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Assimil Using Spanish - A Cautionary Note | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| goosefrabbas Triglot Pro Member United States Joined 6369 days ago 393 posts - 475 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German, Italian Personal Language Map | Message 41 of 59 17 June 2008 at 4:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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I just bought Using Spanish online. Then I saw this thread. :/
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| brian00321 Senior Member United States Joined 6599 days ago 143 posts - 148 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 43 of 59 30 August 2008 at 12:39am | IP Logged | ||
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I know I'm really late responding to this thread, but what
I find that works best for me is to master one small piece of audio of the lesson at a time. To me, mastering the lesson in small chunks and piecing the puzzle back together in end doesn't create as much of a headache, or any headache at all, as trying to LR the entire lesson or attempting to comprehend everything you're hearing on the fly. First I open the lesson in Audacity, play the lesson, highlight a portion of audio (varies from 15-25 seconds) that I don't understand, export the selection, and play the lines/sentence on repeat until I can completely make out what the speaker is saying. Obviously I continue doing this until I'm finished with the lesson, which takes about 45 minutes to an hour. Sometimes it takes a little longer. I know some people might not agree with my method, but I thought it'd be nice to share with those that are having some difficulties slugging through this course. Another thing that's great about doing this is that it helps you tune into the little sounds that you might've missed while trying to swallow the lessons by the mouthful. Hopefully someone finds this helpful, Brian Edited by brian00321 on 30 August 2008 at 12:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6440 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 44 of 59 30 August 2008 at 3:27am | IP Logged | ||
I do find it really interesting. Thanks for posting it! I think the idea of doing intensive reading, rather than extensive (aka, exactly what you described, rather than the 'usual' L-R approach) makes a lot of sense for using Assimil. Given that Assimil is essentially graded input that's designed to be mastered step-by-step, it's a rather good fit for intensive reading. So far, I haven't had any reason to use an approach like yours. When I get around to trying to do some polishing, or perhaps if I try Assimil for a sufficiently unfamiliar language, I may give it a try. I think it could be helpful for me in either of those contexts. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5376 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 45 of 59 17 April 2013 at 4:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have been wanting to respond to this thread for a very long time. In my opinion the entire premise of this thread is way off base. I have been working through Using Spanish for 3.5 months now. It is a wonderful course. Some of the comments in this thread are quite surprising.
There are many posts on this forum where someone asks for an opinion on this course and a common response is "watch out" and then there is a link to this thread. I would like to put it simply... this is an absolutely fantastic course. This is an advanced course with grammar and vocabulary that surpass all other self-study Spanish courses I am aware of (more on that later). It is also packed with idioms and unique ways of saying things in Spanish. The high level of Spanish and the amount of idioms naturally lead to some tricky decisions when translating. This course also is simply packed with information and just the dialogues (cutting out the audio for the exercises) is more than two non-stop hours. With this much information there are, of course, some minor mistakes. I would like to respond to some of the criticisms noted above. First, however, I will say that one thing I acknowledge is that the authors were faced with decisions on how to translate certain things. This sometimes leads to translations that sound funny. For example, "penetra en su despacho" is translated as penetrates instead of enters. Well, it seems to me obvious why that translation was chosen. It is because the Spanish uses penetra in this situation instead of entra. To translate it as enters would technically be wrong. To translate it as penetrates is correct (even though it sounds a bit funny in English). So, the translators are faced with the choice of how to translate it. I don't think using very literal translations is a bad thing. Also, on this point, I have heard the exact opposite criticisms of Assimil for not translating things as literally as they should. Also, with many of these tyes of translations Assimil uses notes to explain the differences in the literal translation and the underlying meaning. They have numerous notes of this style in the book. Regarding notes, there are some comments above that the notes are not the same in the French and English baed books. That makes perfect sense to me. There are many notes for the English based book that explain things for the native English speaker. Grammar is understood differently depending on one's native language. This does not strike me as odd at all. One thing I definitely confess about this book is that there are many words they use in the English translations that I do not know. This seems to be the case when there is a Spanish word used in the lesson that has a very close English cognate. The English cognate is used as the translation. The "problem" is that the English cognate is very obscure and not used in English. My guess is that there are probably 15-20 examples of this throughout the book. I don't think it is necessarily bad, but it was noticeable to me. Though I am not certain (because I do not know British English), my sense is that many of the English words used are more common in British English than American English and, therefore, sound funny to an American. Again, all of this is partly due to the fact that there are some pretty sophistocated vocabulary and idioms used in the book that are harder to translate than in other courses. On the point of idioms, there is a criticism above on the translations of the word "dar". Well, one thing this book does is have lessons that are dedicated entirely to giving numerous idiomatic expressions that use one particular word. Lesson 53 is a lesson on idioms using dar. Every line of the lesson has a different idiom using some form of dar. This is amazing because they make the lesson interesting, funny and memorable. This particular lesson is short (less than two minutes of audio), but contains an amazing 26 idioms using dar. With that many idiomatic expressions one can start to see how nit pickers can find unusual translations. Personally, I find these sorts of lessons amazing and extremely well done. They do this for several other words like andar, ver, pedir, decir and others. Many of these lessons explain more idiomatic expressions than entire courses. There is some criticism above for lack of instructions. Seriously? This is an advanced course and a second level of Assimil. If