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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6468 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 145 of 162 14 July 2010 at 11:40pm | IP Logged |
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I am glad to see that this thread is getting so much attention now. The latest state of
the project should always be at http://www.learnlangs.com/coursewiki/index.php?title=Multila ng/Lessons . There you can see which dialogs have been translated into which languages. We're still missing a lot of translations for the 3rd and 4th lesson, even into common languages like French and Spanish. Once there are a few more translations of those, I shall develop more lessons. As for the discussion about different language standards... I believe that we should adopt a descriptivist rather than prescriptivist approach, i. e. have a group of native speakers identify the most natural-sounding way to phrase things while referring to nothing other than their gut. There are more than enough textbooks that ignore actual language usage. When there are big differences between varieties of the same language, they should be treated separately, e. g. have separate pages for the lesson dialog in British English and American English (Assimil does the same), French French and Canadian French, etc. If "Likewise" or other phrases are hard to render in your language, just put whatever is the most natural response for you, and make a note about that. For the student, learning about the absense of a word for "Likewise" is at least as useful as learning the word for it. For Assimil, the goal has always been to have natural target-language dialogs. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| sei Diglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 5939 days ago 178 posts - 191 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English Studies: German, Japanese | Message 146 of 162 14 July 2010 at 11:50pm | IP Logged |
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So ok, I decided to make the Portuguese (European) version.
This is just lesson 1, I'll do the rest later. When I get IPA installed again on my computer I'll also do the pronunciation. --------- Português (Europeu) Ana: Olá Tom! Tom: Olá Ana! Como estás? Ana: Estou bem, e tu? (1) Tom: Estou muito bem, obrigado. (2) Tenho de ir. Até logo! (3) Ana: Tchau! (4) Extra: Bom dia! Boa tarde! Boa noite! (5) --------- Notes Notas: (1) "Tu" is informal, and since the whole dialog sounded informal, I made it so in Portuguese as well. The formal version for this sentence would be "você", and if the dialog would be made a formal conversation, the verb "estás", would have to be changed to "está", and the greeting "Olá" would preferably be changed to either "Bom dia", "Boa tarde" or "Boa noite". (2) Since it's a male character speaking, it's "obrigado", if it was a female character, the correct would be "obrigada", though it isn't unusual in colloquial speech for women to use "obrigado" as well. (3)Literally from the English, it would be "vejo-te mais tarde!", but that is almost never heard in Portugal. You either use "até logo", if you intend to see the person later, "até amanhã", if you intend to see the person the next day, "até já", if you intend to see the person very soon (would correspond to something like "See you in a moment"), or even "até depois", if there is no certain date to when you will see the person (though you don't hear this very often, and I'm not even sure if it's mostly colloquialism or not, so you'd be safer saying "adeus" (Goodbye)). (4) Since the English was "bye" and not "goodbye", I also used the more common and colloquial version. (5) There is no corresponding expression to the English "good evening" in Portuguese. After it gets dark, you just say "boa noite" (good night). I also decided to use "Ana" instead of "Anna", because the names are equivalent. So this way people also know of a very common Portuguese name. I might be missing some explanation or something such. So just let me know if there's anything I should add and I'll try and do it. Edit: I remembered it is very common in Portugal, in a formal conversation, to say instead of "você", the name of the person you're talking to. So in sentence 3, it would go like "Estou bem, e o Tom?". [This could go into note (1)]. Edited by sei on 15 July 2010 at 12:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| noriyuki_nomura Bilingual Octoglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 5338 days ago 304 posts - 465 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Japanese, FrenchC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, SpanishB2, DutchB1 Studies: TurkishA1, Korean | Message 147 of 162 25 July 2010 at 9:27pm | IP Logged |
