Learn Basic Malayalam In Six Weeks: With Daily Worksheets & Answer Key

What is good: - explanation of letters with at least a few exercises What is bad: - totally random words you don‘t need as a beginner (e.g. container, net, foolishness,…) - at some points there are writing exercises wirh words that haven‘t been explained in the previous chapters….. totally random again - mistakes in solutions and sometimes also spelling. Of course, this can happen, it is nevertheless confusing, especiall for a beginner - far too few exercises to seriously practise these random (!!!) words - at the end there is a list again, but I am so sorry… The text at the end to practice reading is also soooo not useful for a beginner… I cannot use anything in my everyday conversation… It is really a pity and shame.

Je n'ai pas été au-delà des chapitres consacrés à l'écriture et à la phonétique : ils sont en effet dépourvus de la moindre rigueur, les sons ne sont pas décrits (donner un vague équivalent anglais ne suffit pas : la phonétique des langues dravidiennes est très différente !), la correspondance entre les caractères malayalam et l'alphabet latin totalement erratique (quelle différence entre les caractères transcrits "r", par exemple ?). Il existe des normes qui permettent de décrire la phonétique d'une langue et de transcrire les caractères qu'elle utilise : l'alphabet phonétique international pour la première, la translittération officielle de l'écriture propre à cette langue pour la seconde. Or rien de tout cela n'est utilisé dans ce manuel, qui ne peut, par conséquent, qu'induire en erreur et inculquer des connaissance fausses dont il sera ensuite difficile de se débarrasser. Sans compter qu'à ne donner que des équivalents approximatifs, souvent les mêmes pour deux caractères notant deux phonèmes distincts, ne peut qu'empêcher le lecteur d'avoir une vision cohérente de la phonologie de la langue. Il est vraiment regrettable que les langues dravidiennes ne bénéficient que rarement de manuels dignes de ce nom.

When it comes to learning Malayalam, there aren't many resources to learn from in English. When I was searching for a book on Amazon, I could hardly find anything. This book however, fit what I needed. It provides tons of information and a worksheet at the end of the chapters, which is a bonus. There were a few minor text mistakes throughout the book. When it comes to learning a new language, even the minor of mistakes can turn into big ones. These were so minor though, that it didn't make much of a difference. Malayalam is a very tough language to learn, let me tell you that. But I found it to be fun. Also, if you are planning to learn the language from just this book alone, do not attempt it. This book serves as a guide. It also states in this book that you should find a native Malayalam speaker to help you pronounce words. What I highly suggest is to look for apps on your phone. HelloTalk was my main source. Having someone teach you via voice is extremely helpful, and needed. I would also like to include one very important fact while learning this language. You will meet MANY Keralites (Malayalam speakers) wanting to learn English. They have very little people wanting to learn their language and they are always looking for native English speakers to help them with English. I had many Keralites tell me that they have met no one online willing to help them with English. So this is your chance to change that! This book will help you guide your way into Malayalam, and is one of the best starting points.

Rather than starting out with some basic conversations or simple sentences to get your feet wet, this book dives straight into the alphabet, and a whole series of vocabularies for the first few weeks until you get anywhere near being able to speaking Malayalam in any useful sense. Fortunately, I was already familiar with the alphabet and some basic vocabulary, so it wasn't a huge turn off, but if you are learning Malayalam from scratch, following this book's structure could be a real turn off. But otherwise, it's a pretty decent book for introducing you to Malayalam, and since there aren't really any other books available out there, this might be your only option.

I like the layout of this publication. As soon as you begin reading through it, you can see that the compiler has arranged the book in a certain way in order to make it easier to grasp HOW Malayalam is compiled in its written form. For me personally, this is definitely how I learn well. I now see Malayalam will not be as difficult as I originally thought. Early days of course. I've also seen from the pattern of the language, if anyone has previously learned any type of "short hand" of their mother tongue, then Malayalam will definitely be an easier language system to grasp. Brilliant Book!