[.uk] Colloquial Hindi: The Complete Course for Beginners ... (ISBN 041528693X)

if you're a complete newbie, i recommed getting this fair-quality book, but just know its not great:
ok, this is a good book. by studying from this, you'll develop a knowledge of basic hindi grammar backed by a couple hundred words. it is broken into 2 parts. the first 10 lessons is about speaking and the second last six is about writing. i'm now on lesson 9 of the first part and spending a little reviewing the previous lessons. i have 1 major complaint about this book. WAY TOO MUCH VOCAB IS NOT INCLUDED IN THE FIRST TEN LESSONS. by this, i mean that if u want 2 learn how to count, say colors,illnesses, and common everyday foods, u must look at the glossary.most aren't included in the dialogues. hindi #'s are very,very irregular compared 2 english and trying to look it up in the glossary and memorize like that makes things harder. (i can only count up 2 twenty so far and i'm on the 9th lesson!). the same goes for the other things i mentioned. and 2 add a little more, the author likes to explain things clearly. but explain things clearly by using linguistic or language jargon. i had to find out on my own wat transitive and intransitive verbs were on own 4 example. but other than these, everything seems fine to me. but i havent tried the writing lessons. and do get the cd's. but if u can't u'll survive with the cassettes(although that'll be a little harder with those) BUT BEWARE! SUM INDIAN PEOPLE ARE RUDE AND UNFRIENDLY!(NOT EVERYONE IS LIKE THAT THANK GOODNESS). i know this personally. they might think u to be a criminally insane freak 4 ur interest in the language. but pakistanese on the other hand are people u won't have to worry about. the ones i've met are very impressed by my limited knowledge of hindi. good luck!

Was expecting a little more.:
Although it's a great intro with lively discussions and a great deal of vocabulary is introduced and incorporated, it's not all toghether "the" best primer available, especially since it lacks heavily in regards to verbs, conjugations, and other aspects. It's GREAT for complete beginners, but a speaker with some working knowledge may find it a tad bit unchallenging.

If you ignore or dislike grammar buy it:
It's a good option for those who cannot understand grammar or those who hate it. Personally, I'd prefer something more grammatical. The author avoids using any grammar rules and terms. I don't really like this. Also if you don't want to learn the devanagari it's a good option. You can move throughout the whole book without using a single letter of the Hindi script

Far too little of everything:
While the Colloquial course enjoy a good reputation for its courses in European languages, the courses for Asian languages are almost all of far lower quality. The Arabic courses, Colloquial Persian, Colloquial Tamil, Colloquial Punjabi, Colloquial Vietnamese, Colloquial Urdu are all much shorter and more rudimentary than the average European language course. Unfortunately, Colloquial Hindi is no exception. The main problem with this course is simple, far too little content. This leads to two consequences: a. the grammar descriptions are too short. Colloquial courses for almost all European languages include a complete overview of the main grammatical points (of course not always in great detail, but still) but this course gives offers very little for those interested in Hindi. b. the vocabulary is a joke. For most other Colloquial courses, the vocabulary you learn in the course is somewhere around 1400-1600 words. Many courses include over 2000 words (Colloquial Italian, Icelandic, Albanian, Czech, Russian, Spanish of Latin America and probably others as well). This course, in sharp contrast, doesn't even include 800 words, and that's far too little for a course calling itself a "complete" language course. So only half of the vocabulary found in other Colloquial courses and hardly any help at all with the grammar. That's not good enough.

Excellent primer on Hindi:
Hindi is a beautiful language to hear and quite a challenge to learn. Tej Bhatia organized the book in a easy to follow format. The book is divided into learning the language and reading/writing it. It allows the student to learn one or the other, or even both. My main purpose was to understand Hindi and speak in general terms. The first few pages demonstrate the Devnagari script which appears to be overwhelming to a Westerner until one realizes that the alphabet is phonetic. Once the sounds are memorized, combination of characters can be learned and then you realize that you can read the language. Each section begins with a simple dialogue followed by an English translation. Words are defined within the ensuing chapter with easy to follow grammatical rules, sentence structure and cultural insights. The end of the chapters reinforce lessons through tests. The audio portion is complementary to the written instruction, and is essential to utilize. This book is excellent. I highly recommend it for a student of the language. Another method that I have been learning Hindi is through another medium: Hindi Level 1 Win/Mac Personal Edition (Old Version)