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I would personally like to have an Assimil program that's based on a story for the entire 100 lessons - be it a love story, or an adventure, and perhaps with music? With a whole book that concentrates on/develops a particular story over the 100 lessons, I think we could associate the language and its new words better with a story/plot/drama....rather than having 100 lessons that have no connection with one another... Edited by noriyuki_nomura on 25 July 2010 at 9:31pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| gedamara1 Diglot Newbie Albania Joined 5229 days ago 17 posts - 21 votes Speaks: German, Albanian* Studies: English | Message 148 of 162 10 August 2010 at 7:48pm | IP Logged |
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And here is Assimil Albanian with ease -Assimil Shqipja pa mundim (albanian without effort)
Ana: Mirëdita (1) Tomë! Toma: Mirëdita Ana! Si jeni (2)? Ana: Mirë, po ju? Toma: Shumë mirë , ju faleminderit . Më duhet te shkoj. Mirupafshim (3)! Ana: Mirupafshim! (1)Mirëdita means literally good day.It's formal.If you're talking to a friend you could simply say "tung" (tungjatjeta). You can use tung also for saying bye. (2) Si jeni is a formal greeting. To a friend you can say "Si je". (3)Instead of saying mirupafshim you can say "Ditën e mirë" which means something like have a nice day. Extra:Mirëmëngjes.Mirëdita.Mirëmbëma.Naten e mirë. Edited by gedamara1 on 10 August 2010 at 7:56pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6009 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 149 of 162 11 August 2010 at 11:06am | IP Logged |
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Volte introduced question-intonation-as-surprise because it's how people talk.
Romanist objects to question-intonation-as-surprise because it's colloquial (= how people talk). By focusing on the issue of "formal" and "colloquial" I believe have missed the real issue: the distinction between "marked" and "unmarked" forms. An "unmarked" form is plain, normal. A "marked" form gains expressive force by being a deviation from the (unmarked) norm. In other words, unmarked forms employ the basic grammar, but marked forms distort that grammar to change its meaning. Romanist thinks he's looking for formal language, when what he's really looking for is the unmarked form. By introducing a feature that is as heavily marked as this so early on in a course, there is a risk that the learner picks it up as being an unmarked form. This is a particular problem with this, as there are many languages where this will be translated to an unmarked form. Assimil appear to make sure wherever possible that there is a suitable functional equivalent in both languages, even if they are different in form. Setting aside this as a superficial concern, we can look at it at the neurological level. Marked and unmarked forms are not just a feature of theoretical linguists, but have been measured scientifically to be harder to process than unmarked forms. This suggest very heavily that they are not treated by the brain as "basic" units of grammar. If you teach marked language early, before you have covered all the related unmarked forms that the marked form builds on, you leave the student no choice but to learn the form as a basic grammatical form, and the student builds a grammatical model that does not reflect the grammar as understood by a native. Not only that, but the student doesn't even properly understand the phrase you´ve been teaching, because the markedness is part of the meaning, and the student loses that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tornus Diglot GroupieRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5141 days ago 82 posts - 113 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish, Swedish, Danish | Message 150 of 162 01 January 2011 at 5:07pm | IP Logged |
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i think it's a good idea. i've some suggestion.
