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Call Me Apple Vice Captain
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 Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2011 1:53 pm
After going through my language shelf, I found myself giving away a lot of language books which I felt were just rubbish. Good names I found are: Hippocerene ( heart ), and the Idiots Guide series. Hippocrene usually comes with an audio cd, which are very good and I would be lost in Danish without it! Idiots guide is good for reading, as long as its not in a foreign script. Idiots guide also has a complete series to verbs, Spanish verbs, French verbs, etc. That is incredibly handy. For example, their book on Arabic is not so good If One does not know Arabic script stressed I'm currently looking for any book recommendations dedicated to writing and reading Arabic ^^ SO, best books, worst books, etc? smile
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Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2011 5:09 pm
Really? I have the Idiot's Guide to Japanese and I thought it was pretty bad... I guess it is useful as a reference because it has all of the conjugations, supplementary verbs etc. lumped together, but it's not very good for studying I don't think... and it uses romaji...
Umm, for beginner's Japanese, I highly recommend the Genki book series. It's great.
Also for beginner's Japanese, I highly advised NOT using "Beginner's Japanese" by Helen Gilhooly or something like that, I forgot her name. I used it for a few months when I first started Japanese and learned virtually nothing from it.
I also highly recommend the "Remembering the Kanji" series by Heisig. It's soo useful even if you don't follow the Heisig method.
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Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2011 5:30 pm
Seinaru ite Really? I have the Idiot's Guide to Japanese and I thought it was pretty bad... I guess it is useful as a reference because it has all of the conjugations, supplementary verbs etc. lumped together, but it's not very good for studying I don't think... and it uses romaji... Umm, for beginner's Japanese, I highly recommend the Genki book series. It's great. Also for beginner's Japanese, I highly advised NOT using "Beginner's Japanese" by Helen Gilhooly or something like that, I forgot her name. I used it for a few months when I first started Japanese and learned virtually nothing from it. I also highly recommend the "Remembering the Kanji" series by Heisig. It's soo useful even if you don't follow the Heisig method. Seconding the Genki book series. Out of all the Japanese textbooks I've looked at, Genki made it easier for me to understand verb conjugation and grammar.
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Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2011 7:28 pm
Seinaru ite Really? I have the Idiot's Guide to Japanese and I thought it was pretty bad... I guess it is useful as a reference because it has all of the conjugations, supplementary verbs etc. lumped together, but it's not very good for studying I don't think... and it uses romaji... I have 4 Idiots Guide books and am pleased with them all. -shrugs-
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Call Me Apple Vice Captain
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Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2011 8:45 pm
I found the Idiot's Guide to Intermediate Spanish to be very good, but that's the only idiot's guide language book that I own. I can say that the ___ for dummies language books aren't too good, at least when it comes to languages that use a non-roman alphabet (they don't teach you how to write the alphabet/writing system of the language). I agree that Hippocrene is a good company, and I find "Living Language" to be good as well. Barron's makes good language reference books (I have "Mastering Spanish Vocabulary", "Japanese Grammar", and "501 Spanish Verbs" by that company). I also like the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary (though it is technically the only one I've ever had).
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Posted: Sat Feb 19, 2011 12:41 pm
I've always hated the Idiot's guides. I prefer the Dummies guides, except when it comes to scripts. I can't learn from the Japanese one because of it. So I use Genki. (Not saying you will, but if any of you ever want to look into Catholicism, do not use the Idiot's guide. I don't remember what was wrong with it, but it sucked, maybe written by someone who's never been Catholic? Dummies guide is a hell of a lot better.)
As for Arabic, I was using a book called Mastering Arabic. It was working for the abjad, but the grammar parts sucked. They were not well explained in my opinion. I am now using McGraw Hill's Easy Arabic Grammar by Jane Wightwick and Mahmoud Gafaar and I love it. It has everything in both abjad (most of it is without vowels-therefore abjad vice alphabet) and Roman script and the grammar is much more clear.
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Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2011 6:08 pm
I like using Al-Kitaab for Arabic because it uses the script. It also comes with a CD so I can use that to find out the pronounciations of words. They have a book called Alif Baa just for learning the script and about 100 words, but I think that it's a bit overpriced for only teaching you that much.
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Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 3:42 pm
There are a lot of books I would recommend for Japanese, but i guess I'll just say to check out www.thejapanshop.com, even if you don't buy from them, the reviews on the books sold there are usually pretty good.
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Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 10:08 pm
The CD that came with my Hippocrene Icelandic book annoyed the hell out of me. The main character's name is "Jeremy" and he has a thick American accent. Why would that help anyone?
Reading about the actual phonetics of the language and studying the IPA helped so much more.
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Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 4:43 pm
i don't know any, but I'm trying to find some on Thai.
Do ya'll know if any of those books have a Thai one?
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Henneth Annun Vice Captain
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Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2011 5:31 pm
Pandora the Wonderful i don't know any, but I'm trying to find some on Thai. Do ya'll know if any of those books have a Thai one? I have a couple friend teaching at Thai schools on the weekends; I'll ask them about textbooks. In the meantime.... smile
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Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2011 5:44 pm
Henneth Annun Pandora the Wonderful i don't know any, but I'm trying to find some on Thai. Do ya'll know if any of those books have a Thai one? I have a couple friend teaching at Thai schools on the weekends; I'll ask them about textbooks. In the meantime.... smile 
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