Customer Reviews

Teach Yourself Bengali Complete Course (Teach Yourself Books)

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This is meant for those who really want to learn the language as opposed needing a few phrases on their round-the-world trip.

It's particularly strong at the beginning as it walks you through the process of learning the Bengali script. A good tool to coach you into genuinely 'reading' the Bengali script rather than always trying to think in the English equivalent.

I wanted to learn Bengali because I'm married to a Bengali and I wanted to communicate with my in-laws. After studying the book, I was ready to start really trying to pick up words while I was in Calcutta. The problem was, I only got about halfway through the book before it seemed to accelarate too quickly without offering enough to help build my vocab. Translating Tagore by the end of the book? Ummm...yeah, I think that's a bit unrealistic. I learned most of my vocabulary from the Lonely Planet Bengali phrasebook and from talking to my in-law's maid.

Considering there aren't many options, it's probably the best place to start, but at the very least you'll need a good Bengali-English dictionary to accompany it...and I have yet to find a good one of those that's geared for English speakers.

This book could be of use. If you are a teacher and have little creativity, this book can help you structure a course. However, it is of note that the book reflects a particular muslim region by the way the phrases are presented. Better than others, but not the best for me.

I think this book has potential to be a great help in learning the language. But, if you're like me, someone who is trying to learn alone, it might be too advanced. The vocab section helps, but the book moves too quickly in the written form of the language.

As I say with every TY book, they always have great content but poor organization. It is not that hard to order the concepts in a logical way so that it helps to faciliate the learning. PLEASE DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE ORDER OF THESE BOOKS TY!!!!