Customer Reviews

Teach Yourself Xhosa

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It's great! If you want to learn this graet language that book is for you. Well written, good coursebook. Every unit contains dialogue, vocabulary for everyday conversation, even idiomatic exspressions. Tha pack contains also two cassettes with pronunciation guide and dialogues from the book (of course with mother tongue speakers). So if you want to teach yourself this beautiful language you have to buy it. But remember that Xhosa is a tone langage so if you just want to speak a new language so maybe you should start from, for example, Teach Yourself Swahili from the same publisher (it's even better! ). And if you need to know Xhosa buy also Teach Yourself Zulu and you will find it very useful, because both, Zulu and Xhosa are Bantu languages so you will find many similarities.

This book is awesome. It offers dialogues and gives cultural references to help you understand all the amazing ways that Xhosa is structured. For example, it is common in Xhosa to use the plural form of how are you: "Niphila njani?" in place of the singular. This implies that the health of one's whole family is tied into their own wellness.

However, don't make the mistake of thinking you can pronounce Xhosa without a tape like I did. Another important thing to know about this book is that it was originally published in the U.K., so the pronunciations are written to reflect U.K. pronunciation.

This was a course that gave me a great deal of pleasure as I worked my way through it. Xhosa for an English speaking learner is about as different and exotic as it is possible for a language to be, both in terms of its structure and its pronunciation.The accompanying CD is essential, of course, but these authors actually give the beginning student a good idea of how to make the unfamiliar sounds- the clicks, the tones and the implosives. Grammar is covered very systematically and there are lots of good exercises, particularly valuable for developing a comfort level for the noun classes and the way that other parts of the sentence have to agree with them, which is probably the most dauhting aspect of Xhosa (and other Bantu languages) for someone is starting out.These authors have a deep feeling for Xhosa culture and history as well, and for South Africa at a time of great historical change. The dialogues that accompany each chapter are particularly lively and interesting. This has to be one of the best African language textbooks ever produced.

So far so good with teaching myself the basics of Xhosa as I prepare for my trip to South Africa in February.