Complete Urdu Beginner to Intermediate Course: Learn to read, write, speak and understand a new language with Teach Yourself

I am a British lad with Pakistani ethnicity. All my life I have been made fun of for not knowing a "back home" language. My mum and dad always told me off for speaking English at home as crazy as that may sound. Too bad they were never willing to teach it to me, or maybe they just didn't know how to. Recently I've realised the importance of knowing this language as part of my future job as a doctor (hopefully). People on the wards see a brown face and assume they know urdu. I made a decision to start learning urdu for myself because i knew that no one else would teach me. This book so far has explained all the grammatical questions that I have ever had about Urdu. I actually understand the masculine and feminine rules and the tenses. Finally an actual answer to my questions rather than "if you speak it then you will learn it". I'm so happy to have found this course. It's starting to make me fall in love with the language. I never realised how beautiful Urdu was before.There are a total of 15 chapters. Each chapter has about 3 or 4 dialogues. I would recommend getting the audio CD and book in one pack. With the CD you can hear the dialgoue's proper pronunciation. Then after that the dialgoue is broken down into new words and verbs that are present in this dialgoue and any grammatical rules that come up with them. It's a really good way of teaching. They have short exercises and actually have answers in the back, unlike most learning urdu books.So far so good. I am really enjoying the course so far. Thank you David Matthews and Mohammed Kasim Dalvi

The two best Urdu courses currently available are this one and 'Colloquial Urdu'. They are both excellent, but in different ways, so I'll make some comparisons to help you choose. I'll refer to 'Teach Yourself Complete Urdu' as 'TY' and 'Colloquial Urdu' as 'CU'.Audio material-------------------Both courses come with CDs containing recordings of the dialogues, and much additional audio material. Be careful when ordering - it's not always clear from the product information whether you're ordering the book, or the CDs, or the pack containing both.The TY audio material is much better - the actors really do act, and the dialogues flow well. Some of the actors in CU speak in a halting, disconnected way, which makes it hard to get a grip on how a sentence should flow. If you decide to buy CU, beware - the old-style plastic presentation box packaging, containing book and CDs, is hopeless inadequate because the CDs become detached from their anchor points and rattle around in the packaging, which means that they can get so scratched as to be unplayable.Dialogues-------------The TY dialogues are far more useful and practical, dealing with a wide range of everyday situations. The CU dialogues are good, but somewhat wayward in their choice of subject matter.Writing Urdu----------------If you want to learn just to speak Urdu, without learning to write, then TY is not for you, because later lessons do not contain transliteration of the dialogues, and you are left to fend for yourself with the Urdu script. You would do better with CU, where everything in the lessons is in transliteration, and the Urdu script versions of the dialogues are in an appendix at the back (in ridiculously tiny font - anyone over 45 who doesn't have a recently prescribed pair of reading glasses will struggle to read them). The Urdu script in TY is also very small and sometimes indistinct. Both TY and CU have good sections on learning Urdu script, but in CU these sections are totally divorced from the main body of the course. You will get far more practice in the script, and become far more fluent in it, if you opt for TY.Grammar explanations------------------------------TY is friendlier here, with easy to follow, full and lucid explanations of all grammatical points. CU is very good but uses some odd terminology and could be more lucid when explaining some of the more difficult points. TY provides fuller tabulation of grammatical forms in each lesson.Transliteration-------------------I definitely prefer the CU transliteration system, but both are absolutely consistent and clear, and it's very much a personal matter - some people may prefer the TY system.Summary-------------The choice of course depends very much on whether you want to learn the script. If you don't, if you just want to learn to speak Urdu, then CU is the best choice. If you want to learn the script, then go for TY. Both courses are excellent in their different ways, despite any caveats above.

Course moves a bit quick. I need to work at this.

I purchased this book hoping it would indeed be a "complete" course; in many respects it lives up to what it says as it has already guided me through many of the basics I need to learn about reading, writing and speaking Urdu. However (and there is a big 'but'), for someone who has never had contact with Urdu before picking up this book I have found it very frustrating indeed with many scripting inconsistencies (I dare not call them errors as I am not yet that confident) and the sustained use of a quite small font all combining to hinder my progress as I try to unpick what the tutor/author is trying to convey.Mindful that it is easy to rubbish a book, but not necessarily justify that tag, here are a few examples:Page xxiii (i.e. still in the intro, and not even into the proper course yet); the transliteration for ap (you) is next to the Urdu letters Alif Madd and Be (i.e. ab, not ap, noting that ab means now). It took me ten minutes to work out that this must be a typing error and was not me being dumb! But being only 8 pages into the "how to read and write Urdu" section within a 400 page book, it evaporated much of my confidence in the book's quality.Page xxvi transliterates the Urdu word "man" (meaning mother) as having a "nasalised N"; whereas page xxvii (i.e. the very next page) transliterates the same word as having an un-nasalised N. It is not until much later in the book that you get to hear the word, thus finally learn properly this word's pronunciation and thus unpick this inconsistency.Page xxvii - the Urdu script of the word for boy incorrectly shows both a "b" and a dot above the character "re"; it should be the "b" only as the dot is not required (as per the correctly typed dictionary at the back of the book).Page xxviii - the three dots under the first character "pe" of the Urdu word `pura' merge themselves with the top of the characters on the next line, and thus look like two dots (which would make it a "y" not a "p").Etc.It is this final highlighted error that exemplifies the very annoying use of a font size for Urdu characters in the early stages of the book which is far too small. When trying to understand the difference between the character vau (which looks like a English comma, but with a curly top) and dal (which looks like an English comma but with less of a curly top) I was wholly unable to fathom the distinction until I used an online Urdu script tutor, which unpicked my poor understanding in seconds. However, I still confuse the two characters when using this book as the fractional (tenths of a millimetre) difference between the two characters as shown using their small font is too slight for someone still getting used to the language and script.All in all, this book is probably the best "complete" guide available that I have seen, but it could do with a major revision:- Use a larger font size for the Urdu characters throughout the first two or three chapters (i.e. until a newcomer to the language gets used to the script).- Properly proof read the book and eliminate typing errors or inconsistencies, especially in Urdu script and transliteration.If you buy it, you will need to use other on-line resources or a tutor to help you, especially in the early stages of learning, but it has helped me.I hope this review helps.

Proper grammar explanation. Good guidance in self learning,