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"Easy" Slavic Language? | ||
Tags: Easiness | Slavic Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6032 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes  5 sounds | Message 9 of 44 30 September 2008 at 4:47am | IP Logged | ||||||||
There is Assimil for Bulgarian, if you are interested. However it is for French speakers so if you don't know French you will have to learn it first (which is not a bad idea anyway.) Regarding the lack of audio-books and other types of media, I feel obligated to share a slight cultural difference here. In Bulgaria we lack the richness and variety that is typical for western media shops. Nobody buys from media shops, because they suck. As a logical consequence, you will have a hard time buying anything dubbed, or subbed or natively from Bulgaria. Such things are simply not available neither in "physical" nor in on-line shops. However, they circulate on TV and the kind-hearted folk with TV-tuners capture them and upload them to torrent sides. Forgive me for being painfully honest. Everybody uses torrent sites, extensively and almost exclusively (in spite of the endearing efforts of the government.) Don't get me wrong, I am not advocating piracy of any sort. I'm simply pointing out that what appears to be lack of media is simply the result of diverted media-traffic. And I don't see this changing anytime soon. If this makes you feel uneasy, then please don't learn Bulgarian, you will find the place way too wicked for your tastes. Otherwise there is not much choice but to, hmm... behave native-like. Sorry for the moral dilemma :). Edited by Sennin on 30 September 2008 at 5:14am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 11 of 44 30 September 2008 at 6:02am | IP Logged | ||||||||
There are some good resources for Slavic languages other than Russian, especially if you can use languages other than English: my point was just that there are a lot less of them. Assimil has courses for several Slavic languages (and I've dabbled with using a modified form of Listening-Reading with their Polish course, using a French base). Dunwoody press also has some things, including a Bulgarian reader with audio (for English speakers). For media, I was speaking very specifically of audiobooks. Some cultures have tons of them (English has far and away the most). Others have a few audiobooks - Dutch, Polish, Korean, etc. Some languages seem to have absolutely none: I've searched high and low for Basque and Tamil audiobooks and come up empty-handed (unless you count rather unusual religious works, very short stories, and poetry). This search has included a large number of online booksellers, asking every native speaker I can find of the languages in question, etc. For Bulgarian, I've found a few audiobooks - but very few. As you said, they're largely unavailable, in any form. This has almost nothing to do with cultural richness; there are few things easier than finding thousands of songs and tons of movies in Basque and Tamil, as well as a fair number of books. As for a moral dilemma: I openly advocate changing copyright laws, and I see no moral problem in acquiring information (including books and movies) in any way that has no cost to the producers, although I do advocate buying a copy of anything liked/found useful if it's possible to do so (ie, the producers aren't out of business and still sell the item in question, etc). Radio, libraries, and video rental shops aren't illegal; format shifting shouldn't be. The unfortunate corollary of this is that what I see of a lack of media tends to actually be one, not a mere diversion of sources. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 12 of 44 30 September 2008 at 6:04am | IP Logged | ||||||||
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender#Other_types_ of_gender_classifications explains.
Edited by Volte on 30 September 2008 at 6:06am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6032 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 13 of 44 30 September 2008 at 6:54am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Well, my quick search for "български аудио книги" returned the following: 14 classical Bulgarian children's tales in audio format Bulgarian on-line magazine in audio format Poetry by different young authors, with transcripts and audio The bible and other Christian religious texts I imagine an in-depth search will result in many more interesting hits; Of course it is true that the number of audio books can't rival languages like Russian. That is to be expected, our population is about 7.5 million people, which is only 1/18 of Russia's. As a matter of curiosity, why this interest in audio books? I find them rather boring and monotonous. It's much more fun to read the actual book or watch a movie.
I'm with you here, free access to different types of media gives the opportunity to try many different things and to buy the ones that truly suit your needs. It is not about piracy but about the freedom to know what is available and being able to make informed choices. This freedom can also be used in a negative way but that's true for any technological innovation. Personally, I see no unfortunate corollary, because there are countless books (both classics and modern); Online emissions of the radio stations; Many torrent sites with old and new Bulgarian movies (again, just in case you have no other way of obtaining them, which is likely; I can PM a link or two if you are interested in learning Bulgarian). Cheers. Edited by Sennin on 30 September 2008 at 7:15am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| rafal Diglot Groupie Poland besmart.pl Joined 6852 days ago 83 posts - 85 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC1 Studies: German, Spanish | Message 15 of 44 30 September 2008 at 7:30am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Downloading pirated material such as books, audiobooks or videos doesn't necessarily have to be illegal. That depends on the on the copyright law of your country or more specifically on the Fair Use aspect of it. In Poland for example (and I'd hazard a guess that in most EU countries) it is legal under Fair Use to download ebooks, movies or audiobooks* off the Internet or even make copies of each and every page of a book you borrow at a library. It's all legal as long as you do that for your personal use. On the other hand it is illegal to share such works without prior permission from the copyright holder. To sum it up: you can download an illegaly shared audiobook but you can't legally put it on a webpage for other people to download. This means that you can't use torrent-based sharing applications because they automatically share what you download. But it's OK to use Rapidshare and similar solutions. And again, I'm speaking about Polish copyright law. You'd have to check your country's law to be sure what you can or can't do. * No works such as games or applications and databases can be copied under Fair Use (unless the license to such a work permits doing so). Edited by rafal on 30 September 2008 at 7:32am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 16 of 44 30 September 2008 at 7:32am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Sure - short stories, poems, religious works, and other short audio clips can be found for literally a few thousand languages. As for audiobooks - my interest in them comes from exactly one thing: Listening-Reading. I've found it to be ridiculously better than anything else I've ever found for gaining comprehension quickly. However, most languages have no audiobooks available, or barring that, those of a few random small cults and perhaps parts of a bible. With the bible in particular, though, there are some heavy caveats - the language is often changed to use a more Latin syntax than normal, and the translations are sometimes centuries old, while some languages have changed pretty drastically in that time. Finally, there's personal taste: I simply don't want to use it. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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