Colloquial Albanian (Colloquial Series)

By Isa Zymberi

Colloquial Albanian is easy to use and completely up-to-date. Specially written by an experienced teacher for self-study or class use, the course offers you a step-by-step approach to written and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0415056632
• ISBN13: 9780415056632
• Release Date: May 1991
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.8" x 5.5"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary

Customer Reviews

Very helpful, faleminderit!

I have been studying Albanian for over a year and used several texts. The Colloquial Albanian book and cassette set has been one of the most helpful. It follows a logical progression of language building and uses reading/listening passages with humor and variety. The audio cassette was especially helpful for building comprehesion/fluency. My only suggestion is that the speakers speak unusually slowly and often overenunciate on the cassette. It would be helpful to have speakers use a more natural speed for non-native speakers to imitate. However, it was a very good bargain for the price and I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to study this beautiful and complex language.

Best on the market (shume mire!)

Colloquial Albanian is an easy to follow, concise introduction to shqip (Albanian). Isa Zymberi gives clear instruction on the many verb stems and tenses/moods. A fairly broad vocab is covered, although I recommend anyone learning shqip by themselves should also buy an english-albanian dictionary. The accompyaning cassette is essential to develop pronuciation and listening skills. As said by other readers, the book is poorly bound and leafs will start to fall out withing the first few weeks of use. I suggest taking the book to a book-binder who will re-enforce it with string or glue. Overall, a very good book, one of the the best on the market.(There aren't to many on the market, though). I have some Albanian friends from Pristina and they also gave praise to the book, although some phrases brought a smirk to their faces. Would I buy It? -Sigurisht!

OK overall

This is a pretty good book overall. However, it suffers from one major problem: very few people speak Albanian, especially outside the Balkans. The authors might have produced a more useful and acclaimed opus if they had written a book on "Colloquial German" or "Everyday Arabic". If, on the other hand, you consider its obscurity a boon, I suggest Nenets: agonizingly difficult and few native speakers (most of whom spend their time in Siberia herding reindeer).

Excellent

I am glad to have this book (and cassette) as part of my Abanian Reference collection. I appreciate the structure with which Isa Zymberi lays out the instruction. The ONLY qualm I have is with the physical binding of the book. After a few readings, a handful of pages have come undone from the binding.Thanks, Giorgio Kolaj