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Criticised Assimil programs | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6649 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 25 of 67 12 March 2014 at 10:25am | IP Logged | ||||||||
The problem with choosing a modern greek speaker for an ancient greek recording is that the phonological differences between the two are quite vast. Up until the renaissance modern greek pronunciation was used, but then Erasmus of Rotterdam but forth the argument that a.) originally all letter must logical have had a separate sound and b.) sheep does not under any circumstance make the sound /viiii/. See, in an old greek play, the sound of sheep is spelled "βῆ βῆ", and using modern greek pronunciation would render this as 'viii viii', whereas giving watch letter a separate sound, doing a bit of (and after the Germans went amok during the 19th century a lot) reconstruction, we now know that it was more of a /baa baa/ than /viii viii/. As for Latin, Italians do not pronounce it any better than a Frenchman, or a Spaniard, or me. Lot of things have happened, yet we have nowadays a very good understanding about how it once was pronounced. (Modern day italians probably do not even pronounce it the way mediaeval scholars did). Alas, few people bother to really go all in for the reconstructed way because it contains phonemic vowel length and nasals! As for a person from the Coptic church speaking Coptic, a movement went through the coptic speaking world during the last century trying to unite them and tie them more towards the greek and the language being dead and only ever read aloud, lots of people managed to find the idea "lets pronounce it as if it were greek" a good one. I find it rather not. Ancient Egyptian, however, was written without vowels. Modern scholars "invent" vowels and just put them in here and there as to make it possible to say the words sdjmf isn't as easy on the tongue as sedjemef – but the original vowels was not just an e between every consonant (sdjm is sotem in coptic). There are reconstructed vowels for Egyptian, but they are somewhat disputed, and it's monotonous and tedious work to do so most scholars just don't give a f**k and use traditional way by just putting in e's here and there. Non the less, the Ancient Greek Recordings has a pitch accent, something which most scholars today do not bother with. I'd take that with some frenchness over any modern greek speaker any day, as it the only way to get a sense of how the language actually felt, especially in regards to poetry. 4 persons have 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 26 of 67 12 March 2014 at 10:29am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Polish isn't a great model either (though it's better than English/Chinese/Russian/Japanese), due to a tendency to palatalise n and l - see John Well's Bona kaj malbona prononcadoj, partway down the page. One quote: "«La rusoj kaj poloj devas bone distingi inter /n/ kaj /nj/, inter /l/ kaj /lj/: ni ne estas nji. Ili ĝenerale evitu la troan moligon en la lingvo. Oni, do, ne diru: lija njepo (nepo) nje estas espjerantjisto» (Ivo Lapenna)." The last phrase is correctly spelled (and has a pronunciation corresponding to) "lia nepo ne estas esperantistoj". Czech, Serbian, or Croatian tend to be good bases. 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 27 of 67 12 March 2014 at 10:40am | IP Logged | ||||||||
According to the census in India, there are about 14,000 native speakers of Sanskrit. Whether this is true, and whether the pronunciation has drifted from classical Sanskrit, I do not know. For Ancient Egyptian, we simply don't know some important phonetic details. For Ancient Greek, there are a number of scholars who take reconstructed pronunciations quite seriously, as well as a number of hobbyists. Take a look at this recording of a reconstructed Ancient Greek accent, for instance. For Esperanto, most fluent speakers have better accents than the ones in the Assimil recordings. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| alang Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7211 days ago 563 posts - 757 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 28 of 67 12 March 2014 at 5:21pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Name: El Nuevo Italiano Sin Esfuerzo Base: Spanish Generation: 2nd Criticism: Bad translations Edited by alang on 14 March 2014 at 10:21am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5337 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 29 of 67 16 March 2014 at 7:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I’m not defending Assimil, as I don’t know the exact context where the words “colazione” and “pranzo” occur, but I wanted to point out that in Italian they may be somewhat ambiguous (maybe Assimil explains this problem, but maybe not), the same way that “dinner” may be ambiguous in English. I was taught that “dinner” means “cena” (evening meal), with the meals of the day being “breakfast”, “lunch”, and “dinner”. Not so fast! As my English improved I got to understand that “dinner” is actually the main (as in most substantial) meal of the day, whether you have it at around noon or in the evening, so that the meals of the day can also be “breakfast”, “dinner”, and “supper”. Now, while there’s no doubt that when you get up in the morning you have “colazione” in Italian, usually followed by “pranzo” between 12-14 o’clock and “cena” sometime in the evening, there are occasions when lunch can be called “colazione”. For instance, if two businessmen have a meeting during a “colazione d’affari”, they certainly don’t discuss business over a cup of “caffellatte” with Zwieback and jam at 8am. Actually, they meet for lunch. I hope I didn’t add to the confusion, I just wanted to warn you to be careful with the words “colazione” and “pranzo”. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ericblair Senior Member United States Joined 4701 days ago 480 posts - 700 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 30 of 67 16 March 2014 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Where did you learn the bolded? For myself, dinner is always the evening meal with breakfast being morning and lunch being the noontime-ish meal. Brunch would be a special category. The only time I've ever heard the three meals be called breakfast, dinner, and supper is amongst rather backwoods country types. It definitely would not seem to be a common English usage in my experience. But I am American so maybe it is different in British English? Edited by ericblair on 16 March 2014 at 8:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4697 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 31 of 67 16 March 2014 at 8:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It is, but not in that way.
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| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5337 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 32 of 67 16 March 2014 at 8:56pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I know that nowadays the term “dinner” is being used prevalently for the evening meal, but especially if one reads literature and classics (mainly British, but I can’t say for sure that it never came up in American novels) one meets this problem relatively frequently.
From the beginning of the Wikipedia page for “dinner”:
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