Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5791 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German
| Message 1 of 6 01 April 2013 at 10:36pm | IP Logged |
Not sure if this is the right room, but it's the best fit I can find.
Recently I saw Dora the explorer in the iTunes store of the country of one of my TL's
at a very reasonable price. Never having bought anything from iTunes before and
apparently being a naive moron, I bought a £25 iTunes gift voucher in order to purchase
some episodes. Most of you no doubt know (as I just found out) that I can only buy
things from the UK iTunes store using this voucher due to licencing laws (and they
wonder why people turn to illegal downloads). While I'll certainly not make this
mistake again, £25 represents just under 2 weeks worth of disposable income for me (not
a trivial amount of time to have wasted), so I'm looking for suggestions as to what the
hell I can buy from the UK iTunes store that will be useful for any of my TL's: German,
Portuguese (either dialect), Mandarin, Modern Greek. I'm especially interested in
anything for European Portuguese. I'm not interested in Pimsleur.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions. :-(
Edited by Random review on 01 April 2013 at 10:52pm
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iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5270 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French)
| Message 2 of 6 01 April 2013 at 11:01pm | IP Logged |
Random, I can't help you with languages other than Portuguese, or with iTunes. For Euro Portuguese I recommend the freeCentro Virtual Camões Aprender Português. They have a reading section with audio going from beginner to advanced under the "Ler" section. I recommend you start with Era uma vez um rei.
Though not technically European Portuguese, Deutsche Welle's Portuguese for Africa Service has over 60 hours worth of free to download "radionovelas" with pdf transcripts and audio in Mozambican Portuguese- which closely follows Iberian norms and grammar. The audio and pdf transcripts are free to download. The possibility exists to make your own bilingual texts as well by downloading the English transcripts from their English Service.
I recommend you start with Fábulas africanas
For the English pdf's go here:African Fables
As I said, there are over 50 series with each episode lasting about 10 minutes and each series with about 10 episiodes each. The language is conversational and not overly complicated. I started with the Fables and thoroughly enjoyed them.
Alternatively, there are several free flash download programs out there and many children's videos available online. I agree with you about the digital fence. What a shame people who want to do the right thing can't simply because of an arbitrary rule.
Boa sorte
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Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5791 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German
| Message 3 of 6 01 April 2013 at 11:35pm | IP Logged |
iguanamon wrote:
Random, I can't help you with languages other than Portuguese, or
with iTunes. For Euro Portuguese I recommend the freecamoes.pt/aprender-portugues.html">Centro Virtual Camões Aprender Português. They
have a reading section with audio going from beginner to advanced under the "Ler"
section. I recommend you start with portugues/a-ler/era-uma-vez-um-rei.html">Era uma vez um rei.
Though not technically European Portuguese, Deutsche Welle's Portuguese for Africa
Service has over 60 hours worth of free to download "radionovelas" with pdf transcripts
and audio in Mozambican Portuguese- which closely follows Iberian norms and grammar.
The audio and pdf transcripts are free to download. The possibility exists to make your
own bilingual texts as well by downloading the English transcripts from their English
Service.
I recommend you start with africanas-para-uma-cultura-de-paz/a-6117269">Fábulas africanas
For the English pdf's go here:fables-for-a-culture-of-peace/a-5864544">African Fables
As I said, there are over 50 series with each episode lasting about 10 minutes and each
series with about 10 episiodes each. The language is conversational and not overly
complicated. I started with the Fables and thoroughly enjoyed them.
Alternatively, there are several free flash download programs out there and many
children's videos available online. I agree with you about the digital fence. What a
shame people who want to do the right thing can't simply because of an arbitrary rule.
Boa sorte |
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This is great advice, Iguanamon. Problem is that I'm already doing both those things
based on your advice in another thread (that and a few other things you recommended).
I really should have gone back and thanked you as it really was great advice: I still
struggle with the colloquial stuff, but after just a week of working through these I
was amazed at how my comprehension of formal Portuguese skyrocketed to the point where
I noticed I could understand news videos and stuff (obviously that was because there's
so much vocabulary in common with Spanish at the formal level). Didn't know these were
on iTunes, though. Cheers man.
Any idea what I can do with my £25?
Edit: also (off topic) any idea where I can buy Dora in European Portuguese (I already
have it in Brazilian)? I'm willing to pay a reasonable price (like the German ones,
which can be had very reasonably), but not hundreds of pounds and there doesn't seem
to be a Portuguese Amazon.
Edited by Random review on 02 April 2013 at 12:15am
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iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5270 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French)
| Message 4 of 6 02 April 2013 at 1:38am | IP Logged |
You're welcome, Random. I'm sorry. I know nothing about iTunes. I don't use it. Wook.pt Dora DVD's is where you can buy the Dora DVD's from Portugal. They run about 9-15 euros apiece. I never order from them because of the digital fence but Britain is part of the EU. FNAC.pt is another alternative. Perhaps someone in Portugal can help you find some used copies.
Do you know about Historia do dia These are short stories for children (some with English translations check the arquivo) from sapo.pt in Portugal, with audio. You might also try Escola Virtual from sapo.pt for virtual classes geared towards kids from year 1 to year4.
Boa sorte!
Edited by iguanamon on 02 April 2013 at 2:46am
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embici Triglot Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4618 days ago 263 posts - 370 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Greek
| Message 5 of 6 02 April 2013 at 3:55am | IP Logged |
I don't know what's available on iTunes UK but I recently bought Vocabulearn Greek on
iTunes Canada. It was about $10 for three hours of audio which I thought was reasonable.
Earworms Greek is not bad either and that's on iTunes (over here at least).
Edited by embici on 02 April 2013 at 3:55am
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Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5791 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German
| Message 6 of 6 02 April 2013 at 4:47am | IP Logged |
iguanamon wrote:
You're welcome, Random. I'm sorry. I know nothing about iTunes. I
don't use it.
Wook.pt Dora
DVD's is where you can buy the Dora DVD's from Portugal. They run about 9-15
euros apiece. I never order from them because of the digital fence but Britain is part
of the EU. category=video&text=Dora&bl=HGVIrera&AID=&submitbtn=Ok">FNAC .pt is another
alternative. Perhaps someone in Portugal can help you find some used copies.
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8 episodes for 10 euros?! More than reasonable. It seems they do deliver outside of
Portugal too. Looks promising!
iguanamon wrote:
Do you know about
Historia do dia These are short
stories for children (some with English translations check the arquivo) from sapo.pt in
Portugal, with audio. You might also try
Escola Virtual from sapo.pt for
virtual classes geared towards kids from year 1 to year4.
Boa sorte! |
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No, I didn't. Where do you find this stuff (I'm currently laughing my ass off and
shaking my head in wonder)? Just what I need. I hope you know my German's really going
to suffer because of this heh heh heh!
Iguanamon, if it's OK with you I'd love it if you started a thread on European
Portuguese audio resources so you can post all this in one easy-to-find place. I'd
never have found this stuff myself. You up for that?
embici wrote:
I don't know what's available on iTunes UK but I recently bought
Vocabulearn Greek on
iTunes Canada. It was about $10 for three hours of audio which I thought was
reasonable.
Earworms Greek is not bad either and that's on iTunes (over here at least).
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£5.99 and two levels of Mandarin at the same price each. Even if nothing better is
suggested, that'll be £18 well spent. Thanks.
Edited by Random review on 02 April 2013 at 4:54am
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