Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 works best with tapes March 26, 2007
Joseph Getter (Middletown, Connecticut, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I've used this book for self-study, but in conjunction with a set of a dozen audio cassettes. I acquired these directly from the publisher, UC Berkeley Langauge Center. I can't imagine using this book without the audio component. Compared to the excellent Asher Colloquial Tamil, the Hart audio does use a very slow pace of speaking, and this is really helpful for the beginning foreigner, the intended audience of this book (Asher's audio is absolutely much more realistic yet uses too much English and is a little too fast at the beginning, I'd say.) As noted, the Hart book is Brahmin Tamil, and the book doesn't tell you that.
 Is this really the best book around? July 2, 2006
Raman (Pittsburgh)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I'm a native speaker of Tamil. I got this book because I never formally studied in school and my vocaublary is very limited.
The introduction goes over the vowels, consonants and how to write conjunct characters. There are a few typos but it's written in a way that would suffice for most people. I was able get along with this book but it occured to my that if you don't already know some Tamil you would be very frustrated.
This is what I mean... Every lesson follows the same format: a conversation (in Tamil), a vocabulary section (with English meanings of Tamil words) and exercises. There is little or no grammar in each lesson. For that you'll have to look at part 2 of the book. Consider Lesson 1 for example. It begins with a conversation written in Tamil with no phonetic translations. (You are expected to have leaned to read the charactes by now.) There is no translation of these sentences to Englist either. You'll have to do that yourself using the vocubalary section. But before looking up a word, you'll first locate and remove from the words any suffixes such as the ingerrogative suffix -a (for yes/no questions) or the suffix -um which means 'and'. the rules for adding the suffixes are not explained. Needless to say you have to figure out lots of rules yourself just to understand a simple conversation. The excercises in lesson 1 want you to convert a few sentences into the negative and to form yes/no questions but the lesson doesn't teach you that. It doesn't even teac hteach youthat the word order is Sub-Obj-Verb, which you need to know to do the exercises.
I wonder if this book was originally written for native speakers to be used in Indian schools. Well, it's pretty unfortunate that this is considered the best book around. Excatly who benefits from this book? You might.. if you already speak the language somewhat and can read the script. Otherwise, if you have studied several foreign languages extensively, have a good background in linguistics and would like to take the challenge of learning a new language on your own.
This book's language is Brahmin-centric -- use with caution July 2, 2006
Velu Naicker
1 out of 6 found this review helpful
I gave too much weight to the Amazon reviews when deciding between this book and Ron Asher's Colloquial Tamil. As a complete beginner who will soon spend a year in semi-rural Tamil Nadu, I want a book that will get me up to speed as soon as possible. Hart's book is very good for learning to read. Unfortunately, a lot of the basic vocabulary (like "how are you?") is used only by Brahmins. It wouldn't be a problem if Hart specifically noted this, and also gave alternate phrases, but she doesn't. Although I'm a Brahmin, I want to be able to communicate with all types of people without giving offense. So, I ultimately decided to go with the Asher books. And, unlike the reviewer of Asher's CDs who found that the speakers spoke too fast, I think they are very good at approximating native speech patterns. However, the Asher book and CD should be used in conjunction -- which is not clear from the Amazon page. If I hit you you will die.
 Highly Recommended April 14, 2005
A. Sarma
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Referring to Vols. 1 and 2
As a tamilian-american born and raised in the US, I was looking for a self-study book for learning to read and write tamil as well as for improving my spoken tamil and vocabulary. I am fairly fluent in colloquial tamil. Therefore, I was also particular that the book did not solely focus on the more authentic tamil currently found on TV news and other media. For my purposes, this book is superb! It provides crystal clear explanations of the types of letters and their sounds. The rules to combine letters (sounds) are also very clearly explained. There are, of course, some typos and certain exceptions to some of the rules are missing. However, these are very few in number. Ms. Hart has done an amazing job of distilling the structure of the language into a relatively small set of rules that, for the most part, capture all there is to know in order to be intelligible. In my experience, native speakers rarely have enough grasp to accomplish this, regardless of the language.
The section on grammar rules is quite comprehensive but may require the reader to be familiar with some grammatical terminology not often stressed in American schools. Some of this terminology may have only been introduced to the typical american student when he/she first takes a foreign language and usually this terminology is not emphasized. However, refamiliarizing oneself with this is not too difficult.
The dictionaries at the end do contain many commonly used words and can prove useful.
All in all, the book certainly is excellent in helping me accomplish my goals. Highly recommended!!!
Excellent for classroom learning or self-teaching. April 11, 2001
M. Cauble (Cambridge, MA USA)
15 out of 15 found this review helpful
This is an excellent book. After years of trying to make sense of the confusing "learn Tamil in 30 days" or similar books one can get in India, I found this book to be very helpful. The only book I have found which comes close to it is the "Microwave Approach" (only sold in India, I believe), which puts more emphasis on the spoken version but leaves out most of the written elements. As to what the other reviewer has said -- my copy of this book has a small section detailing the differences between written and spoken Tamil, but maybe they've changed it since then!
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