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Beginner's Urdu Script (Teach Yourself)

By: Richard Delacy
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Teach Yourself Books
ISBN: 0340779888
ISBN-13: 9780340779880
Released: 23 Feb 2001
RRP: £7.99
Average Rating:

Customer Reviews

Disappointing addition to the TY range - By: , 07 Aug 2004
I'm sorry to disagree with other users, but whilst this book is adequate as a means of learning to read Urdu, it is not at alll helpful in learning how to write. The handwritten examples are sloppy & make it difficult to distinguish between letters such as vau, dal & re. The pen used is too thick & letter forms that should be hollow are filled in & appear as black blobs. Also, little explanation is given about how the letter forms should be arranged in relation to each other in the slanting nasta'liq style chosen for use in the book. When one of the chief aims of the book is to teach people how to write, there should be far more fastidiousness in the presentation of the written examples.
Another good one in the TY Script series - By: R. WEST-SOLEY, 05 Aug 2003
A nice, easily-paced course which teaches you a few letters at a time in each chapter. Very clear, although a bit more detail on a couple of characters (such as chothi he's initial forms) would have been useful - hence four & not five stars. Not quite as fun as Teach Yourself Beginner's Japanese Script, which was a stroke of fun-loving genius, but nonetheless very effective.
easy to read. - By: , 16 Feb 2002
I was pleasantly surpriesd by this book.I didn't realise how complex Urdu is until I recived this book. It does however make it very clear & easy to understand.I enjoy wrighting in Urdu. It's very pretty. I was pleased that the book showes you the easiest format by numeric order.I was glad that the auther has put the Muslim calender in the book as well as the Christian calender.I have found the book to be a good beginners guide to reading Urdu as well as writing.The auther has explaind the complex vowel's clearly too. I didn't realise how many style's they have for singel letter's. It is writen so diffrentley if it is at begining of a word, in the middle, at the end or by it's self.It's a very fasanating Script to learn. Aswhell as being a fasinating launge.
Excellent! Very easy to follow and quick to produce results - By: Sarah Khan(sra1@hotmail.com), 26 Sep 2001
A native english speaker & married to a Pakistani, I am fed up with not understanding my in-laws' jokes or family gossip, so decided to learn Urdu a while back. However, with a 3 & 2 year old in tow, I have neither the time nor the concentration span to master often complicated self-study books in urdu & similarly arabic.
Imagine my elation, however, when I discovered this concise little book that had me identifying smalll urdu words & names on asian satellite TV almost immediately.

Each letter of the urdu alphabet is dealt with systematicallly in its own section. In each section you are taught what the letter looks like standing by itself, how it appears in the beginning, middle & end of a word & how to write it in clear, detailed steps. Exercises are then provided to apply this knowledge to smalll digestible words & their translations. As your knowledge of the urdu alphabet increases, longer words & phrases occur towards the end of the book as a natural progression, not a giant leap or feeling you've bitten off more than you can chew.
Pretty standard stuff, you might be saying, but what I believe sets this book apart from the rest is the SIMPLICITY with which it deals with what can be a complicated subject. There are few complicated grammatical terms, which, through the frequent consultation of a dictionary or the need for a language teacher, are off-putting & make you lose interest before you've even started. Also there is no complicated waffle between points. The exercises are self-explanatory with a summary in point-format at the end of the chapter which alllows alll gathered information to sink in more quickly, since valuable brain space has not been taken up trying to figure out what the book is teaching.
The simplicity of the exercises built up my confidence & dispelled my trepidation at not only having to learn a foreign language, but also a foreign script. The exercises are thorough & simple, but not too simple that you miss the point altogether or work to a mediocre standard.
An added bonus is through the thoroughness of the exercises, the information is immediately committed to memory without the need for hours of revising afterwards.
Although only at the beginning of my urdu-learning career, I feel this book is the best stepping-stone to overcoming the first major hurdle. I will no-longer have to scour the shops for those sparsely occurring transliterated urdu books with this book,I believe, as the key to alll those other urdu books,newspapers, TV & so on. I highly recommend it to urdu beginners of alll ages as it is easy to follow & quick to understand, while still remaining a challlenge & of a good standard.