Beginner's Serbian with Online Audio Bilingual Edition

This book will teach you Serbian if you’re traveling to the country. It’s written in a way that’s easy to follow. I prefer the book over the CD.

I’ve been working on learning Serbian for a while so that I may understand and speak with my husband’s extensive family in Serbia. Initially I was working out of the Complete Serbian book but had a really tricky time with the way the grammar lessons are structured as it seems more geared to people with a UK English background. As a product of American schools, This Beginner’s Serbian one is a little easier to understand . I really like the way vocabulary is presented—It’s divided into Nouns/Adjectives, Verbs, and Useful Expressions. The verbs are also given with first person singular and third person plural conjugations right off the bat and that is very useful. The chapters are thorough without being exhausting and some of the exercises really make you translate from English to Serbian which is what I need the most help with. One thing I haven’t used a lot of is the online audio as I think it’s only the conversations in the beginning of the chapters which I tend to just read inside my head. Overall, I’m quite happy with it and wish I had found it earlier in my studies.

I really like the dialog approach in this book, and the audio that goes with each dialog is fantastic. I really like that the dialog is not over simplistic, but starts right away with a conversation that feels more realistic than what I've seen in other textbooks. Each chapter covers a lot, which to me is a very good thing. This does mean that as the learner, it's important to really go over it all and not just blaze through it quickly. I will make flashcards from the dialogs using Anki, making sure to include the audio on those flashcards so that I am practicing listening and speaking the language, not just reading.Unlike the other reviewer, I had no trouble getting the audio downloaded from the website. I did download it on my pc, not mobile, but it's no problem to copy those files over to my phone once downloaded.I have other books for Serbian as well, but this is the one I feel like I get the most out of.

This book is a MUST HAVE for any current student of Serbian, anyone interested in learning the language from scratch, and anyone just looking to brush up on and hone their knowledge. This book makes what I had previously thought to be a difficult language easy, accessible, and fun to learn. The book is well organized, easy to read, and has been of immeasurable help to my classmates and I, as well as friends traveling to the Balkans. I found the audio CD's also to be a great help.

Very good instructional manual...but...it starts off at the beginner-plus range. Rank beginners will find it challenging. So, be prepared to jump right in...because the learning curve will be steeper than with other courses we've seen.Having said that, the dialogues and instruction in this book are much more comprehensive and definitely suited to someone who wants to go a bit beyond "restaurant Serbian". I recommend it highly just for the grammar explanations, which are better than most.

This is a terrible book. It’s astonishing that it was even published. It arbitrarily changes between the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. It has no logical structure. I could not return it quickly enough. The only reason to buy this book is if you enjoy wasting money and/or you want to confuse yourself and ultimately not learn the Serbian language. If I could assign zero stars—or better yet, a negative amount of stars—I would do so.

So far the book is great, my husband is Serbian so it's an added bonus when I learn something from the book to test it out for pronunciation. The CD are really an advantage too.

Has a nice mix of cyrillic and latin, so that you're prepared for reading in either one.Haven't tried the audio CDs yet, which I probably should. In conjunction with a livemocha account, I'm feeling pretty good about this.

Ex ellent learning text. 👍

Really good to have CDs although it would be good if the individual tracks had the titles embedded so that when you rip the CD to your phone or laptop then you can see which exercise is which. I had to go through and rename each one manually which took ages. This problem is the same for other publishers so not unique to Hippocrene.If you are a paper quality nerd then you will be happy because the pages are solid quality paper.The steps are much more logical than other publications and the vocab and exercise (so far at least) have been consistent and clear.It is very easy to break into separate projects which suits my learning style. I can learn a bit...go away...come back and learn some more.Finally there is a developing story through the book in the form of the conversations, these involve a woman called Gordana who is visiting Serbia. As her adventures continue your knowledge increases, quite nice to have the same characters cropping up again and again as this feels like there is something linking all the various academic bits you have to contend with as part of the learning.Anyway I don't know if it was intentionally comical or not but the stories had me greatly entertained. Gordana seems to be such a pain in the behind that I am actually looking forward to what was going to happen in each subsequent episode.Perhaps the finale will have Gordana bundled into a plane back to Boston by her exasperated Serbian hosts.

Although it starts where complete beginners (like me) are, it goes much further than I need, which is to be able to read street names and manage a few simple sentences for a weeks holiday in Montenegro. Good for those who want a thorough grounding in the language though. Two CDs came with it, which I consider an essential feature.