stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5830 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin
| Message 9 of 21 14 February 2009 at 2:39pm | IP Logged |
I am using the most recent version of Colloquial Arabic of Egypt and I quite like it. I am up to lesson 4. In each lesson there are 2-3 dialogues, all recorded plus some additional oral exercises. The grammar is explained in small chunks and I do not feel overwhelmed. As is usually the case with language books these days there are not many exercises to reinforce what you learn. But each dialogue is followed by the English, so I intend to translate them back into Arabic for actual practice.
As for the script there is a section at the end of each chapter which teaches you a few letters at a time. By the end of the book you will be able to read basic signs etc. The actual material and dialogues are presented in romanised script. However at the back of the book all the dialogues are presented in Arabic script for those who can already read it.
Overall i would recommend the book.
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Taikonotatsujin Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5978 days ago 9 posts - 9 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Russian
| Message 10 of 21 12 March 2009 at 3:10pm | IP Logged |
Rollo the Cat wrote:
I hated the Russian version. It was disordered.
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I'm just starting the last unit in the Russian one. I've found the grammar explanations really clear. Better than my university Russian teachers, in fact. I'm using it to brush up my Russian, rather than learn it from scratch.
I don't think I'd recommend if for a beginner, however. It covers an awful lot, and it moves at a very quick pace. The translation exercises in the latter units are extremely difficult. Also, if you know everything in the book, you'll be able to discuss problems with the education system in Russia, whether women have equal rights with men and whether Russian health care lags behind the west (I just learned "to lag behind"). Booking a hotel room, however, along with a load of other useful phrases for the traveller, you'll have to find somewhere else.
It's suited my purpose, however, and I have ordered Colloquial Russian 2
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Dark_Sunshine Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5763 days ago 340 posts - 357 votes Speaks: English*, French
| Message 11 of 21 12 March 2009 at 5:12pm | IP Logged |
I have Colloquial Romanian but I've only been through the first couple of lessons. To be honest, I'm not very impressed with it but there's not a lot of choice when it comes to Romanian materials.
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Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6009 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh
| Message 12 of 21 12 March 2009 at 6:13pm | IP Logged |
I find Colloquial Polish caused "word fog". All these nouns and adjectives appear in small lists and you're suddenly expected to use them in answering questions, but they're not settled in, so all you can do is flip back a page and look them up.
I didn't get past chapter 1 of Colloquial Danish -- It launched straight into a relatively large dialogue that was printed three times (Danish, "phonetic" transcription and translation) and I immediately felt swamped. It was all short introductory language and there wasn't any feeling of understanding after doing it.
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JPike1028 Triglot Senior Member United States piketransitions Joined 5395 days ago 297 posts - 337 votes Speaks: English*, French, Italian Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written), Swedish, Portuguese, Czech
| Message 14 of 21 04 August 2010 at 5:47pm | IP Logged |
Does anyone have any experience with Colloquial Brazilian Portuguese that they can expound upon here?
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TheGBiBanana Newbie United States Joined 5306 days ago 16 posts - 16 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Arabic (classical), Arabic (Iraqi), Arabic (Written)
| Message 15 of 21 04 August 2010 at 6:56pm | IP Logged |
Cainntear wrote:
I find Colloquial Polish caused "word fog". All these nouns and adjectives appear in small lists and you're suddenly expected to use them in answering questions, but they're not settled in, so all you can do is flip back a page and look them up.
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I've noticed my TY Arabic book is like that, it list's alot of vocabulary and expects you to use it. To deal with thise I just learn/memorize ALL of the words before moving on to the next chapter, it takes longer but it's worth it.
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Deshwi Triglot Newbie Canada Joined 5598 days ago 31 posts - 38 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Arabic (Written), Turkish, Hindi, Persian
| Message 16 of 21 04 August 2010 at 7:16pm | IP Logged |
I have the Colloquial Persian course. The 2002 version by Abdi Rafiee, it does teach the script. This is the only Farsi course I have so I can't compare it to anything else, but so far so good.
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