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Assimil Experiment Group Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4703 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 17 of 344 01 November 2012 at 7:09pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm also using French With Ease and I agree with you. Just one thing, as far as I remember, "mais" is pronounced more like a "мэ" with an open "э", not a "ма". Maybe a native will be able to confirm it =) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| yuhakko Tetraglot Senior Member FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4620 days ago 414 posts - 582 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishB2, EnglishC2, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Korean, Norwegian, Mandarin | Message 18 of 344 01 November 2012 at 7:32pm | IP Logged | ||
Well I can't say for sure if "мэ" is the right pronounciation (not knowing how to pronounce that) but you can just see it like that : "mais" and "est" have exactly the same pronounciation except that you have an "m" in front for the first. I don't know if it's understandable, but you'll get the gist soon enough! As for my Norwegian, I have only done lesson 1 and will wait to get the recordings to go on to other lessons but it seems like it is going to be quite the challenge. It is a language very different from everything I have experienced until now. I was however quite pleased to learn that Norwegian does not have any conjugaison as it takes a lot of times to be able to handle verbs well when there is some. Another surprise was the difference between neutral and masculine/feminine articles. I was not aware Norwegian had it. I guess I'll have to be careful about that! Edited by yuhakko on 01 November 2012 at 7:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4703 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 19 of 344 01 November 2012 at 7:37pm | IP Logged | ||
Thanks yuhakko! Actually, "мэ" would be pronounced as something like "mé" in French, as far as I know. It's definitely not the right pronunciation for "mais", but that's why I said that I think it's an open "э", so it'd be something more like "mè" in French. It's probably not exact, but I hope it's close enough. Sorry if I'm not being clear enough. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Vārds Bilingual Diglot Newbie Latvia Joined 4898 days ago 24 posts - 41 votes Speaks: Russian*, Latvian* Studies: German | Message 20 of 344 01 November 2012 at 8:05pm | IP Logged | ||
To me est sounds like an -er ending in German (e.g. Vater) (which is close to Russian "э" sound). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Marishka Newbie United States Joined 5236 days ago 25 posts - 56 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French, Dutch | Message 21 of 344 01 November 2012 at 9:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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Assimil Instructions
It has been mentioned that Dutch With Ease contains more detailed instructions than various other Assimil courses, so I thought it might be helpful to post those instructions. Of course, there are a number of ways to use Assimil, and the only right way is the way that works best for you! As the Grateful Dead song goes: Believe it if you need it, if you don't just pass it on. Passive Wave 1. Listen to the text with the book closed. It does not matter if you do not understand what is said. You will gain a general impression of the sounds, hearing the pronunciation without being influenced by the spelling. 2. Listen to the recording a second time while looking at the English translation. 3. Read the Dutch text aloud (with the aid of the phonetic transcription if necessary). Be sure you understand the meaning of each sentence, comparing it with the translation as required. 4. Now read the Dutch text again, but this time without looking at the translation. 5. Listen to the recording twice, once while looking at the English translation, and once while looking at the Dutch text. 6. Listen to the recording again with the book closed. At this point you should understand what is being said. 7. Listen to the recording once more. Stop the machine after each sentence, and try to repeat it aloud. 8. Carefully read the comments several times. Examine the Dutch sentences being explained. These notes are very important. 9. Read the exercises. Repeat each sentence several times. The exercises review material from the current lesson and from preceding lessons. If you have forgotten certain words, consult the English translation. 10. Examine the examples of sentence structure. They show how words and phrases are combined in Dutch, which is not always the same as in English. Active Wave (Beginning with Lesson 50) Now you begin the active phase of your study. In each new lesson you will be reminded to go back and review one of the earlier lessons, starting with Lesson One. Your general knowledge of Dutch will now allow you to master the earlier lessons with ease! Learn each new lesson as you have done until now. Use the following procedure in the second wave of your study. 1. Read the lesson, repeating each sentence once. If you have the recordings, listen to them carefully. 