Colloquial Mongolian: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series)

Easy to use and understand, helpful grammar lessons. It will need to be supplemented if you want to learn the language at a high level, but it's a great start. I would recommend supplementing it with "An Elementary Mongolian Grammar" by Daniel Elliot.Also, DO NOT buy the kindle version. It's full of typos. I bought it initially, and was going to give this book a bad review, but decided to return the Kindle version and try a hard copy.

I have a BA in Mongolian Language (old script) and wanted to find a book to review and bring it back. I saw that this book was rated as difficult and fast moving by most reviewers so I figured it would be great for me. I ordered the set with a book and CD. The book is indeed hard to follow and lacking in a lot of clarity and missing needed explanations. The CDs are sadly read very monotone, which for a language that is full of excitement in intonation is a pity. If I were to use this book as a true beginner with Mongolian I can see that it would be quite frustrating.If you have a background in Mongolian language this book will help you to review the language. Mongolian and Japanese are very similar in their syntax so maybe it will be easier to learn if you speak Japanese, but there is still a lot of lack in clarity and ease of use in this book. It doesn't seem to grasp the true essence of the language.

Any person interested in learning colloquial Mongolian should note that many of the phrases in this book are outdated. I have used many of them in casual conversation received either confused looks or laughter from young Mongolian friends. However, the grammar seems to be very good and it might be the most comprehensive Mongolian language book widely available.

You can never go wrong with the Colloquial Language Series. This happens to be (to my knowledge) the only source for Mongolian that has an audio CD to go with the textbook. A very interesting language might I add. Check it out!

The written word is great, but for language learning, hearing is the best.This is the best next thing to going to Mongolia.Practical conversations at normal speed.Good prompts and interaction.

Haven't really had a chance to get into it too much, but so far it seems excellent. Using along with the CD.

This is a highly commendable effort, especially given its status as just about the only readily available Mongolian textbook out there. If you're curious about what's going on in this enormously fascinating yet unfortunately neglected language, it probably wouldn't hurt to know that it's going to take a lot of determination and far more than a mild interest in Mongolian to get much of anything from this extremely demanding and surprisingly thorough text.While Colloquial Mongolian is based around a ton of pretty practical dialogues, the text may come off as being heavily focused on grammar, especially early on. This is probably a necessary evil as Mongolian grammar isn't the kind of thing that's just going to make sense after glancing at a couple of passages, but still a lot of people are going to be turned off by being expected to puzzle through sections on `iterative verbal nouns' and `imperfective converbs' before you learn how to say `goodbye.' Probably the best bet is to simply ignore the terminology and just concentrate on the examples given. Point is there's no real need to get hung up on some of these explanations and a good move might be to remind yourself that Mongolians don't care when their suffixes are reflexive, in the same way that anyone able to read these reviews probably knows the difference between the words I, me, we and us without necessarily being aware of the `correct' terms for their cases or person. Like most of the offerings from the colloquial series, this book is content with fabricating conversations then tacking on vocabulary lists, leaving the responsibility for reviewing all this information up to the reader, who has to look elsewhere for reinforcement. Since you're gonna need all the help you can get, the grammar sections are good practice even if sometimes the Mongolian may be easier to understand than the English, but hey, that's kinda a good thing.The dialogues are situational and begin with fun little idioms. They cover basic greetings, shopping, hotels, ordering food and so on, then move quickly into travel itineraries and visits to herdsmen, where we get hefty doses of cultural and historical information. The good news is that translations are provided for just about every sentence in the book so when you find yourself frustrated by the pacing (we're on to modernized excerpts from the Secret History of the Mongols by chapter 10), or just need a break, sitting back with the English versions of the dialogues makes for some very interesting reading.As other reviewers have noted the description of Mongolian pronunciation here leaves a lot to be desired, but you're not going to have to work through too many conversations before you realize that coughing up a satisfactorily complete rundown of Cyrillic as forced upon just about the least Slavic language imaginable would be tall order, and it's probably best to just work at it the hard way while trying to juggle all the exceptions and fleeting or hidden letters as they come. With such a user-unfriendly alphabet the tapes are absolutely imperative, and they include all the dialogues (about 4 a chapter), but, unaccountably, none of the vocabulary lists. It's a glaring and unfortunate omission because recording the new words would really help with memorization and with familiarizing yourself with the script, plus there's enough extraneous English banter on the tapes that could have been cut out to make more room. Also it should be noted that readers interested in the older vertical script will be disappointed, as the book only provides a standard letter chart and two versions of the same uniquely confusing paragraph, which most likely won't be enough to lead to any kind of literacy.While not really a criticism, the biggest thing working against this book is that it's probably a little too ambitious. The text is super dense and gives you more than you would need for a visit to Mongolia, and yet isn't quite accessible enough to be 100% satisfactory as a self-study aid. This would, though, be a great textbook for class use if you're lucky enough to be in that position. It's still an impressive work and as packed with information, linguistic and otherwise, as these things get.

First off, this is a fine book, with thorough explanations of a language very different from English. If you've studied other languages, then you shouldn't have any problems. If this is your first "second language", then it may be very technical for you ("accusative tense", "genitive tense" etc.). Also, it goes at a pretty quick pace. Spend good time learning the alphabet as having a good base of Mongolian (Cyrillic) Script will protect you from feeling overwhelmed as the exercises become more complex. (But this is a tip for anyone learning a new language in script that is totally unrelated to your native tongue.)Before purchasing this book and CD, I was very confused by the difference in different versions (Paperback vs. Audio Book vs. Audio CD).I purchased the boxed set and the CD (thinking that the CD was a PC version of the lessons and exercises, but it's just the audio CD of the exercises included in the boxed set. So now I'm stuck with two copies of the same CD's).ISBN-13: 978-0415167147 = Paperback book of conversation lessons, vocabulary and grammar lessons, explained in English but Mongolian is only in Mongolian (Cyrillic) script (not phonetic English spelling)ISBN-13: 978-0415289498 = Accompanying Audio CD with recordings of dialogues and other exercises.ISBN-13: 978-0415431644 = A boxed set of the two above.There seem to be cassettes available also, but I haven't purchased them so I can't speak to that.

A really good coursebook that allows the learner to progress very quickly. Covers a lot of ground in each new chapter, which can feel a bit bewildering at first but it does allow for quite complex dialogues from early on, which is a good thing. Presumes the learner has some pre-existing knowledge on languages (i.e. that you know some very basic linguistics terminology). The only thing that bothers me is that I sometimes feel that there is too much emphasis on grammar and not enough on vocabulary.

Good!

Good way to get started with this complex language. My first choice would have been an Assimil product, but they had nothing for Mongolian. This book, if you have the audio CD that goes with it, is a good start into the language and customs of Mongolian people.

If you buy this thinking it will be helpful, you ll be disappointed.It s not well thought out and makes learning more difficult than it need be. I m assuming the publishers laid down what the book should be like. The recordings make no allowance for the fact that you need to to hear the spoken word somewhat slower than a native speaker would.Teach yourself language courses are much more useful and user friendly (check out Hindi by Rupert Snell as a lesson in how it should be done)

The book delivers what I expected from a basic language training book aimed at the average English speaking person. It would be waaayyyy better if the voice recordings were included with the purchase of the book. Would be much better if it included a more in-depth english-mongol dictionary.Overall I am satisfied because the book helps me understand the grammatical structure and vocal pronunciation of the Mongol language.