I bought this book because I wanted something I could listen to at work and hopefully learn quicker by just constantly listening to the CD's. The CD actually has very little English/explanations. It just reads the Hindi from the book. If you are really serious about learning Hindi, you might want to buy Rosetta Stone's computer software. It is quite expensive, but well worth the money. I found this set to be a nice supplement to that program. This book helps you read and learn how to speak Hindi quite effectively. I would highly recommend this book to everyone.

A pioneer's aid, May 23, 2004
Reviewer: A reader
For my ministry I need to learn Hindi. I am still going through the course, but I feel this is the best teach yourself program on Hindi out there that will really teach you something without wasting your money. Buy the complete course, which is a textbook and 2 CD's. It will actually teach you what the words mean, not just to memorize phrases without knowing the individual words, so you can in time form your own sentances. The book does move a bit fast, but this is a really good, intensive course for someone who is serious about learning the Hindi language. This book also teaches you how to pronounce and read Hindi. Although I still have much to learn, already with what I have learned from this course I find that Hindi speakers can understand what I say.

Outstanding!, April 12, 2004

I am a total beginner, but this book and CD set is fantastic! It is well-paced, and critically, it's also well-structured, providing focused instruction that keeps you moving forward without overwhelming you. It really is hard to fault this set, and if you are looking for a course that gets you well underway from zero, this is it.

An Excellent Book!, August 1, 2003
Reviewer: A reader
Personally, I found this book to be excellent. The lucid and thorough coverage of grammar, the fairly-large vocabulary, the pleasant and easy-to-read font, the interspersed notes on colloquial divergencies, and the decent audio tapes make this an all-around respectable introduction to Hindi.

The Hindi script, which may take considerable time to master, is given only a chapter of coverage, so I strongly recommend also purchasing a text devoted to teaching it. A bit of caution: The Hindi variant of the Devanagari script, much to my annoyance, departs from the elegant and consistent rules the Sanskrit version mandates. It can take some time and a good deal of effort to master the Hindi script because of its irregularities.

Nevertheless, the text itself is very good and well-worth the price.

It's better than nothing, I guess, July 30, 2003

I find I can slog my way through this book using my training as a linguist and a student of several other languages, but I can't imagine a regular joe getting much out of it.

The Devanagari text is rendered in a tiny typeface, and no instruction is given on how to write the letters; after finding some web sites that show this, I discovered I was doing it all wrong. The writing system is also just dumped all at the beginning of the book, rather than being introduced gradually throughout the lessons (and a writing system this complex needs to be introduced gradually). Some glyhps that show up later aren't even in the beginning section on the writing system.

The material is poorly organized, in that school of thought that believes putting the vocabulary & grammatical notes AFTER the text that uses them is a good thing. In real life conersation you hear things you don't know, but you can ask the speaker as soon as they've said it; not so with a book, where it's merely annoying to come across words & constructions that you know could have been introduced beforehand. I quickly took to reading each section of the book backwards.

Vocabularies are not organized in any conceptual way that would aid learning (opposite or similar pairs or groups, sequences, and the like). Some people have the initiative to redo word lists in their own notebooks, but I don't see why a pedagogical book can't take a little trouble to be more functional as a reference as well.

The end glossaries are not symmetrical--although you can look up some (not all!) Hindi words for numbers and get their English translations, you can't find any number in the English-to-Hindi section, for example (they're hidden in an appendix elsewhere in the book).

The early recorded dialogues are TERRIBLE; stress and intonation are obviously wrong, the actors seemingly talking 'slow and loud' for the benefit of the beginning student. It doesn't help. I've taken to buying Bollywood DVDs for my dialogue needs and just trying to pick out words & phrases I've learned so I can be sure I'm hearing authentic pronunciation.

If you want to learn Hindi, there aren't a lot of books out there, especially packaged with audio material. You'll be able to work out the language using this book, but it's going to be a lot more work than it should have to be.

Goes WAY too fast, February 19, 2003
Reviewer: A reader
I consider myself intelligent, and I am even a foreign language teacher, but I could NOT keep up with this book. The first few pages teach you the alphabet (in Hindi script), then the book starts with dialogues, all in Hindi script, with no English translation, and there are about 20 new vocab words to learn every lesson, ONLY in Hindi script--unless you are already adept at reading this, it moves way too fast.