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Teach Yourself Urdu Complete Course (Book + 2CD's) (Teach Yourself Complete Language Courses) | 
 enlarge | Authors: David Matthews, Mohamed Kasim Dalvi
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Category: Book
List Price: $39.95
Buy New: $22.79
You Save: $17.16 (43%)
Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 159020
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2
Pages: 400
Number Of Items: 2
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 6.2 x 1.9
ISBN: 0071546995
Dewey Decimal Number: 491
EAN: 9780071546997
ASIN: 0071546995
Publication Date: May 20, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.
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Product Description
Teach Yourself makes learning Urdu easy The languages spoken by the people in the India and Pakistan region are plentiful and diverse, just like their speakers. Here Teach Yourself gives you the opportunity to learn one of these major southeastern Asian languages. Teach Yourself Urdu Complete Course allows you to study in the comfort of your own home, at your own pace. It introduces you to practical themes, such as making travel arrangements, meeting someone new, shopping, and other every day activities. Includes two audio CDs with listening and speaking exercises.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 13 more reviews...
 Learning Hindi/Urdu, this is the Urdu side October 19, 2008
LaRoza (PA)
I have the Teach Yourself Hindi book (for script and language) and decided to learn Urdu at the same time.
Like the Hindi book, it is best to get a hang of the script first. Urdu script is harder than Devanagari and I strongly recommend you get another book for learning it (the Urdu script book in this series is what I recommend).
This book is very good otherwise. I am in my Hindi books more advanced, but was able to learn a lot from this book (using mostly latin text transliterations) by glancing through it.
It is Urdu, so there is a lot of Persian/Arabic in it as compared to Hindi, but they have the same grammar and share most of the words for everyday speech.
This book as a nice section for the script, but Nastaliq is not easy. Devanagari is. One should get a dedicated book for the script or spend a lot of time in this first chapter.
 Not for beginners September 3, 2007
Michael O'Neill
A really authoritative course in Urdu with lots of useful cultural info as well. It puts you at the deep end and gets tougher. The main problem that will stop most beginners getting past chapter one is that they decide to use the nastaliq (complex cursive) script from the beginning. Given that "ordinary" cursive arabic script is tricky enough to get your head around this more elaborate form is a real obstacle. Even native speakers have to know the words in Urdu before they can pronounce them properly from this script so the benefit of this immersion method is not clear. They could have been gentler with beginners and had a few more chapters exclusively in roman script to ease them in.
If you have a grasp of the language from other sources and want to use this to build up grammar as well as reading and writing skills this will do the job.
Michael
 Me gusta (lo que llevo leido) August 23, 2006
M. RIO (Espana)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
El libro esta bastante bien. La clasificacion de las lecciones es clara, las explicaciones son minuciosas y tiene dialogos con personajes simpaticos para ponerse en situacion. Me gustan mucho los CDs, se escuchan bien y en poco tiempo empiezas a entender lo que dicen.
En contra: esta en ingles, por lo que al explicar la pronunciacion de cada letra es algo lioso. El tipo de letra cuando escriben en urdu es muy pequena y veces no se distingue bien.
Urdu asaan nahin hai, magar yeh kitab achi se achi thi. April 14, 2006
Alaan W. Savoy (Lackland AFB, Texas)
30 out of 30 found this review helpful
On the box it says that the goal of this book was to reach "all-around confidence". It did that and more. This book covers a variety of subjects while following the story of John and his wife Helen as they travel through several sites Pakistan and North India. There were even several situations and vocabulary words that they covered that I thought I would never need to use, but found myself using in conversation shortly after. Also, the culture notes were a very nice touch as well. And as a Muslim I really liked the Islamic culture notes they brough up also.
I am a USAF military linguist and I was 100% sure that the best way to learn a language was to be in a class all day, or immerison in the specific country, or among friends. This book proved me wrong. The content is difficult, especially after the 5th chapter because they remove the English transliteration and you are stuck reading the Urdu script and can only "cheat" by going to the back of the book. It seemed like every five chapters it got REALLY hard and seemed not gradual enough in the level of difficulty. But it took me three weeks to finish this book (I will admit, that was way too fast) and afterwards I was speaking and thinking in Urdu and the overall goal of "all around confidence" was definatley met.
That being said, I want to share the downsides, which are few. The errors that a lot of the reviewers talked about, I didn't notice until the last few chapters, and most of the students will probably notice this because by that point they are familiar with the Urdu script and it won't be a problem. Also, I learned Arabic script first from "Teach yourself Arabic Script" and "Very Simple Arabic Script" so I can't comment on their Urdu script introduction, which is needed for the rest of the book. You can't fake it past chapter five without knowing the script!
Finally, I would like to add that if you are *really* serious about learning Urdu, this is THE book to get, but still there is a long way to go. I *highly suggest* following up by getting "Urdu - An Essential Grammar" by Ruth Schmidt afterwards. I was so confident in Urdu after this "Teach Yourself" course but the Grammar book will make your realize that there is still a whole bunch more to be learnt and clear up the fuzzy spots. But overall, I very highly recommended "Teach Yourself Urdu Complete Course" very, VERY well done.
great choice_ make sure you get a dictionary as well. January 17, 2006
Mungojerrie
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
It is as compact as it gets... I was amazed to see myself reading and understanding (!) websites in Urdu after 3 weeks max (i have to mention tho, that i am a native Turkish speaker with some knowledge of Persian.. that certainly helped me memorize words much faster and eaily). The topics are well chosen, giving just about info you'd need for a daily conversation (and survival). The repetition pattern helps a lot to keep words in your mind. And no matter how much I want to complain about it's load of grammar and structure, in the end, it proved successful.
pros: has a mini dictionary, there is no english transliteration after unit 6 (but included as an appendix- it pushes you to try to understand), includes info about the culture and traditions as well.
cons: the dictionary could've been more comprehensive (a seperate verb list would be good), not enough chance to exercise what you've learned.
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