Customer Reviews
Will equip you well for any holiday in the Dutch speaking world - By: M. McManus, 09 May 2007 
As a keen student of foreign languages, I can say this book was instrumentalin me enjoying a holidayin the Dutch speaking part of Belgium, carrying out a range of conversations, from booking restaurants to negotiating the price of an international phone call. I say this because I could not have done this without this book. Very few materials exist on the market for languages like Dutch, meaning finding good quality ones is very tricky. However, TY Dutch is one of the better titles, & one that I genuinely enjoyed studying. The book contains a number of highly interesting, funny & realistic dialogues. The voice actors put tremendous enthusiasm & realism into their dialogues, such as when the male actor sighs through his lines on a shopping trip with his wife, or the way the female actor adopts a nostalgic, dreamy tone when recalling her previous house. This is a refreshing change from the uninspiring monotone of many language audio exercises.
The written segments are also enjoyable, & there are no spelling errors, again something that is refreshingin a language course. Every chapter is logically divided up, & is sprinkled with delightful illustrations & cultural notes, all of which make the text more "human" & friendly, which is important given most language learners are often intimidated by a new language & new, tricky rules & sounds. The chapters also deal with "realistic" dialogues, such as arranging day trips & ordering food, rather than the highly hypothetical scenarios I have seenin other titles. This emphasis on "real", readily usable language is a major plus point.
The book does not have any real negative points, although it has to be said the first dialogue is very pedestrian, & thus the learner will initially be rather startled by the faster & longer dialogues that follow directlyin chapter 2. Another slight problem I had, & this seems to be common with TY series titles, is that the vocabulary index is not very detailed, meaning if you want to take your studies further, you will need as good dictionary. However, the TY Dutch dictionary is disappointing, so look elsewhere for a Dutch dictionary.
In conclusion, this book will be very effective for your Dutch studies, but be sure to buy the CD as well as the book, as Dutch has one or two sounds that can only be mastered when you hear them.
Excellent Book - By: , 20 Mar 2003 
This book is up-to-date & very useful if you want to know casual Dutch. It starts off pretty simple with the basics & then progresses through various useful topics, such as talking about yourself, shopping, talking about jobs, talking about computers & even your mobile phone! This book teaches essential grammar along the way, as well as useful words & ways to make you sound more native. it even has some helpful hints about Dutch culture.
If you have read Teach Yourself Beginner's Dutch or the old version of this book & thought they were pretty poor, then this book IS better. It really is because I thought those others were not so good.
To sum up the book: it's really useful for real-life situations & writtenin a relatively amusing & simple way.
