(Part 2) Best language learning books according to redditors
We found 411 Reddit comments discussing the best language learning books. We ranked the 205 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
Hey! Native here. AMA about Tamil! Some dope resources include:
--Will update this list--
Note: Realize that the some of the links to resources in this comment may be illegal in your given jurisdiction. Use at your own risk. Consider supporting the authors if it has helped you anyway. Thanks.
Routledge Intermediate Korean Reader
Advanced Korean
KLEAR Korean Reader for Chinese Characters is also a graded reader but it's based on progressively harder hanja, not Korean grammar
Oh this is perfect timing!
I studied Hindi on-off for two years. It's a bit rusty now but I'm still totally enamored with it all.
A great book, universally acclaimed, is Teach Yourself Hindi! which can get you from beginner to intermediate pretty singlehandedly.
I was at a bit more advanced level when I first used this reader, but I can highly recommend it when you feel up for it. I suggest you look at the preview and decide what you think of the first story (the difficulty ramps up a bit on the later sections of the book).
At this point, I've gone through that text countless times now, with a focus on improving my reading speed and comprehension, and it's really helped build up my confidence to tackle native materials.
I've moved on to trying to read webnovels and webtoons on kakao and I try to use a routine I worked out from going through that book:
I guess TLDR: re-read a lot. That's just what's worked out best for me so far. Your experience may vary.
That same company seems to have a more beginner level reader text but I've never used it so I can't give an opinion on it. It looks like it also has a preview of the first story.
New Practical Chinese Reader is a popular choice for a lot of Mandarin courses. The Colloquial (T'ung & Pollard/Qian) and Teach Yourself (Scurfield 1, 2) books are both pretty popular for beginners.
I've heard good things about Lingodeer as an app for Mandarin/Korean/Japanese but haven't had a chance to go through it seriously yet.
Happy language learning!
Io ho l'edizione hardcover che si trova su Amazon, qui.
Abbiamo appena regalato la stessa ad una mia amica, direi che non ci sono grossi problemi di reperibilità.
You should learn Kazakh A Learner's Dictionary of Kazakh Idioms https://www.amazon.com/Learners-Dictionary-Kazakh-Idioms/dp/1589018818
Kazakh Comprehensive Grammar (DOES NOT USE THE CYRILLIC ALPHABET AT ALL): https://www.amazon.com/Kazakh-Comprehensive-Grammar-Routledge-Grammars/dp/1138828637
Kazakh Language: Grammar, Texts, Vocabulary https://www.amazon.com/Kazakh-Language-Grammar-Texts-Vocabulary/dp/1453610499
Colloquial Kazakh: https://www.amazon.com/Colloquial-Kazakh-Zaure-Batayeva/dp/1138958565
Kazakh Textbook: Beginning and Intermediate https://www.amazon.com/Kazakh-Textbook-Tangat-Tangirberdi-Ayapova/dp/1881265919
From what I understand, I think you're going to need to start with Sanskrit proper before diving into BHS particularly.
http://learnsanskrit.org
This is a very recent textbook, and is supposed to be a very good one. It's not too pricey.
There are some other resources linked to on the official site.
These primers also come recommended to me:
https://www.amazon.com/Devavanipravesika-Introduction-Sanskrit-Robert-Goldman/dp/0944613403
https://www.amazon.com/Samskrta-Subodhini-Sanskrit-Primer-Michigan-Southeast/dp/089148079X
This is one that I got from Demonoid that is OOP.
Do you have a good reference grammar? If not, I have and enjoy all three of these:
Not a reference grammar, but there's also Practice Makes Perfect Italian Pronouns And Prepositions.
All of these should have a listing of all of the uses of the prepositions, including the verbs that have to take specific prepositions (abituarsi a, continuare a, cercare di, pensare di, etc).
How to practice them... this is the kind of thing SRS'es are good at. I'd make an Anki deck and put example sentences in it from any and all textbooks/grammars/websites/anything. If you're not familiar with Anki, one of the types of flaschards is 'cloze deletion', where you can have a "missing word" question. It'll prompt you with a question like "Vado ___ studiare in biblioteca" where you'll have to answer "a" ("Vado a studiare...") The system will keep track of which ones you've pretty much got and which ones you need more review with.
I really enjoyed Latin Alive. It's very readable and entertaining, with lots of interesting etymological connections. It follows the evolution of Latin up through early forms of French, Spanish, and Italian, but not all the way up to the modern languages.
