Tamil for Beginners

By Kausalya Hart

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0877253528
• ISBN13: 9780877253525
• Release Date: March 1999
• Publisher: Center for South & Southeast
• Length: 361 Pages
• Weight: 1.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.8" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

a gentle introduction to a very difficult language

Quality materials on Tamil are hard to find. This is definitely a resource worth having. The book begins with the script, (and the author thoughtfully provides handwritten examples), so that a learner can master the basics of writing before moving into speaking, and avoiding the bother of learning a transcription native speakers can't read and that he/she will never use again. The lessons begin with simple conversations on everyday topics and move on to conversations on more difficult and abstract ideas. Each lesson contains extensive lists of useful vocabulary that can quite readily be plugged into the sentence patterns already learned. To get the most of this book, however, one should also obtain the audio and the accompanying grammar manual (both should be available from Cal Berkeley). The tapes that I obtained were of excellent quality, but the speech is quite slow compared to the astounding rate of speed at which native speakers actually talk; The CDs that accompany Asher's 'Colloquial Tamil', which is also excellent, give the learner a much more realistic picture of what he will encounter when he actually starts to participate in the wonderful world of spoken Tamil. A minus is that there is no answer key for the exercises, which are good and reflect the material presented- this is where knowing a native speaker would come in very handy.

works best with tapes

I've used this book for self-study, but in conjunction with a set of a dozen audio cassettes. I acquired these directly from the publisher, UC Berkeley Langauge Center. I can't imagine using this book without the audio component. Compared to the excellent Asher Colloquial Tamil, the Hart audio does use a very slow pace of speaking, and this is really helpful for the beginning foreigner, the intended audience of this book (Asher's audio is absolutely much more realistic yet uses too much English and is a little too fast at the beginning, I'd say.) As noted, the Hart book is Brahmin Tamil, and the book doesn't tell you that.

Highly Recommended

Referring to Vols. 1 and 2 As a tamilian-american born and raised in the US, I was looking for a self-study book for learning to read and write tamil as well as for improving my spoken tamil and vocabulary. I am fairly fluent in colloquial tamil. Therefore, I was also particular that the book did not solely focus on the more authentic tamil currently found on TV news and other media. For my purposes, this book is superb! It provides crystal clear explanations of the types of letters and their sounds. The rules to combine letters (sounds) are also very clearly explained. There are, of course, some typos and certain exceptions to some of the rules are missing. However, these are very few in number. Ms. Hart has done an amazing job of distilling the structure of the language into a relatively small set of rules that, for the most part, capture all there is to know in order to be intelligible. In my experience, native speakers rarely have enough grasp to accomplish this, regardless of the language. The section on grammar rules is quite comprehensive but may require the reader to be familiar with some grammatical terminology not often stressed in American schools. Some of this terminology may have only been introduced to the typical american student when he/she first takes a foreign language and usually this terminology is not emphasized. However, refamiliarizing oneself with this is not too difficult. The dictionaries at the end do contain many commonly used words and can prove useful. All in all, the book certainly is excellent in helping me accomplish my goals. Highly recommended!!!

Excellent for classroom learning or self-teaching.

This is an excellent book. After years of trying to make sense of the confusing "learn Tamil in 30 days" or similar books one can get in India, I found this book to be very helpful. The only book I have found which comes close to it is the "Microwave Approach" (only sold in India, I believe), which puts more emphasis on the spoken version but leaves out most of the written elements. As to what the other reviewer has said -- my copy of this book has a small section detailing the differences between written and spoken Tamil, but maybe they've changed it since then!

Best introduction to Tamil I've seen yet!

I highly recommend this book to anyone trying to learn Tamil, especially since any books about Tamil, much less one as well-written as this one, are very hard to find outside of India. Nice aspects include: explanation of alphabet, lengthy and quite useful vocabulary lists, fun easy-to-read stories in Tamil, and lessons that are easy to follow and not too overwhelming. My only hesitations are that the grammar section is not always totally clear (though better than anything else I've seen) and that there isn't anything about spoken Tamil variations, but these are small complaints. Mrs. Hart teaches Tamil at UC Berkeley and this book is her text. I had the pleasure of studying Tamil with her for a year and I made fast progress. I wish the same to anyone else who tries to learn this beautiful and often underappreciated language.