Colloquial Hebrew: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series)
by Tamar Wang
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List Price: $48.95
Our Price: $32.31
Your Save: $ 16.64 ( 34% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Routledge
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
EAN: 9780415431590
ISBN: 041543159X
Label: Routledge
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 256
Publication Date: 2003-12-10
Publisher: Routledge
Studio: Routledge
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Hebrew course for beginners moves quickly into advanced mode
Comment: My Hebrew tutor loaned me his copy of the course, and I found it so useful that I purchased my own copy. It starts with basics but then advances quickly. The lessons are compact and require review several times over in order to become proficient. The accompanying book is necessary for the first time or two, but after that listening to the CD's alone is instructive. Mastery of this course will place you far beyond the beginner stage.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: One of the few good Hebrew books I've found
Comment: I'm not sure why it's so difficult to find a decent Hebrew textbook as compared to, say, the numerous French and Spanish primers that flood the market. I know Hebrew isn't as widely spoken as the latter two languages, but surely it can't be that hard to produce a decent textbook.
Wang's book is good for several reasons: it starts off assuming you know absolutely nothing and progresses from there. She starts you off with the alphabet (and not just the block letters, but the script). Then letter recognition. And only then does she proceed to basic sentences. The instructions are in English, unlike some language books that immediately start speaking to you in the language. That drives me nuts. Also, Wang doesn't merely translate Hebrew passages into English but offers an English transliteration of the former so you will get a hang of the pronunciation. This is particularly welcome in a language that doesn't have written vowels!
The book focuses on real-life vocabulary. This isn't the book to learn posh Hebrew. This is the language found in everyday life. You'll learn about city life, travel, food, friends, family, counting, ect. You're also not parroting back stock phrases, which is worthless when you're learning another tongue. The emphasis is on learning proper conjugation, translating back and forth between languages, and being able to make up sentences of your own. I'm also thankful this book doesn't teach vocabulary that only students would use (i.e. dorms, colleges), because naturally I'm not a student and I bet a lot of people picking up this book wouldn't be either.
By the end of the book, you'll be learning some vocabulary used in newspapers. You won't be fluent by book's end, but you'll be at a decent intermediate level and be prepared to take your studies from there.
There are conjugation tables at the back (much appreciated for the tricky verb patterns!) and a small vocabularly index. If you're going to be serious about this, however, I'm going to make a suggestion that I make of every language primer I've used: get a decent bilingual dictionary. While most language textbooks offer a vocabularly index, they're nowhere near the length or breadth you need if you're going to be learning the language efficiently.
There is, however, one little beef I have: there are numerous spelling mistakes peppered here and there. I'm fortunate in that when I first picked this book up, I'd already had a few years of Hebrew instruction at school so I could flip through the first few chapters to pick and choose what I needed, and I had the luxury of noticing spelling mistakes where a beginner may not. You'll know you've hit a mistake when a word doesn't match its transliteration.
It's not going to derail your learning, but will confuse beginners momentarily and therefore is annoying.
Also, I got the book alone. I purchased this through a bookstore and there weren't any tapes or CDs that I could see, and it wasn't until later that I learned they even existed. If you've already had some exposure to spoken Hebrew, you'll probably be fine without them. But if you're starting Hebrew from scratch you should definitely get the tapes/CDs so you can hear what the spoken language sounds like and try to emulate their pronunciation.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Extremely helpful...
Comment: I started with 'Living Israeli Hebrew For the Very Beginner' and it proved an invaluable foundation for both speaking and reading...you do have to know your aleph-bet visually and aurally. I have done 'Pimsleur I' and it was a great start on pronunciation and conversational style. 'Hebrew in 10 Minutes a Day' is modestly helpful, mainly for the stickers... and now I have a live personal tutor whose idea of rapid immersion makes me empathize with the Salem witches... but the one thing that has allowed me to start weaving all this together, and actually make sense of the spoken and written language, is this book. (I did not get the tapes or CD, but plan to add them if I can.) Thank heavens for the excellent transliterations!
My reasons for 4 instead of 5 stars are that I would have liked a little more complete verb table, and definitely would like a larger vocab dictionary and a better index. In short, looking stuff up is tough and slow, but there's a lot here, and generally very well-explained.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great
Comment: One of the best books of this series. It's definetely worthy. I learnt a lot from it. Of course it can only teach you till a basic-intermediate level. Then you could go on with a tutor or "A reference grammar of modern Hebrew"
Customer Rating:
Summary: Exceptional but error-ridden content
Comment: I share everyone's enthusiasm for this book: it's one of the most clearly-written, user-friendly guide for adults to learn Hebrew that I've yet found. I've spent many evenings and four weekends completing this book, and it's helped bring back the language fluency that I had as a child.
I've taken off a star, however, because of the inexcusable number of errors in the answer key and in the book. Sometimes, portions of exercises are inexplicably missing entirely from the answer key; in other cases, the answer key includes misspelled or sporadically different words compared to the actual exercise, and vice-versa. The CD recordings also vary words and even omit entire sentences from the in-book dialogs.
The authors also have a frustrating tendency to use words in the book that they do not define in the end-of-book dictionary, so it can be sometimes hard to read along. Plan on including a decent Hebrew dictionary along with this book.
The Disc 1 I received was also defective, however, Routledge promptly promised to replace it when asked.
That said, this remains one of the better books, its flaws aside. But it was inexcusable for the publishers to release it without a competent editorial job. "Modern Hebrew for Beginners" is probably your better bet.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Hebrew course for beginners moves quickly into advanced mode
Comment: My Hebrew tutor loaned me his copy of the course, and I found it so useful that I purchased my own copy. It starts with basics but then advances quickly. The lessons are compact and require review several times over in order to become proficient. The accompanying book is necessary for the first time or two, but after that listening to the CD's alone is instructive. Mastery of this course will place you far beyond the beginner stage.