You could start there, and if you wanted to go into more detail, you could try Romance Languages: A Historical Introduction, which is more of a textbook, so less storytelling, but it's still pretty engaging and accessible (at least the parts I've read).
I used the Richardson book. It’s grammar and vocabulary lessons, followed by a section of reading texts that get more advanced and introduce more words. It’s a free PDF now from Esperanto-USA (https://retbutiko.esperanto-usa.org/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=19232) or you can buy the book on Amazon (Kindle here: Esperanto: Learning and Using the International Language https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06X96ZDZ1/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_v4iADb27HYR0P). The paperback is for some reason currently not available (it’s too expensive from third-party sellers), so don’t bother with that. You could print the free PDF if you really wanted to.
Disclaimer: the Richardson book was written in the 90’s and doesn’t know about the Internet. I was involved in the minor edits to the current version, which came from a scan of the paper book, since we didn’t have the digital files anymore. The text is just a tiny bit less-than-clear because it’s a scan, and that’s unfortunate. It could use a full OCR and actual editable text. I also cleaned up a few of the images from earlier editions that were questionable (there was a “parts of the body” image of a woman that was cartoonish and “too anatomically correct,” and a few others).
Gunch is right, Koine is much easier, but it's also much less satisfying and less useful if you want to read anything besides the New Testament. There is actually a sub-reddit devoted to this, /r/IntroAncientGreek, that you might want to check out, and /r/AncientGreek will be a better place to crowd-source an answer for this. If you want hardcore grammar learning, I would suggest Hansen and Quinn but I also recommend Cecilia Luschnig's book Intro to Ancient Greek: A Literary Approach which will have you reading actual Ancient Greek texts MUCH sooner than Hansen and Quinn. It's a rather difficult language that will be difficult to learn without supervision and someone to answer your questions, so maybe get an answer key? Best of luck, and Χαῖρε!
It's great that you're interested! However, you're asking for two different things.
This should be a nice book of the [Anglo-Saxon Chronicles] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anglo-Saxon-Chronicles-Michael-Swanton/dp/1842120034/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521744983&sr=1-1&keywords=anglo+saxon+chronicle) in translation, for a non-academic reader.
As for the language, that's a bit more tricky. As Old English is basically only taught at universities and the ubelievable greed of academic publishers, the prices are more than 20 pounds or dollars for a paperback copy. And these are textbooks for learning the language, mind you. They will explain the pronunciation, the case system, the nouns and adjectives, the grammatical gender, the declension of verbs, the poetic metre, etc etc. They also have some shorter texts in Old English, both poetry and prose, with a glossary at the end.
From those, I'd recommend [Peter S. Baker - Introduction to Old English] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Introduction-Old-English-Peter-Baker/dp/047065984X/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521744924&sr=1-8&keywords=old+english) (my favourite), [Richard Marsden - The Cambridge Old English Reader] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cambridge-Old-English-Reader/dp/1107641314/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521744918&sr=1-5&keywords=old+english) (which is more of a collection of texts and not a textbook for learning the language, though does provide some very limited help), or [Mitchell and Robinson - A Guide to Old English] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Guide-Old-English-Bruce-Mitchell/dp/0470671076/ref=sr_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521744828&sr=1-12&keywords=old+english)
For a non-academic book to learn the language, I don't have any experience with it, but people seem to like it on Amazon, so it's [Matt Love - Learn Old English with Leofwin] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Learn-English-Leofwin-Matt-Love/dp/189828167X/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521744828&sr=1-4&keywords=old+english). There is also a book+CD set by [Mark Atherton - Complete Old English: Teach Yourself] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Old-English-Teach-Yourself/dp/1444104195/ref=sr_1_14?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521744446&sr=1-14&keywords=old+english)
It's crucial that you have a proper grammar book written by accredited professionals and are not relying on random blogs and italian.about articles. I recommend Soluzioni: A Practical Grammar of Contemporary Italian.
This list isn't exhaustive but should give you enough ideas for a starting point.
**Azeri***
Freebies
Commercial
Kazakh
Freebies
Commerical
Uzbek
Freebies
Commercial
It seems that your comment contains 1 or more links that are hard to tap for mobile users.
I will extend those so they're easier for our sausage fingers to click!
