Colloquial Slovak: The Complete Course for Beginners (The Colloquial Series)
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List Price:
$34.95
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$23.07
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Manufacturer: Routledge
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 491.8682421
EAN: 9780415115407
ISBN: 041511540X
Label: Routledge
Manufacturer: Routledge
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: 1997-01-30
Publisher: Routledge
Studio: Routledge
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Editorial Reviews:
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Colloquial Slovak is a practical course in everyday written and spoken Slovak requiring no prior knowledge of the language. This book is ideal for study independently or with a teacher. Cassettes recorded by native Slovak speakers are also available. This paperback in the Colloquial Language Learning Series is available individually here or as part of a cassette pack. To purchase the book and the cassettes, please refer to the cassette pack listing for this language.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Don't hesitate to buy! It is an excellent resource
Comment: I started using this book to learn Slovak with NO prior knowledge of neither Slovak nor a Slavic language, and I found it excellent. I've read other critical reviews, and I simply don't agree. Midway through the book, I went to Slovakia and people were amazed at how I spoke Slovak with almost perfect grammar and little accent, I learned everything from that book.
Someone mentioned something about that they didn't explain verb conjugations, and I think that may be because there are so many irregular verbs that it would have been useless to explain a bunch of conjugations, have you memorize them, only to be mistaken when you go to apply them. Those are things that you find out when you learn a language, things you best acquire from speaking, you can't learn a language solely from a book, you have to converse, and this book does exactly that--sets you up with the ability to converse, and all the rest it can't cover comes from interaction.
ALSO someone mentioned something about mistakes in the book, I never noticed any, I'm not Slovak, but when I looked at Hippocrene's Slovak products, I noticed handfuls of spelling mistakes immediately--so if there are mistakes, at least this book is better than the other resources.
The only downside I remember is that they didn't really explain the declension paradigm; they offered it in the appendix, but they left you to your own devices on why some words change form, and others differently. Once you have a handle on that though it's ok.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Colloquial Slovak - It's a good learning tool.
Comment: As a self-learning beginner, Colloquial Slovak has proven to be my best source for learning the Slovak language.
It's strongest feature is the way it builds understanding of the grammer. Grammatical concepts are added naturally into the dialogues and readings so that you can read progressively more complex sentences. I've read it several times now and started to make the fastest progress when I committed to doing the exercises, which really help in fixing things into my brain.
You really need the CD to get better at understanding the spoken language, I"d highly recommend getting both.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Pretty Good
Comment: Generally a good book but some of the dialogue is clunky and not real world. Better than most other books for this topic.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not the worst, but could have been better.
Comment: PROS:
- Useful and sometimes humourous dialogues
- Concise appendices showing nominal and adjectival declension and conjugational patterns of verbs
- Succint notes on grammar
- Recordings of dialogues and oral exercises are clear
- Widely-available and reasonably affordable.
- Answer key in the back of the book.
CONS:
- Not enough exercises (There are 16 chapters with each having between 4 to 7 sets of exercises. Each set has between 3 and 8 questions)
- Grammar notes are presented somewhat haphazardly in each chapter since their raison-d'etre are the dialogues (ex. You get an introduction to the dative and locative in chapter 4 or 5 just because the dialogue has a few sentences in the feminine dative/locative singular. However, you don't see it again in the notes until several chapters later. I would have preferred if the grammatical focus had been more complete. For example for the sake of completeness, I would have liked to have seen locative or dative in all of its forms (singular, plural, masculine, feminine and neuter) introduced in the same chapter)
As a first step for someone learning Slovak, this course does the job but the scarcity of exercises means that you won't get a lot of practice. One way to alleviate this problem is to also work on another beginners' course in Slovak such as "Slovencina pre cudzincov" by Dratva et al. or "Slovencina pre Vas" by Bohmerova. At the least you'll get more structured exposure to basic Slovak by virtue of using more courses.
Depending on your learning style, you may not be able to gain and retain enough knowledge from this course alone to communicate at more than a tourist's level in Slovakia. "Beginning Slovak" by Oscar Swan is more demanding but completing Swan's course will take you much further than Naughton's course. Indeed, completing Swan's course will get you to a level of someone who has completed a first-year course and part of a second-year course in Slovak. At best, completing Colloquial Slovak will get you at roughly the level of someone who has completed 75% of a first-year course in Slovak.
Customer Rating:
Summary: I learned Slovak from this book & CD!
Comment: After lots of study, I was able to speak with strangers when visiting Slovakia for the first time and also to email and chat with my Slovak friends.
Yes, the book contains irritating shortcomings e.g. the glossary is minimal, so please buy a dictionary; the index omits page numbers!; and more. Even so, Slovak is a relatively difficult language and just requires a lot of work to learn.
If you want to learn Slovak but like me, live far from a University program or native speakers, then this book is a great investment.
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