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

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.

What a concept: a language instruction book which actually understands both languages and presents both clearly and methodically. I've only just started, but I can already see the quality and benefit, particularly when compared with "Learn Malayalam in 30 Days Through English" (reviewed separately). The book contains 42 (six weeks' worth) manageable lessons, each followed by a "worksheet" or mini-quiz covering the material in that day's presentation. I would have preferred that the worksheets scrambled the order of the items instead of presenting exactly as on the preceding page(s), for a more difficult and therefore more thorough learning experience. That's a minor quibble.

I really liked the book, since I am a beginner and it wasn’t overwhelming to learn from this book. However, some pronounciations are not clearly explained, some might even be wrong as I pointed out by my native friends.It’s a great start if it’s a first book, but it probably won’t be enough to do basic communication and reading.

Shipping: I received it on time and in perfect condition.Worthiness: I think it's a very good book and it explains very well what Malayalam language is and how it can be learn. I was amazed by learning that Malayalam is easier than it might seems, the authors explain very well the difference between English and Malayalam languages, giving you the taste that it can be easily learn and actually that it's easier to learn it than English language (I'm Spanish and Italian speaker then English is my third language)

You will not learn Malayalam using this book. You won't even get a good foundation in it. I gave the book two stars simply because it's nearly impossible to find any affordable materials for learning Malayalam, and I appreciate the authors for making the effort to put something out there. However, this book is practically useless as a learning material. If this is your only source for learning Malayalam, you will come out knowing a few hundred words at most, you'll horribly mispronounce most of them, and you'll have a basic and probably confused understanding of Malayalam grammar.About a quarter of the book is dedicated to learning the Malayalam alphabet, but you're better off using the Wikipedia article on it. The authors don't provide IPA pronunciations that could help linguists, and even worse, they don't provide clear and concise explanations of pronunciation that could help normal people, or if they do, they provide it several lessons after being introduced to a letter. They also use a transliteration system that will only confuse most learners.For example, in the first lesson we're introduced to ത, transliterated as "tha", and ട, transliterated as "ta". Apparently this is the system used by the government of Kerala, but it's a horrible and confusing system, and it shouldn't be used in a language learning book. If you have some experience with linguistics or with other Indian languages, you would probably assume that "th" represents an aspirated stop. If you're just the average English speaker, you'll probably assume it sounds like the th in "thing". Both are wrong. "th" in this system represents a dental stop, while "t" represents a retroflex stop, and as far as I can tell this isn't explained anywhere. Instead, we're told that the letter ട sounds like the "t" in English "hotel" (it doesn't), and we're given no explanation at all for how ത/tha is pronounced.The next section of the book is just a long list of Malayalam words along with their English translation. This is probably the most useful part of the book, but you won't be able to pronounce most of these words if you've only been using this book, and Google Translate Malayalam is good enough to get you most or all of these Malayalam words if you put in the English equivalent (I checked). So again, a free online resource is better than this book.I gave up on the book at the beginning of the section that deals with grammar. The authors simply don't know how to teach a language, and the confusion from the earlier chapters on the alphabet just got worse. In lesson 27, we're told that "words can have various noun forms" and then given 7 forms without any explanation as to what each form means, or what its grammatical function is. It looks like there might be more substantive sections on grammar later on, but from my experience with the earlier sections of the book, I don't think I could trust it to give me a proper understanding of Malayalam grammar.I can't recommend this book to anyone. You're better off using Wikipedia articles for pronunciation, spelling, and grammar, and Google Translate as a source of vocabulary for your own flashcards.

Exactly what I have been looking for. I only wish it could connect to somewhere online sinI could hear how some of the sounds are supposed to be pronounced. I am an American married to a Malayali and working hard to improve my Malayalm.

Good

This book barely focuses on the main topics of Malayalam. At best it gives you some vocabulary and it teaches you how to read. It includes little to no grammar topics that concern verbs or tenses. I do not recommend getting this book.