Here is link number 1 - Previous text "1"
Here is link number 2 - Previous text "2"
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^Please ^PM ^/u/eganwall ^with ^issues ^or ^feedback! ^| ^Delete
For learning Ancient Greek (as an autodidact), start by signing up for The Great Courses Plus and take the Ancient Greek course, taught by Hans-Friedrich Meuller:
Greek 101: Learning an Ancient Language | The Great Courses Plus
You can sign up for a free trial on The Great Courses, for just long enough to complete the Greek course. But I think it’s totally worth paying for ALL of the content.
I recommend downloading the guidebook and doing ALL of the homework. Copy and paste the exercises into a Word doc and type out the answers/translations. Take the course as many times as you can for mastery.
I’ve created a couple of free courses on Memrise for Ancient Greek verbs that (I hope) people may find helpful. I use (my best attempt at) Modern Greek pronunciation. Audio can be disabled by anyone who has a problem with that. My Memrise account (Diachronix) has some other Modern Greek courses.
Paradigms of Ancient Greek Verbs
Principal Parts of Ancient Greek verbs
Professor Al Duncan produced an excellent series of Ancient Greek videos (on Youtube: Learn Attic Greek with Al Duncan - YouTube), which follows along the exercises in chapters 1–10 and 30–34 of Cynthia Shelmerdine’s Introduction to Greek.
That textbook is a bit error-prone, but it’s still pretty good for beginners. I recommend using it to follow along in Professor Duncan’s videos, at least until they cut off at chapter 10. But you’re on your own between chapters 11 and 29. Again, I recommend typing out ALL of the exercises.
The Athenaze Book 1 and Athenaze Book 2 are good self-study resources for intermediate learners, with a lot of excellent reading material. I also have a Memrise course for the vocabulary in these texbooks.
Athenaze: Book 1
Athenaze: Book 2
Leonard Muellner (Professor Emeritus of Classical Studies at Brandeis University) has a Youtube series on Ancient Greek: Learn Ancient Greek, with Prof. Leonard Muellner - YouTube
Unfortunately the audio throughout most of this series is terrible. But if you manage to listen closely (and not fall asleep), it’s quite edifying. Meullner is a genius. The course follows along the Greek: An Intensive Course textbook by Hansen & Quinn. You could try getting that textbook and following along, but I would recommend this last. I just can’t imagine most people having the patience for it. And I’ve heard mixed reviews on Hansen & Quinn, which professor Meullner criticizes ad nauseam throughout his videos.
Another resource I really like is the online version of ΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΙΚΗ ΤΗΣ ΑΡΧΑΙΑΣ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗΣ by ΟΙΚΟΝΟΜΟΥ. You can turn the audio in the bottom right and a robot reads it out-loud. It’s helpful to learn the grammatical terminology in Greek and, if you can manage reading demotic Greek, you can experience the way the Greeks approach Ancient Greek (and observe the notable differences). They have interesting grammatical category distinctions that we don’t have in the West, many of which are quite handy. But this textbook doesn’t have any engaging reading material, aside from bland descriptions of the language. So it’s not for everyone.
Most other learning material I could recommend is mentioned in the various links above. But here are some key items for building a collection of self-study material:
*Geoffrey Horrocks’ “Greek - A History of the Language and Its Speakers” (MUST READ)
Plato: A Transitional Reader
Kaegi’s Greek Grammar
Smyth’s Greek Grammar
Plato Apology
Homeric Greek - A Book for Beginners
Rouse’s Greek Boy - A Reader
Basics of Biblical Greek
A Graded Reader of Biblical Greek
Geoffrey Steadman’s Ancient Greek reader SERIES
The overwhelming majority of writing within Germanic philology pertains to that period wherein substantive textual corpora emerge in each language, from the 7th century onward (excepting Gothic, in the 4th, being the exception which proves the rule - its own story has little relationship to anything else in Germanic language history). During the historical period, the major branches of the Germanic language family are very much distinguished from one another, and so tend to be studied independently of one another. There are compelling opportunities to study language contact (in areas like Schleswig-Holstein, where Franconian, Anglo-Frisian, High German and North Germanic collided). But that tends to be a matter more so for journal articles than textbooks.
Nonetheless, one good opportunity to address Germanic dialectology in all these languages' earliest attested forms at once is Robinson's Old English and Its Closest Relatives: A Survey of the Earliest Germanic Languages.
Tacitus' Germania is a nice primary source to accompany any enterprise in this area, incidentally. And very readable, in my opinion.
I second this. This Routledge-published John Whitlam reference works are absolutely the best comprehensive and serious was to dive in - even at first.
