kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4886 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish
| Message 49 of 78 22 October 2011 at 8:54am | IP Logged |
Just tell her you're going to Tunisia, then neglect to tell her where you'll be
finishing.
... meanwhile, FSI 10 is another one with missing audio files. How do you say 'dang it'
in Arabic?
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napoleon Tetraglot Senior Member India Joined 5013 days ago 543 posts - 874 votes Speaks: Bengali*, English, Hindi, Urdu Studies: French, Arabic (Written)
| Message 50 of 78 22 October 2011 at 12:58pm | IP Logged |
Are you sure its prudent to visit Libya at a time when its just emerging from a civil war. There's a power vaccum in Libya now. In some ways Libya was a lot safer for foreign tourists when Gaddafi was in power. I concede that history is being made in Libya now but there's no real central administration to speak of. Your interest in Libya's culture is certainly admirable but surely its not worth risking your life over.
Forgive me for digressing. Just my two cents.
Napoleon
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napoleon Tetraglot Senior Member India Joined 5013 days ago 543 posts - 874 votes Speaks: Bengali*, English, Hindi, Urdu Studies: French, Arabic (Written)
| Message 51 of 78 22 October 2011 at 2:06pm | IP Logged |
@Emilianna
Sorry for the delay...
Anyway the book that I mentioned is called 'Cortina: Conversational French in 20 Lessons'.
The book is really old and the language is a tad dated but for a language like French it doesn't really matter. There have been very few (read: no:D) changes in formal french over the years thanks to the venerable Academie francaise.
The book is so old that its available online for free download as it has gone out of copyright; just google if you want to check it out.
Notwithstanding the dated language, the book provides you with a vocabulary of approximately 3500 words. It also includes an exhaustive and detailed reference on french grammar.
I plan to use this book primarily as a graded reader.
Napoleon
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kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4886 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish
| Message 52 of 78 22 October 2011 at 8:48pm | IP Logged |
Napoleon, you missed the "maybes" and the "ifs" in the sentence! We are going to
Tunisia. We might go to Libya too, if the situation improves.
My language studies usually revolve around where I travel. And I usually base where I
want to travel to on what language I might want to learn. Usually I do about two months
of study. This is the first time I've started so far in advance, or set such clear
goals. Or tried three at once.
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liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6226 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written)
| Message 53 of 78 23 October 2011 at 6:09am | IP Logged |
Another week down, slow but steady progress.
I have gotten through Unit 6 in both Teach Yourself Arabic and Teach Yourself Spoken Gulf Arabic. They are both
heavy on the "tourist lingo" so most of what I have learned so far involves acquiring directions, haggling in shops,
ordering food, etc.. Each one has a vocabulary list of around 1000 words so, despite the tourist lingo, that
should be a pretty good vocabulary base. I also have been checking out the Assimil Arabic course. The
recordings are annoying but the book is actually quite good. Perhaps if I can get through the first 40 units or so I
can move up to "Level 2", the French one which I have heard is much,much,much better.
I have been listening to BBC Arabic to try and pick out the gists of the news stories but it is a bit frustrating
because it still sounds like " blah blah blah blah....Libya...blah blah blah blah....Qaddafi...blah blah blah
blah....Libya...blah blah blah blah....the State .... blah blah blah blah....the leader ..." I have picked up on
some of the Egyptian colloquialisms of many of the callers ... dilwatee (now?) , dah (this) , ehh , (what) etc
etc... I wonder if this is due to the Britain-Egypt connection or just that Egyptian is a widely used dialect? ( I also
wonder, is "ajaba" "I wonder" in Arabic like it is in Turkish? Anyone know?)
@Kanewai, nice thought about Tunisia! (LOL) Sadly, I think I'm on house arrest for at least a year as I just moved
my family reluctantly, cross-country to Oregon. Although...maybe a year's pass to the masseuse might free me
up.... hmmm....
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napoleon Tetraglot Senior Member India Joined 5013 days ago 543 posts - 874 votes Speaks: Bengali*, English, Hindi, Urdu Studies: French, Arabic (Written)
| Message 54 of 78 23 October 2011 at 7:36am | IP Logged |
liddytime wrote:
Although...maybe a year's pass to the masseuse might free me
up.... hmmm.... |
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LOL :D
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kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4886 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish
| Message 55 of 78 23 October 2011 at 11:46am | IP Logged |
Every once in awhile I pick up the Assimil course, thinking, it can't be as bad as I
remembered. I've uploaded some samples from the French L`arabe. Judge for
yourselves, and let me know how this compares to the English version:
Lesson 25
Lesson 50
and 77
There are only 77 lessons.
I like the book itself a lot, and the French translations aren't too difficult. We
should
chip in and pay someone with a nice voice to re-record the lessons! I would love to
use this as my text, once I get the writing down. I just don't know that I could handle
two months of bad accents.
Assimil does have nice Arabic speakers. Here's a clip from the Kit de conversation,
arabe tunisien:
Piste 9 Conversation
This is more like a Lonely Planet style phrasebook, but note how nice the Arabic
sounds. The main course should sound like this!
Edited by kanewai on 23 October 2011 at 11:55am
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liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6226 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written)
| Message 56 of 78 25 October 2011 at 11:10pm | IP Logged |
!!ZOINKS!!!!
I was just searching my files looking for the Audio for FSI MWA Vol. 1 and realized I only have audio for up to Unit
9.
I have been searching the net to try and find the rest of the Vol 1 audio, but can't find it anywhere! I tried to
download it from uz and ala3rabiyya but the "files are corrupted" and they won't open.
Where have people been finding Vol 1? If it is no longer available would one of you be willing to upload it to a
file-
share site like ifile.it ? The files are not copyrighted so the legality of sharing should not be an issue.
Shukraan Jaziilan!
PS: The Assimil tracks are from the "new" L'Arabe sans peine with the 77 units. People seem to like this course
better than the "old" one with 100 units. Both versions have a very un-natural Arabic cadence in the audio
although the newer version is slightly better. I have no idea whatsoever why Assimil feels the need to do this
with their Arabic courses!? The whole idea of the Assimil method is to get used to how speech in the learner's
target language sounds. Why would you slow down the recordings to make the speech sound un-natural?! I
have toyed with speeding up the dialogues using Audacity and it does help a little bit.
Edited by liddytime on 25 October 2011 at 11:23pm
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