Yatir Nitzany

This a book for someone who is trying to learn a functional speaking Yiddish rather than for a scholar who seeks the ability to read and write in the language. It appears to have many words which are likely to be used in conversations today with both printed Yiddish Letters and a usable transliteration. The transliteration is not the standard YIVO one, but should be good for a non-scholar. The emphasis is on memorizing a basic vocabulary of a few hundred words without concern for formal grammatical rules..
The method should provide me with a vocabulary to get over the hump toward learning formal written Yiddish.… (més)

Slightly better than the one about “Qatari” Arabic (which was actually mostly Iraqi) but still terrible. No consistent transliteration scheme renders the book utterly useless and he does nothing to explain the complicated consonant system of Emirati Arabic.
Vowels are written inconsistently so that there could be any number of ways of pronouncing “yom.” (Does it rhyme with ‘dome?’ ‘Dumb?’ ‘Doom?’ ‘Dom?’)
Language learning begins with comprehension, not with speaking. Rushing into a book like this, for a serious language learner, would only lead to confusion later. Not to mention how dreadful your accent will be if you pronounce these Arabic words as they are written here!
In addition, the book, like the other one I read by this author, had typos in both the English and the Gulf Arabic.
Much better books have been produced on Gulf Arabic dialects.… (més)