2. Cover the Dutch text and try to reconstruct it, looking only at the English sentences. Make an effort to do this both out loud and in writing. This is the most important part of the second wave! 3. After you are finished, uncover the Dutch text and carefully correct any errors you have made. After each new lesson, you will be told which earlier lesson you are to review in this precise way. This second wave of your study will lead to an active and, in a very short time, spontaneous knowledge of Dutch. You will probably be able to ignore #10 of the passive wave instructions, as it refers to the sentence structure exercises that follow the fill-in-the-blank exercises sections in Dutch With Ease. I was surprised to see these, since there is nothing like them in the other Assimil courses that I have (French With Ease, Spanish With Ease, German With Ease and Italian With Ease). Here are the instructions for those exercises: ZINSBOUW (Sentence Structure) In this section you will be given examples of Dutch syntax. The way words are put together in Dutch to form phrases, clauses and sentences is often quite different than in English. The columns have been so arranged that a correct sentence is formed whenever you take one element from each column. If phrases in a column are in parentheses it means that a correct sentence can be formed even when these are omitted. As rapidly as possible, repeat aloud the various sentences that you have composed with the different elements. This will help you learn correct sentence structure in a natural way. The number of possible combinations is indicated beside each exercise. The sentences are easy. You should have no trouble understanding them. Try to pronounce the words correctly, placing the stress on the proper syllables. There are 3-6 columns of words and phrases in each set of sentence structure exercises. There are 3 sets of these exercises in the first lesson, totaling 129 different sentence combinations! I was tempted to skip them because I had not planned to spend more than 30 minutes a day on Dutch With Ease. But while flipping through the book, I noticed this admonition in lesson 13: Even if these exercises appear boring or childish to you, do not neglect them! Only by repeating typical Dutch constructions over and over will they become familiar to you. And again in lesson 25: These exercises on sentence structure are extremely important. Never neglect them. Also review the exercises in former lessons regularly. Little by little, you will become better at forming sentences correctly. So I have decided to just go by the book on this one. I will definitely have to spend more time on Dutch With Ease than I had planned, but one problem I had with French With Ease and Spanish With Ease was that the passive wave seemed too passive, so adding these sentence structure exercises to the mix could be a very positive thing for me. Edited by Marishka on 01 November 2012 at 9:07pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| pmcl925 Diglot Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5517 days ago 3 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 22 of 344 02 November 2012 at 1:38am | IP Logged | ||
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French with Ease
I was surprised at how much I understood just listening to the dialogue the first go-round. I think outside sources for the pronunciation (youtube:"frenchsounds") will be really beneficial, since the sounds don't directly correspond to their letters. It'll be interesting to see how this goes. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sabotai Senior Member United States Joined 5870 days ago 391 posts - 489 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Japanese, Korean, French | Message 23 of 344 02 November 2012 at 5:05am | IP Logged | ||
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Chinese With Ease
The first lesson was what I expected. Several incredibly short sentences to show the basics ("Hello", "Are you hungry?", "I'm not hungry.", "Let's go.") I like that they start off really slow, but I think they went a bit too slow with the audio at first. It sounds really unnatural. But, I listened ahead a bit and it speeds up quite a bit very soon. By lesson 13, it's far more in line with the speed of other Assimil courses I have used. Here's a quick rundown of how I'm using it. 1) Listen to the dialog a few times before opening the book. 2) Read the dialog, both Chinese and English. Read the grammar notes. 3) Listen to the dialog several more times. 3) Listen to the exercises and translate from Chinese to English, and do the fill in the blank exercises. 4) Listen to the dialog a few more times if I feel the need to. 5) Do "Scriptorium" for the dialog and exercises. That should take about 20-30 minutes, depending on how many times I feel I need to listen to the dialog. Two things though. 1) I know some characters already due to having studied Japanese in the past. Not that many, but enough to not be scared by them. 2) I also am familiar with how to write the characters in general, so Scriptorium doesn't take me as long as it would for someone who has never seen or written Chinese characters before. I'll be updating my progress weekly from here on out. Just want to drop a line to say I've started. Good luck to everyone. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4695 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 24 of 344 02 November 2012 at 9:04am | IP Logged | ||
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Mè is indeed the standard pronunciation of "mais" in French, but you'll hear a ton of
people dialectically saying mé anyway. ais pronounced as é is a common feature. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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