Modern Brazilian Portuguese Grammar (Modern Grammars) https://www.amazon.com/dp/113864689X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_j6gjDbSATPHWZ
I would recommend getting the workbook that accompanies the grammar and just trying to get through the workbook relatively quickly using the grammar as a reference (meaning you don't need to sit down and read through entire chapters of relatively detailed grammar lessons before you start studying).
He also has an "intermediate Brazilian Portuguese reader" with modern Brazilian fiction and non-fiction excerpts scaled for difficulty, which has been really helpful to continue getting comfortable.
I really stand by traditional college course style textbook reading-and-writing type learning and think you should just try and mix in as much interesting media as possible. Try watching some Brazilian movies on Amazon prime with English subtitles and after a few months if focused learning see if you can't switch to Portuguese subtitled Portuguese media and maybe some podcasts. Change your phone as suggested earlier and actually take a look at the suggested articles.
They are popular among Mandarin learners. Here's an example, basically built on the HSK lists. While the HSK lists are not precisely frequency based, they do basically introduce words based on how commonly encountered they will be in writing and also how complex.
This could be a parallel in Korean.
There are more sources for some languages than others. Most of the information about the Germanic languages we get from Roman references and translations. In most if not all of the languages there are translated Bible passages, due to the expansion of Christianity through Charlemagne and others.
For Gothic, most of the sources come from a bishop named Wulfila who translated the bible into Gothic, except for the Book of Kings. You can find his Codex Argenteus in a Swedish museum now. Other than Wulfila, we have other bible passages or commentaries in Gothic, as well as Gothic names found in Latin and Greek texts.
Most Old Norse text sources come from Iceland. There's the Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson written about 1220, there's many poems about old Germanic gods and heroes, and there's the Islendingabok, a historical account of the Icelanders written about 1125.
The major Old Saxon document is the Helihand, a translation combining all the gospels into one book and changing many elements to reflect Saxon culture.
For Old English there's obviously Beowulf but also many other poems, and prose as well. We also have the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a collection of accounts of Old English history and culture. And of course there are Old English translations of Bible passages, particularly the gospels.
I can keep going if you want. I'm just summarizing from a book. Old English and Its Closest Relatives
Ok, so
Grammars:
(The first three are all from Routledge)
Basic Persian: A Grammar and Workbook
Intermediate Persian: A Grammar and Workbook
Persian: A Comprehensive Grammar
Books:
Persian of Iran Today: Volume 1
Persian of Iran Today: Volume 2
Complete Persian (Modern Persian/Farsi)
Websites:
Easy Persian
Persian Language Online
Grammar and Resources, The University of Texas at Austin
Ali Jahanshiri’s Personal Website
YouTube channel(s):
Reza Nazari
There was another one, but I can’t seem to find it right now
Not sure where to categorize this, but Chai and Conversation has audio lessons.
In addition, Forvo has pronunciations of words.
——
Sorry for any formatting errors, I’m new to this place.
Namaste.
I don't particularly like the Linganaut sites but they're probably a good start. Yes, a male would happily say मैं तुमसे प्यार करता हूँ mai tumse pyar karta hu to say "I love you" (A female would say करती karti instead) in a normal casual environment, exactly how we say "I love you" in English.
You might find Teach Yourself Hindi Conversation helpful. In the UK (where I live) it's a little hard to get hold of, but not impossible. Get the copy with the accompanying CDs for audio. The book has loads of conversations that you can follow with the audio and translations.
Teach Yourself Hindi Conversation is the sister of the main book Teach Yourself Hindi. Teach Yourself Hindi is a great book which again has accompanying audio and plenty of conversational examples. This main course book is mostly focused on the grammar and rules of the language which may not be that helpful for your purposes.
I do find the site Learning Hindi quite useful, though there is a lack of audio for a lot of the lessons. Perhaps their conversational section will be of most help to you.
You might like [this one] (https://www.amazon.com/Romance-Languages-Historical-Introduction-Alkire/dp/0521717841)
Sure :)
For learning Devanagari I recommend the Hindi Script Tutor online. Devanagari can seem a bit daunting at first, but it is actually a pretty pleasant script to work with- it's pretty consistent and after a while it'll be as easy as reading the Latin script! I personally find it much easier than Urdu script (not to deter you from learning that!)