someone is ready to use this masterpiece of language learning they should not need someone else to give them instructions. There is some criticism above about the speed of the voices. I think the audio quality is extremely high. They speak what I believe to be a normal speed. Some lessons are faster than others. I am probably at close to a B-2 level and I can shadow most of the lessons without the book and without too many mistakes. The audio is of very high quality. I find it absolutely perplexing how people could say they find the problems with this book to be so bad that they recommend not to use it or recommend to use a different base language. That is absolutely not my experience at all. The book is not perfect, but nothing can be perfect at this level. I would be more than happy to respond to any criticisms of this book. For the next month I will be using it and will have it right here next to my computer... so if there are still any Using Spanish haters out there feel free to respond :) My purpose of this thread is to share with people who are considering this book that this is a wonderful, if not the best, "advanced" self study course out there. Do NOT be discouraged by the criticisms in this thread. ---------------- As mentioned above, this is an advanced book. I believe it has a higher level of Spanish than any other self study course. As an example, (courtesy of randomreview) I am now including the text from this course and two other "advanced" courses for comparison purposes. Assimil: Using Spanish -¡Auxilio! ¡Socorro! ¡Ladrones! ¡Socorro! -Gritaba un hombre subiendo de cuatro en cuatro, casi desnudo, las escaleras del Palacio de Justicia. -Y, en dos zancadas, se plantó delante del juez del pueblo. -Éste, molesto ante una irrupción que tan poco caso hacia de los buenos modales y de los trámites necesarios, levantóse y dijo: -¡Silencio! ¿Qué significa esto? ¿Qué ocurre? -¡Su señoría! Yo soy tejedor de oficio y pasaba por su pueblo camino de villa toro, adonde me dirigía para comprar telas y tejidos... -¡Vaya al grano! -A la salida del pueblo, en el cruce, tres hombres, amenazándome con navajas y palos, me han obligado a........................................................... ........ Living Language: Ultimate Spanish advanced. Mirando la Tele Elena ha venido desde Tegucigalpa a visitar a sus parientes en Nueva York. Entre ellos, se encuentra su primo Gerardo, quien vive en Nueva York desde que era muy pequeño. ELENA: ¿Habrá algún buen programa en la tele? Gerardo: No sé. Enciéndela. ELENA: ¿Qué veo? ¡Está mi serie favorita desde pequeña: <<Viaje a las estrellas!>> GERARDO: ¿Hablas en serio? ¿La pasan en Honduras? ELENA: ¡Claro! Es una clásica de ciencia ficción. De hecho, conozco bien este capítulo: en éste, el capitán Kirk, el doctor McCoy y Spock bajaron para salvar a los habitantes de un planeta que está por explotar, porque el sol está por convertirse en nova. ¿Ves a esos seres cabezones? Se habían llevado a aquella muchacha muda a un laboratorio subterráneo para ver si su especie era digna de ser salvada de la destrucción.......... Linguaphone: Curso Superior de Español. Elija el deporte más adecuado. A cada etapa del crecimiento corresponden unas características biológicas que deben ser respetadas, por ello, antes de iniciar cualquier actividad deportiva que implique competir, se debe realizar unexamen médico que informe del estado de salud. Entre 3 y 6 años El mejor ejercicio consiste en cualquier actividad lúdica en la que haya movimiento. Es conveniente proporcionar al niño los instrumentos necesarios para desarrollarse . Es bueno correr, trepar, saltar, nadar y montar en bicicleta Entre 6 y 10 años Se produce un aumento gradual del peso, la talla y la fuerza muscular. Es aconsejable que iniciemos al niño en el deporte mediante actividades multidisciplinarias, proporcionándole una buena preparación de base tanto física como psíquica. Actividades idóneas: natación, baloncesto, gimnasia rítmica. Los expertos recomiendan que estas actividades no se practiquen de manera competitiva............. Edited to correct spelling and minor grammar mistakes Edited to add: it is also relatively cheap. The book can be purchased for $16 and the audio for $20. Edited by James29 on 17 April 2013 at 7:11pm 13 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5167 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 46 of 59 17 April 2013 at 8:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you for your post, James! I'm definitely going to use Using Spanish, be it in English or in French, because I may understand the Spanish text better anyway. The example you give just demonstrates how advanced the Assimil is compared to the others. I had this impression regarding Usin French and Living Language Ultimate French: Using French had more specific lessons on a wide range of subjects - it worked more on "filling the gaps", which is what you need at this level according to another thread. The Linguaphone has scientific, international vocabulary which is not exactly advanced: it's often the first type of text you're able to read in a foreign language! The LL has a text that could fit in the middle of an Assimil book for beginners.
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| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7206 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 47 of 59 17 April 2013 at 8:52pm | IP Logged | ||
That the Spanish itself and audio are great in Using Spanish isn't the question, but just quickly choosing one section of a terrible translation from that idiomatic lesson on "dar". The passage below sure as shit isn't idiomatic English!
Assimil Using French is an example of a properly done advanced book. The English version of Using Spanish has several grammatically incorrect translations. I would never describe a book with lots of grave grammatic errors in translation as "the best" or "fantastic". I like Using Spanish, but it has got a lot of unnecessarily bad translations. You would do us a service by providing us with your best English translation of lesson 53. There are other lessons I would ask for the same on, but I'm sure you would be too busy because it's likely to be a lot of work, or too embarassed, because your translations, if accurate, won't be much like what's in the book. I don't mean I agree with all the criticism in the thread, but a blanket statement that the book is fantastic is not true if fantastic includes criteria such as accurate and understandable translations. There are tiny errors in most Assimil books, and they are easily forgivable. Things like the note points to the wrong paragraph or something like that. Using Spanish is in an entirely different category. Grave errors in translation! Edited by luke on 17 April 2013 at 9:09pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5376 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 48 of 59 17 April 2013 at 9:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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OK, great. Luke, could you please provide a better English translation of that section you quoted?
Edit: note also that that very short quoted section has 7 grammar footnotes explaining the translations of the idiomatic expressions. Edited by James29 on 17 April 2013 at 9:12pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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