natives can makes a record of the dialog, this would really help for the pronunciation then these dialog can fit with all the language, i think we should modify it a little bit, otherwise it introduce some complex notions sometimes. oh and we have to write additionnal lesson of course. also for the following lesson, it would be great if the story stay connected. i guess tom is someone who do a language exchange and come to a country to learn its language. it is a good idea since it'll enable us when we have given to the "student" enough vocabulary to start stopping translation and start explaining in the target language for instance,: bob: tom, you have to XXXX( new word student aren't supose to know, and we don't give its translation in English) tom: what does XXXX means? i don't know this word bob: it means " walk really quickly " ( we can give a translation of the explanation , it's only one word we don't tranlate. ) and thus the reader will understand the word XXXX is the verb run but it requires that the student already know how to say "walk" and "quicky" of course. in fact tom is what the student should be, he is not really good with his target language , but he can ask an explanation when he doesn't understand. with this idea, we can propose a language immersion without travelling, great, isn't it? since french lesson 2,3,4, doesn't exist yet, i'm translating it into parisian french ( parisian version of lesson 1 would be the same as the french canadian one) Leçon 2 Tom: Excusez-moi, êtes-vous alex? (1) Homme 1: Non, c'est pas moi. (2)(3) Tom: Oh, je suis désolé. Homme 1: Ce n'est pas grave. (3) ... Homme 2: (Marche vers Tom): Bonjour! Tom: Bonjour alex! Je suis tom, du canada. Homme 2: Desolé, je ne suis pas Alex. Elle est là-bas. Tom: Elle ? Alex est une femme ? (1) The are 2 ways to transltate "you" in french: a singular form "tu" when you're talking to one person and a plural form "vous" when you're talking to a group of person. however when you're talking to one person you don't know, or you want to be polite, you should use the plural form. (2) which can be translate by "it's not me", it's more common, and a literal translation would be more complex and sounds weirder and involve object (3) negation is composed in french by 2 word "ne + verb + pas". however if the verb first letter is a voyel , you have to drop the e in ne and link the verb and "n" with an apostrophe, so it reads like "n'+verb+pas nevertheless you can notice on line 2 the contracted form of "it is not: ce n'est pas" is " it isn't: c'est pas " , both are correct. Leçon 3 - Alex: c'est la rivière, et là-bas il y a un pont célèbre (1) Tom: intéressant. qu'est-ce là-bas ?(2) Alex: c'est le musée d'histoire (3) Tom: Non, pas ce bâtiment. ce ... bâtiment moderne Alex: oh, c'est le musée d'art (3) (1) note that in french we say adjective after the verb unlike in English (2) translation: what is this over there . (easier to translate and at least it involve a word we already know, so we would better remember it) (3) it is the museum (dealing with) history. "de la/le" may be a quick way to translate "dealing with". war museum --> museum dealing with the war--> musée de la guerre. however if the following word first letter is a voyel, you have to drop the e and the following article , and link with an apostrophe . note: the word "histoire" first letter is an h, with is a mute consomn, hence we drop the e here too. Leçon 4 Tom: Est-ce que ta maison est loin? Alex: Non, nous y sommes presque. Es tu fatigué? Tom: Non je ne suis pas fatigué. ... Alex: Laisse moi te présenter ma famille. Voici mon père. Papa Voici tom tom: Heureux de vous rencontrer. le père: Pareil. alex: Voici ma mère. Alex: Et où est john? la mère: John n'est pas là . lui et sarah sont à une fête tom: John? Sarah? alex, est-ce que Sarah est ta soeur? la mère: John est son frère. Sarah est sa soeur. i'll complete it later Edited by tornus on 02 January 2011 at 2:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cowlegend999 Groupie CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5142 days ago 72 posts - 94 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 151 of 162 01 January 2011 at 6:58pm | IP Logged |
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If you ever do create a whole book I think it would be a good idea if it could be made into PDF format, that
way using this site we could have a hard copy http://www.lulu.com/publish/books/?cid=us_home_nav_bk id much rather have an actual book than just an ebook. I'm not sure if it would be much work to make it a PDF, but this is just a suggestion. Keep up the good work guys!!! Since I only speak English fluently I can't help, but I wish you all good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| peppelanguage Triglot Groupie ItalyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5862 days ago 90 posts - 94 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, English Studies: French, Swedish | Message 152 of 162 02 January 2011 at 1:37am | IP Logged |
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To put it in PDF format would definitely NOT be a problem, you just need a PDF Printer (there are freewares that can do this, too...)
But we need SOME more lessons :) I think tornus's idea is GREAT!! Make the "student" in the book a REAL student, asking infromation and explanations when he needs those...and thus simplifying the thing, and making it easier for the reader/learner to identify himself in the character (and learn quicker) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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