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Criticised Assimil programs | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6665 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 9 of 67 11 March 2014 at 4:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I have read and listened the "Inglés perfeccionamiento" (1991) and I don't remember these problems. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4244 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 10 of 67 11 March 2014 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I slightly worry about only highlighting criticisms of Assimil courses, because I find that many Assimil courses, even if they have problems, can still be really useful, particularly if they're not your only method of study. I've come across plenty of typos, untranslated lines, and poor explanations in Assimil, but often there's still quite a bit of useful content. And some courses that are quite problematic in some areas, could also be quite strong in others.
For example, I've had quite a difficult time with 2nd gen Hungarian (English, French & German Base). The learning curve is really steep. Most of the notes in the course tell you to look at notes from earlier in the course. Not nearly enough literal translations are offered and when they are, they're usually not as literal as they need to be. However it's a really funny course with long dialogs and lots of native content like songs and poems and information about Hungary. While I found it very frustrating to use as a beginner, I could also see it being a wonderful course for someone who has already completed a basic Hungarian course or who already has some experience with another agglutinative language like Turkish or Finnish. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Hungringo Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 3978 days ago 168 posts - 329 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, English, Spanish Studies: French | Message 11 of 67 11 March 2014 at 5:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think yours is a different generation (63 lessons). The one I am talking about is 3rd generation (70 lessons) and was published in 2013. Just a few gems: "Marriage planes" Wedding ceremony in the air? :-) „but nothing at the budget end of the price range” is totally MISTRANSLATED, and the Spanish version („pero todos tienen precios accesibles” means the OPPOSITE of the English text. The book is blighted with typographical errors, no human being has ever read the manuscript, and the original French was at least partially machine translated. The Spanish adaptor's incompetence beggars belief: she is unaware of the correct use of "deber" and "deber de", she doesn't know the difference between "apóstrofe" and "apóstrofo" and it's pretty obvious she didn't fully understand the English text she was working with. This book is a disgrace and Assimil should be ashamed of it. Edited by Hungringo on 11 March 2014 at 5:10pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4511 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 12 of 67 11 March 2014 at 5:56pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Name: Dänisch ohne Mühe
Base: German Generation: 2nd Criticism: Many grammar errors in the glossary (like getting gender or plural of nouns wrong), unnaturally clear audio (more so than in your average Assimil course). Some typos and errors during the course, I don't remember what exactly. Name: Schwedisch ohne Mühe Base: German Generation: 2nd (2003 "corrected" version) Criticism: Lots of typos, like mixing a/ä/å up, especially in the explanations and grammar lessons, or cutting the last few characters of a sentence in many of the translation exercises. Additionally, no glossary at the end (afaik the French base has one?). Explanations sometimes on the wrong page. Despite these shortcomings, I would still recommend to use these books. They are exceptionally dense, especially the Swedish one would be a nice intermediate or pre- intermediate book. By then, you will notice the typos yourself, so they aren't any problem. A complete beginner should probably start with something else, like the modern TY courses. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| alang Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7211 days ago 563 posts - 757 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 13 of 67 11 March 2014 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
lol. That was why I debated including it. I am going to include the old Latin course for the same reason. Name: Le Latin Sans Peine Base: French Generation: 2nd Criticism: Heavy French accent on audio
I read a review of the course on the Amazon.de site and the reviewer criticised, that the further into the course a person completes the more errors show up. I want to emphasize these criticisms are not to prevent people from using or ordering the product. It is to help the learner to be informed what they are getting into, so appropriate corrections can be searched for. Edited by alang on 15 March 2014 at 12:50am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| t1234 Diglot Newbie South Africa Joined 4128 days ago 38 posts - 83 votes Speaks: English*, Afrikaans Studies: Turkish, Polish | Message 14 of 67 11 March 2014 at 8:28pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Agree with daegga on Schwedisch ohne Mühe, but to be honest if you speak German and English, most of the time you won't even need the grammar notes, it's
pretty transparent. It's very comprehensive, it's the equivalent of a X With Ease and Using X in a single book. I have Polnisch ohne Mühe and it has similar problems. I found a list of errata on amazon.de. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6429 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 15 of 67 11 March 2014 at 8:46pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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There are around 3000 native Esperanto speakers. There's also a relatively 'neutral' Esperanto accent - pronouncing all of the sounds correctly, without a listener being able to guess your native language. Some native speakers I've met don't have a particularly neutral accent (they tend to have that of the native language of whichever parent spoke Esperanto to them), but some do.
3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5324 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 16 of 67 11 March 2014 at 9:33pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Latin with a French accent sounds a bit weird, but probably not half as weird as it would be with an English
accent. An American friend of mine got furious with me when I hinted that the Romans hardly used English phonology, "because there was only one way to pronounce Latin". When I took Latin I fought for my right to pronounce Latin with a Spanish accent which in my view was more likely to be close to the original than the Norwegian accent. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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