Burmese for Beginners

Pros:(1) Vocabulary introduced is extremely pragmatic and useful in everyday conversation. For example, the first vocabulary word list's first entry (page 23) is "I". Love it! Thanks Mesher!(2) Uses the vocabulary presented in simple, extremely useful conversations.(3) Builds from zero knowledge to (if this book were mastered) full fluency, gradually and clearly, with wonderful examples.Cons:(1) Frequent mistakes, probably about one per page, in both the Burmese and the Transliterations (for example, page 25, line 2). I'm lucky to have a native Burmese speaker to coach me, or these mistakes would be quite annoying.(2) His transliteration system is incredibly annoying. It's not clear how to pronounce what Mesher means by "au'" (page 9). His g's and k's are thoroughly mixed up. Usually when he writes a "g" he means a "k" sound and vise versa, but not always. I saw this type of transliteration when I learned Thai, and I realize it has something to do with "g" being an un-aspirated version of "k", but it's foolish to change the ingrained interpretation of the letters "g" and "k" which English speakers all possess. I have other qualms with his system but these are some main ones. I'm not sure what his logic is but I assume he just doesn't know what he's doing, because there's no explanation or warning as to how convoluted his system is. He could at least have the decency to warn his poor readers that he intends to make his transliteration as confusing and unintuitive as possible.I wasn't aware I was supposed to receive an audio CD with the book, but I did not receive it. I hope, Mesher, that you're reading this in preparation for your next edition. Good book, but it could be twice as good with a few tweaks.

It is a useful book - easy to follow and helpful. The author has a gift of making his explanations simple and easy to understand. There are some typos and the books presents a more colloquial way of Burmese speech, but I am glad I bought it. I must say that I am attending Burmese classes during the day and am using this book as a supplement. I do not know if I would have found it just as helpful if I were not given other instruction.

I own this book and wanted a second copy. Some pages are blank, some pages are out of order. The quality is not good. It's very apparent it has been copied and pieced together, which you can tell by the binding.

I went to Burma last year. I was really wanting to learn a few basic sentences in Burmese for my 14 day trip. The country is AWESOME and I would go again in a heartbeat. At the time that I went there was no basic Burmese CD to study from even though I purchased this CD 3 months before going. I did not learn much from the CD.

easy to learn.

Gooood~~

I chose this rating because the book was exactly as described. I liked the product as is. I would recommend this to anyone who wants a fast transation and to start learning language immediately!! Thank you Amazon!

This is the best book to learn Burmese. I just wish they had an electronic version for my iPad.

It is okay if you have the CDs to go with it but there are a lot of pages spent on learning to write Burmese. I lived in Burma for 2 years and only concentrate on learning to speak because the written language is very complicated. Also it would help if the book contained the International phonetic language to help with pronunciation as many of the Myanmar blends (eg. ky = ch) needs a lot of practice to remember.

I received an older version of the book, totally different from what I was shown on the website. Felt deceived!

The book came with no cd as advertised!! The order took forever to arrive.

I CAN'T THINK WHO THIS PRODUCT IS AIMED AT. THE VOCABULARY IS POINTLESS. I CAN NOW TELL SOMEONE THAT THERE ARE NO CAMELS IN MYANMAR, OR THE SIZE OF MY MOTHER-IN-LAWS FEET, OR THAT I WANT TO MARRY A MOVIE STAR. BUT I CAN'T ORDER FOOD IN A RESTRAURANT, OR DRINKS IN A BAR, OR BOOK INTO A HOTEL, OR ASK DIRECTIONS, OR ANY OF THE NORMAL THINGS THAT A TOURIST WOULD WANT TO DO. ALSO, IT SEEMS THAT THE CD'S ARE MEANT TO BE USED IN CONJUNCTION WITH A PHRASE BOOK BUT THIS IS NOT PROVIDED. IN SHORT, A COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY. AVOID.

ミャンマー語の自習本は、新しい日本語のものはあまり頼りにならないし、大学書林のものは古そうなので、英語から入るのがよいですね。