Customer Rating:
Summary: One of the few good Hebrew books I've found
Comment: I'm not sure why it's so difficult to find a decent Hebrew textbook as compared to, say, the numerous French and Spanish primers that flood the market. I know Hebrew isn't as widely spoken as the latter two languages, but surely it can't be that hard to produce a decent textbook.
Wang's book is good for several reasons: it starts off assuming you know absolutely nothing and progresses from there. She starts you off with the alphabet (and not just the block letters, but the script). Then letter recognition. And only then does she proceed to basic sentences. The instructions are in English, unlike some language books that immediately start speaking to you in the language. That drives me nuts. Also, Wang doesn't merely translate Hebrew passages into English but offers an English transliteration of the former so you will get a hang of the pronunciation. This is particularly welcome in a language that doesn't have written vowels!
The book focuses on real-life vocabulary. This isn't the book to learn posh Hebrew. This is the language found in everyday life. You'll learn about city life, travel, food, friends, family, counting, ect. You're also not parroting back stock phrases, which is worthless when you're learning another tongue. The emphasis is on learning proper conjugation, translating back and forth between languages, and being able to make up sentences of your own. I'm also thankful this book doesn't teach vocabulary that only students would use (i.e. dorms, colleges), because naturally I'm not a student and I bet a lot of people picking up this book wouldn't be either.
By the end of the book, you'll be learning some vocabulary used in newspapers. You won't be fluent by book's end, but you'll be at a decent intermediate level and be prepared to take your studies from there.
There are conjugation tables at the back (much appreciated for the tricky verb patterns!) and a small vocabularly index. If you're going to be serious about this, however, I'm going to make a suggestion that I make of every language primer I've used: get a decent bilingual dictionary. While most language textbooks offer a vocabularly index, they're nowhere near the length or breadth you need if you're going to be learning the language efficiently.
There is, however, one little beef I have: there are numerous spelling mistakes peppered here and there. I'm fortunate in that when I first picked this book up, I'd already had a few years of Hebrew instruction at school so I could flip through the first few chapters to pick and choose what I needed, and I had the luxury of noticing spelling mistakes where a beginner may not. You'll know you've hit a mistake when a word doesn't match its transliteration.
It's not going to derail your learning, but will confuse beginners momentarily and therefore is annoying.
Also, I got the book alone. I purchased this through a bookstore and there weren't any tapes or CDs that I could see, and it wasn't until later that I learned they even existed. If you've already had some exposure to spoken Hebrew, you'll probably be fine without them. But if you're starting Hebrew from scratch you should definitely get the tapes/CDs so you can hear what the spoken language sounds like and try to emulate their pronunciation.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Extremely helpful...
Comment: I started with 'Living Israeli Hebrew For the Very Beginner' and it proved an invaluable foundation for both speaking and reading...you do have to know your aleph-bet visually and aurally. I have done 'Pimsleur I' and it was a great start on pronunciation and conversational style. 'Hebrew in 10 Minutes a Day' is modestly helpful, mainly for the stickers... and now I have a live personal tutor whose idea of rapid immersion makes me empathize with the Salem witches... but the one thing that has allowed me to start weaving all this together, and actually make sense of the spoken and written language, is this book. (I did not get the tapes or CD, but plan to add them if I can.) Thank heavens for the excellent transliterations!
My reasons for 4 instead of 5 stars are that I would have liked a little more complete verb table, and definitely would like a larger vocab dictionary and a better index. In short, looking stuff up is tough and slow, but there's a lot here, and generally very well-explained.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great
Comment: One of the best books of this series. It's definetely worthy. I learnt a lot from it. Of course it can only teach you till a basic-intermediate level. Then you could go on with a tutor or "A reference grammar of modern Hebrew"
Customer Rating:
Summary: Exceptional but error-ridden content
Comment: I share everyone's enthusiasm for this book: it's one of the most clearly-written, user-friendly guide for adults to learn Hebrew that I've yet found. I've spent many evenings and four weekends completing this book, and it's helped bring back the language fluency that I had as a child.
I've taken off a star, however, because of the inexcusable number of errors in the answer key and in the book. Sometimes, portions of exercises are inexplicably missing entirely from the answer key; in other cases, the answer key includes misspelled or sporadically different words compared to the actual exercise, and vice-versa. The CD recordings also vary words and even omit entire sentences from the in-book dialogs.
The authors also have a frustrating tendency to use words in the book that they do not define in the end-of-book dictionary, so it can be sometimes hard to read along. Plan on including a decent Hebrew dictionary along with this book.
The Disc 1 I received was also defective, however, Routledge promptly promised to replace it when asked.
That said, this remains one of the better books, its flaws aside. But it was inexcusable for the publishers to release it without a competent editorial job. "Modern Hebrew for Beginners" is probably your better bet.
Colloquial Hebrew is easy to use and completely up-to-date. Specially written by experienced teachers for self-study and class use, the course offers you a step-by-step approach to written and spoken Hebrew. No prior knowledge of the language is required. What makes Colloquial Hebrew your best choice in personal language learning? * Emphasis on conversational language with clear pronunciation guidance
* Grammar section for easy reference
* Comprehensive vocabulary lists (Hebrew-English and English-Hebrew)
* Stimulating exercises with lively illustrations By the end of this rewarding course you will be able to communicate confidently and effectively in Hebrew in a broad range of everyday situations. This pack contains two 60-minute CDs which have been recorded by native speakers and will help you perfect your pronunciation, listening and speaking skills.
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