to the written variant.

I gave too much weight to the Amazon reviews when deciding between this book and Ron Asher's Colloquial Tamil. As a complete beginner who will soon spend a year in semi-rural Tamil Nadu, I want a book that will get me up to speed as soon as possible. Hart's book is very good for learning to read. Unfortunately, a lot of the basic vocabulary (like "how are you?") is used only by Brahmins. It wouldn't be a problem if Hart specifically noted this, and also gave alternate phrases, but she doesn't. Although I'm a Brahmin, I want to be able to communicate with all types of people without giving offense. So, I ultimately decided to go with the Asher books. And, unlike the reviewer of Asher's CDs who found that the speakers spoke too fast, I think they are very good at approximating native speech patterns. However, the Asher book and CD should be used in conjunction -- which is not clear from the Amazon page. If I hit you you will die.