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6 of 6 found the following review helpful:
Helpful, up to a certain point Dec 05, 2003
My Nepali boyfriend gave me this little book to learn his language, since when I met him, I had nothing good to say about his country because I knew nothing about it. I was grateful for alot of things in the book, like grammer, sentence structure, who you speak to, cultural tips, etc. But I found the pronunciation guide horrible. They do not explain the differences between many sounds, and only explain certain consonants. They introduce the Devanagari script rather suddenly with no explanation. It would be helpful to know HOW to read it and understand what is written instead of just recognizing it by sight and nothing else, although that is good too.The dictionary was helpful in the back, but very limited. It only went over words mentioned in the book, and didn't broaden words from outside of what was reviewed. I liked the book as a starter...but even my boyfriend admitted that some things were not said right. (Not as they speak it today, it's too old-fashioned, etc.) I kept having to go to him and ask him things, and the whole point of me having the book was so he wouldn't have to try and teach me. (hahahaha) So, I guess I would recommend it to people who know nothing about Nepali, but be sure to have someone to ask questions. It's bad enough when you are running blind with a language you haven't heard of before.
5 of 5 found the following review helpful:
 Handy little phrasebook at a nice cheap price May 28, 2003
I was surprised that the two reviews prior to mine gave such a bad rating. Well, I'm half-Indian, I was born in the north-east of India near the Himalayas with very close contact with Nepalis in my early childhood and I couldn't actually see what the problem was with this book! It's small, compact, glossy, useful and very cheap, I mean what else do you want if you are only looking for the basics. However, I can read and speak Hindi and know basic customs (which are actually explained in the phrasebook, for example food etiquette) so perhaps that made a difference. Hindi is closely related to Nepali and written in the same Devanagari script. You can actually learn the Devanagari script from this phrasebook which I find sets the Lonely Planet phrasebooks above most phrasebooks. If you don't want to learn the script, then the phonetic tranliteration system used is the correct one generally used by linguists, which ensures a word is correctly pronounced by the student, even when reading in English. This is why I prefer Lonely Planet phrasebooks as once you master the basics of script and pronunciation along with basic grammar (yes, it has a solid basic grammar section as well) you actually have a good base to further learn the language if you want. I found the phrases in it very useful. You get a very good starting point for customs, ordering food, hotel rooms etc. As I said, it's also in a nice, very small size. Amazing actually how much information is packed in considering how small the phrasebook is.
1 of 5 found the following review helpful:
 Just buy the book in Nepal Jan 04, 2002
And you find better ones. Lonley planet again fails to deliver with yet another product. The organization is poor, bad choice of phrases, etc.. Heres a tip: skip the book, goto Nepal, meet some Nepali's talk with them, learn a little, then go to the millions of bookstores in Khatmandhu and find a book that fits your needs. It may be this one, but I doubt it.
27 of 27 found the following review helpful:
Not a bad dictionary, but... Jan 26, 2000
The dictionary in the back was helpful, but the organization of the book is not very good and it is awful in explaining pronunciation. After studying it faithfully and trying it out, my Nepali friends, finally, asked in English, "What are you trying to say?" I also learned that some of the information was inaccurate. I hate to speak badly of it, since it is about the only Nepali language travel book on the market, but, hopefully Lonely Planet will consider an overhaul.
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