For actually learning the language, the go-to book is Teach Yourself Hindi by Rupert Snell. Like I said earlier, Hindi: An Essential Grammar is good. There are two intermediate readers that I know of: Intermediate Hindi Reader by Usha Jain (I've heard that her other two books on beginner and advanced Hindi grammar are good too) and The Routledge Intermediate Hindi Reader. I have only used Jain's book, but the Routledge one looks good too and I think it has more updated texts.
There is also a Door Into Hindi, which is great. It is just like Darvazah, except that it actually works lol (if it doesn't work, try a different browser or close out and try again- sometimes it gets a little glitchy). Learning Hindi is also a pretty good website.
http://www.amazon.it/Codex-Seraphinianus-Luigi-Serafini/dp/8817068888
Su amazon ne sono disponibili ancora 9
I have A Guide to Old English, Introduction to Old English and Old English: Grammar and Reader at home and they all are pretty useful if you are interested in the language (plus Clark-Hall's dictionary). I've never tried to study it as a live language - I just wanted to read some old texts :)
There is also Complete Old English - not sure how good it is but you may want to look at it.
And for sale for only $500!
I've mostly been relying on Spoken Tamil for Absolute Beginners.
OP, есть ещё один учебник от Merphy (розовый) Grammar in Use Intermediate: Self-study Reference and Practice for Students of North American English
Мне мой преподаватель советовал именно эту версию, если хочу именно американский английский
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Modern-Brazilian-Portuguese-Grammar-Grammars/dp/113864689X/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?keywords=modern+brazilian+portuguese+grammar+a+practical+guide&qid=1568048071&s=gateway&sprefix=modern+bra&sr=8-2
There's a companion workbook too.
I highly recommend this book: https://www.amazon.com/Grammar-Use-Intermediate-Self-study-Reference/dp/0521734762/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1487082446&sr=8-2&keywords=intermediate+english+grammar
I've used it to teach grammar to many Chinese students. Tenses are hard, and practice is the only answer.
Devavanipravesika, An Introduction to the Sanskrit Language by Robert P. Goldman
http://www.amazon.ca/Devavanipravesika-An-Introduction-Sanskrit-Language/dp/0944613403
Most people have responded to your desire to know more about how Greek evolved. However, if you want to learn Classical Ancient Greek, I strongly recommend Luschnig, Attic Greek. It's a great book. I learned Greek from it, and have taught Greek from it. https://smile.amazon.com/Introduction-Ancient-Greek-Literary-Approach/dp/0872208893/
If you're looking for a starting point, there's a decent transitional reader by Bolchazy that walks you through progressively more difficult passages from the Republic. After that, the Apology and other short dialogues are good, the Geoffrey Steadman readers are enormously useful for helping you figure things out, and he has readers for Republic 1, Crito, and other dialogues. I would pick one of those, and there are free pdfs on his personal website if you aren't sure which one to choose: geoffreysteadman.com
Transitional Reader:
https://www.amazon.com/Plato-Transitional-Reader-Ancient-English/dp/0865167214/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1520535060&sr=8-1&keywords=transitional+reader+plato
I would combine Duolingo with Lernu: https://lernu.net/en
You don't have to spend money, but if you want to, I've heard good things about the Teach Yourself Esperanto book (it's a pricey though): https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Esperanto-Learn-write-understand/dp/1473669189/ref=sr_1_1?crid=L17CYNEAZJ1E&keywords=teach+yourself+esperanto&qid=1573258720&sprefix=teach+yourself+esper%2Caps%2C213&sr=8-1
There's also the textbook by David Richardson, which is available as a very inexpensive ebook; the reader near the end of the book is valuable: https://www.amazon.com/Esperanto-Learning-Using-International-Language-ebook/dp/B06X96ZDZ1/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3C83DAZAWX3V1&keywords=esperanto+richardson&qid=1573258790&sprefix=esperanto+rich%2Caps%2C217&sr=8-1#customerReviews
After you've made it to the end of a course and have a bit of a grasp of the language, you can do ekparolu, which is a program that matches learners up with fluent Esperanto speakers for 10 free skype sessions: https://edukado.net/ekparolu/prezento
If you live in or close to a city with an Esperanto club I would go to that too; they're usually pretty easy to find online with a bit of googling and it's important to start trying to speak the language out loud as soon as you can even if it's hard or you can only really say "saluton" and "ĝis".
Amuziĝu :)
I guess that I'd like the Portuguese version of this instead. However, it did recommend this one, whose description seems to fit my bill a bit better. I'll have to look into it to see if it's worth paying this much.