On the learning of Estonian...
Apr. 8th, 2009 07:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khiemtranI'm going to be in Tallinn in about a months time, so I've been looking around for resources on learning Estonian. So far, the options seem to be surprisingly few. I've already got the LP Baltic phrasebook, which doesn't seem to be too bad, but a bit light on for content. The pronunciation guide is also a bit vague - I've listened to audio from the BBC Quickfix webpage and from www.panglosskool.eu and it doesn't sound very close to how I would have read it off the page.
Top of the heap seems to be the Hodder & Stoughton Teach Yourself Complete Course, although even I would have to concede that with four weeks to go this would be a frivolous purchase. How often am I ever going to be in Estonia? On the other hand, I enjoyed the travel experience in China so much now that I've put in the hard yards and can communicate more freely. It was certainly a much richer experience than Hungary, even though I got by fine with almost all English there.
One potential compromise is to make do with the LP Baltic phrasebook and panglosskool.eu for now, but then to look up the Teach Yourself Finnish course instead. Finns are far easier to come by than Estonians in my current line of work, and hopefully some of the basics of Estonian will be transferable (Finnish and Estonian are supposed to be mutually intelligible, but I don't know that will be true for a beginner).
Top of the heap seems to be the Hodder & Stoughton Teach Yourself Complete Course, although even I would have to concede that with four weeks to go this would be a frivolous purchase. How often am I ever going to be in Estonia? On the other hand, I enjoyed the travel experience in China so much now that I've put in the hard yards and can communicate more freely. It was certainly a much richer experience than Hungary, even though I got by fine with almost all English there.
One potential compromise is to make do with the LP Baltic phrasebook and panglosskool.eu for now, but then to look up the Teach Yourself Finnish course instead. Finns are far easier to come by than Estonians in my current line of work, and hopefully some of the basics of Estonian will be transferable (Finnish and Estonian are supposed to be mutually intelligible, but I don't know that will be true for a beginner).
