Everyday Malay Phrase Book and Dictionary: Your Guide to Speaking Malay Quickly and Effortlessly in a Few Hours Paperback – May 15, 2004

Love the book!

Since most phrase books are pretty much the same it all comes down to price and the situations you will find yourself in if you are tourist you will find in this book. The important part of any book is not just being able to ask a question but being able to understand the response which this book helps you.

I found this book the perfect companion to my month-long trip to Malaysia last year. Very useful. The dictionary is a little brief, but it's pretty good for an intro.

excellent

Nicely done... as expected.

I was hoping to find a practical reading with typical situations which this ebook seems to offer.However reading of the first 10 pages showed at least few typing errors per page (Gonggu, Khabur boik, Puun,...??).Unfortunately the spelling errors happen to be on the Malay words, not english which may be very misleading for a new Malay learner. It is disappointing considering that the overall structure looks very interesting and easy to read.I suspect a direct digitization of the book with no post-conversion verification... While I've just asked for refund, please look into it and correct it, I'd be happy to buy a revised release.Meanwhile, I may try the physical book which has apparently good reviews.

I am a person that traditionally really dislikes phrasebooks, but this book is an excellent example of how a phrasebook should be written. Most phrasebooks just recite words or sentences, and the learner has no idea what each part of the sentence means. While a typical phrasebook may teach someone how to recite something verbatim, the learner will have no idea how the language works grammatically and thus cannot communicate effectively. This book is excellent because it provides a very good grammatical foundation for the phrases. It also has helpful, but not too complex, explanations for the phrases in the book. Moreover, there is a small English-Malay/Malay-English dictionary in the back.Unfortunately, I was not in Malaysia long, and since I was only in KL, getting by in English was not too difficult. However, I found this book while I was there and tried to get as much out of it as I could in a couple days. I recommend buying this and studying it for a month or so before going to Malaysia. That way, you'll get the most you can out of it. Give it a shot.

To be fair, I'm commenting on an earlier edition of the same title, by Oey and Hutton. As a Malay speaker, I wanted to brush up my speaking before an interview and was shocked to find that this phrasebook passes off Indonesian as Malay. Keep away if it's Malay you're interested in. A far better investment would be Lonely Planet Malay Phrasebook or the Teach Yourself Malay book.