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Are older Assimil courses outdated? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7238 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 25 of 72 16 August 2013 at 10:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
Very cool! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kronos Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5294 days ago 186 posts - 452 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 26 of 72 16 August 2013 at 11:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, lessons 71/72 feature the old writing system (old handwriting as well) and also teach the individual letters. Even though this will be more of historical interest by now, it still comes as a nice bonus. Lessons 71 starts like this: "The text of this lesson is printed in Gothic type. This type, although it is gradually being supplanted by the Roman characters familiar to English-speaking countries, is still found in some German books and to a lesser extent in newspapers." 1930s, no doubt! Gothic type was abandoned, almost outlawed in 1941 by the then government.
No chance, it is there solid as a rock. But the individual cases get increasingly mixed up, though this is still far from the rule. Some words that used to be inflected with the genitive case now (incorrectly) prefer the dative, sometimes the other way round, etc. The language is becoming a little less formal, including the orthography. All in all not a big deal though. I would always advise to learn the formal, 'correct' usage in the beginning and care about colloquialisms and lingo only after a time. The worst thing for a beginner however are Amazon.de customer reviews, I just went there yesterday. If you learn German, don't go there. What you will encounter is supposedly written by natives, but often ridden with grave mistakes and expressed in a horrible style. Any foreign high school student with a minimum of brains and literacy can do better than that! Edited by Kronos on 17 August 2013 at 12:54am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5632 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 27 of 72 17 August 2013 at 12:06am | IP Logged | |||||
There was a case system nearly as complicated as in German, but it had completly vanished from the spoken language. It was mainly a question when to write n: "Zie je deN mooieN boom, dieN ik geplant heb.", but the Genitive forms were also fighting a tough rearguard battle. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| zorglub Pentaglot Senior Member France Joined 7033 days ago 441 posts - 504 votes 1 sounds Speaks: French*, English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: German, Arabic (Written), Turkish, Mandarin | Message 28 of 72 17 August 2013 at 1:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hello !
As far as I remember there are at least 2 poems in that version. One could be "Huelgas" where "se hace caino al andar" (maybe) the other about a white horse, and I think a third one which writes about windows (cristales). ANd i liked them even if obviously i'd need to review them. And in addition that was a very good introductory course: I have many professional opportunities to speak Spanish and thanks to that course (and the newer one) I dospeak decent enough Spanish for my contacts to ask in which country I learnt it. I would say good introductory course "plus". I agree thee is some non essential vocabulary.... "DOg forbid" ? Do you mean dog for bite ? ;-)
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| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5598 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 29 of 72 17 August 2013 at 3:32am | IP Logged | |||||
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I just looked at my English version of Dutch Without Toil and I can't see that it has cases in it. Are you all
looking at the French or German version? The English base from 1981 says that it is adapted from Cherel's original version - so maybe it has been modernized. - can you give me a lesson number with the cases in it so I can check. I have the old Dutch advanced book in the French base - and have never seen the audio for it. There was also a business Dutch in French base in the early 1980s - I have the book, but again have never seen audio for it. Edited by Elexi on 17 August 2013 at 3:37am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5598 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 30 of 72 17 August 2013 at 3:36am | IP Logged | |||||
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I should also add that the original German advanced course was entirely in Gothic type - but this was
removed when they reprinted it in the 1980s. Unlike GwT, the records have German folk songs at the end of each chapter - like other Without Toil courses. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kronos Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5294 days ago 186 posts - 452 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 31 of 72 17 August 2013 at 4:47am | IP Logged | |||||
Great info, Elexi.
I found the cassettes for both of these courses listed in the catalogue of the Bibliothèque Arthur Rimbaud, Charleroi, Belgium. La pratique du néerlandais - "Le cours comprends 3 audiocassettes." Le néerlandais des affaires = Nederlands in het bedrijfsleven : Cassette N°1 (enregistrement sonore) Le néerlandais des affaires = Nederlands in het bedrijfsleven : Cassette N°2 (enregistrement sonore) Le néerlandais des affaires = Nederlands in het bedrijfsleven : Cassette N°3 (enregistrement sonore) In case the links don't work, go to the library's search page and search for "La pratique du néerlandais" and "Le néerlandais des affaires", resp. The author for the advanced course is here given as A. Chérel, and the book has (only) 311 pages (about thirty pages less than the first editions by H. Opdebeeck), which is in agreement with one second-hand copy I once saw online and which had also 311 pages. Perhaps after the war they revised the course and republished it with a small print run; I also saw La pratique du néerlandais advertised in at least one 1950s or 60s Assimil manual. Nevertheless it is very rare - there is not one major library in Germany for instance who owns a copy. I've never seen those cassettes listed or even mentioned anywhere else. I wish someone would borrow these, convert the tapes to mp3 in good quality and put them online, together with pdfs of the books. The older book may well be out of copyright by now. Edited by Kronos on 17 August 2013 at 4:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kronos Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5294 days ago 186 posts - 452 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 32 of 72 17 August 2013 at 6:09am | IP Logged | |||||
Actually this is possible, since all the entries say, Exemplaire disponible. You can order books from other libraries via a service called Interlibrary loan, which many libraries are offering. Generally this service is restricted to printed material, but cassettes may be accepted too, especially if the content is educational, as undoubtedly is the case here. Around here the price for each physical copy you borrow is EUR 1.50 or thereabouts. Three cassettes equate three physical copies. There are basically two problems. (1) If the lending library is located in a foreign country, you might be asked to cover the transport and any extra costs yourself, and this is definitely more than a one-digit sum. (2) If the lending library deems the title too rare to be trusted in your hands, they can restrict the loan to the borrowing library, i.e. you can use and read it in your library for a couple of weeks once it has arrived there, but not take it home. In the case of cassettes that would of course be absurd, but with books this is a quite frequent procedure. In that case, if the library has a photocopying machine (and it SHOULD have), you can copy it right there (as long as this isn't explicitly prohibited either). A bit inconvenient, but possible. Last year I got annoyed when I tried to order the old La pratique du néerlandais book via ILL from a library in France and ran into the same problems I just described -- and on top of that was even asked to communicate with the French library myself and, I guess, negotiate a suitable arrangement with them. I decided that this was all too complicated and not worth the cost and trouble, and cancelled the order. I am an obsessive collector, or can be, and had to draw a line at some point. It is not a big loss; Dutch is not among my priority languages and I'm sure the book at least will turn up somewhere in the future, but these *tapes* are so ultra-rare that they might never show up anywhere, and if the library some day decides to get rid of their old arcane stuff, these may well have been the last copies in existence. Too bad, because the audio for the Dutch basic course was above excellent, and it is possible that the material for the advanced course was produced with the same staff or even alongside the other course. Edited by Kronos on 17 August 2013 at 6:18am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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