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42 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great book but should have been organized better, April 11, 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: Teach Yourself Bengali Complete Course Package (Book + 2CDs) (Teach Yourself Language Complete Courses) (Paperback)
This book is divided into a few major sections. Script - A few letters are introduced per chapter and practice exercises are given at the end.
Grammar - starts with a conversation, which has an English translation. Then the grammar used in that conversation is explained.
Bengali literature - With English translations
Glossary - uses script and transliteration I bought this new version to get the two CDs. They are so much easier to use than the tapes that came with the previous version. I got tired of rewinding and fast forwarding trying to find what I wanted to practice. The content on the CDs is divided into several 1-2 minute tracks. While this is a great book I actually don't like the way Radice introduced each grammatical concept. Things like tense, possessives, etc. are often scattered over different chapters. Having used the previous version of this book for a while I recommend that you first learn the script (the chapters introducing the script are excellent). For the grammar section get a notebook and divide each page into two columns. Pick out major grammatical concepts such as possessives, plurals, verb tense rules (past, present, future, present continuous, etc.), familiar/polite forms, imperatives, etc. In the first column write out the grammatical rule for each concept in your own words, in the other column write the examples that Radice gives. Then study from your notebook. It will be very difficult to learn Bengali reading this book chapter-by-chapter. Due to the scattered organization of the content I am giving this book four stars instead of five. To reiterate, don't read this book cover-to-cover. For best results pull out the major concepts and organise them in a more logical manner. Also, you might find 'Introduction to Bengali Pt. 1 A Basic Course in Spoken Bengali' by Edward Dimock very helpful in addition to the Radice book.
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21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
incredible book, April 24, 2005
This review is from: Teach Yourself Bengali Complete Course Package (Book + 2CDs) (Teach Yourself Language Complete Courses) (Paperback)
I love this book and refer to it often. As a person who did not grow up hearing Bengali I prefer to learn words that are used more in conversation. The Bengali people that I know say that many of the words I use in my speech that I learned from this book are quite literary. Even the conversations use some pretty big words that are not so commonly used verbally. I also think that many East Bengali words and dialect are thrown into this book despite the fact that the book seems to be mainly geared towards West Bengali. The audio is absolutely essential. Bengalis tell me that I have virtually no accent when speaking and I owe that completely to his tapes that came with this book and his explanation of the linguistics of the sounds and letters in the language. In addition, if you are interested in Bengali literature, this book is an excellent primer.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not practical. Too much emphasis on writing/reading, not enough on speaking, June 26, 2007
This review is from: Teach Yourself Bengali Complete Course Package (Book + 2CDs) (Teach Yourself Language Complete Courses) (Paperback)
This set appears to be somewhat academic oriented as it focuses on the use of the text and not enough on the audio and just learning how to speak the language. The average user I would imagine wants to focus on learning how to speak and understand Bengali. Reading or writing it, given its unique script, is another matter and not necessarily that important for day-to-day communication.
I've used Pimsleur language programs in the past and I found them to be extremely effective - the most effective actually. Pimsleur's audio programs are self contained. No books are required. They introduce basic words and you have to repeat them over and over and you slowly build up to bigger words and then sentences. They can be expensive, but they're worth every penny. Unfortunately, Pimsleur doesn't have a Bengali program.
I was hoping this set would copy Pimsleur. It doesn't. The CDs are not self contained. You have to use the book along with the CDs which means listening and repeating the words in the car is waste of time. And you have to ask yourself how you learn a language. I'm quite disappointed and skeptical about this set as a result. A child learns by hearing the words and learning the meanings long before they learn how to read or write the language. That seems like a logical way to learn for adults as well. But this set doesn't follow that natural flow.
According to the text, Bengali is the sixth most spoken language in the world. If that's the case, I don't understand why it's so hard to find a good teaching resource. According to many reviews, here and elsewhere, this book and CD set is "the best on the market" for learning Bengali. If that's the case it's unfortunate, because this is not by any stretch the best way to learn a language.
I did find that Transparent Language has a computer program (Languages of the World: Bengali available only directly from TL's web site) that's not sold on Amazon. It's primitive in its interface, limited in scope and I've used it only briefly. But so far I would say that it is a better choice than this set which I immediately saw as useless in terms of learning how to speak Bengali. There's also a 4 CD and book set called "Easy Way to Learn Bengali" by Som N. Konar and Dr. Meera Heera Smith which I have been unable to find anywhere.
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