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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| FuroraCeltica Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6863 days ago 1187 posts - 1427 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 9 of 58 14 November 2006 at 3:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
M<y thoughts exactly. I've got quite a few TY books, and some are better than others. The Dutch was excellent, as was the German. The Russian one has one draw back in that the speakers are quite slow. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Roger Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6590 days ago 159 posts - 161 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Indonesian | Message 10 of 58 14 November 2006 at 5:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I also bought the TY italian vocabulary by mike zollo, which is quite good but certainly not for the begginer. A reviewer on amazon.co.uk said that to their estimates it has roughly 4000-5000 words which seems to be true, it gives example adjectives and verbs etc, and then makes a phrase out of them, so that you can learn in context which really helps.
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6701 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 11 of 58 14 November 2006 at 5:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have read several of the books, though mostly in old editions (but the newer ones I've borrowed from the library were not fundamentally different). I generally think that the treatment of grammar in these books is flimsy and therefore those who like a systematical way of doing things should invest in a real grammar plus a good dictionary. I loathe graded exercises, but as far as I can judge the exercises here are generally adequate, - better than in some other series I have seen.
For me the series has mostly been a way of getting a glimpse of languages that I would never dream of learning, and for that they are fine. I have just checked my book shelves and found Modern Greek (1980), Romanian* (1974), Turkish (1978), Swahili (1980), Irish (1980), Old English (1978) and Samoan (1973), - and there may be a couple more lying around somewhere. Seeing those books again makes me really feel old... * the only one I have ever worked my way through as intended Edited by Iversen on 14 November 2006 at 5:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Roger Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6590 days ago 159 posts - 161 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Indonesian | Message 12 of 58 14 November 2006 at 5:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You may feel old but look at how many languages you speak!!! that is alot of languages to learn well done.
Also after starting the TY russian i beleive it doesnt even touch the michel thomas style of learning a language, but i shall keep plugging away and see how it goes. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6700 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 13 of 58 14 November 2006 at 9:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've worked through most of TY Russian, and I thought it was a a decent introduction to the language. The explanations of grammar are clear and the dialogues are much better than the text I used in college or some of the other ones I've seen.
A few little problems: not enough drills. 1. I've worked through about 90% of the lessons and memorizes the material in the first 10, but I still don't feel comfortable trying to speak the language, esp. in terms of perfective and imperfective aspects of verbs, verbs of motion, and cases. In other words the trickiest parts of the language. Russian is definitely a language that you need to have a lot of drills on to get comfortable with the nuances. 2. The grammar doesn't go far enough. In a couple of the other courses I've seen, there is at least one grammar point that isn't in TY Russian, which is participles -- the ing form of verbs. Considering it's more difficult that English, but I think just as common, it's a shame it wasn't introduced. 3. After I've worked my way through the whole book and feel comfortable reading everything in it, I still get completely lost when I try to do any free reading. I see words I know, but not enough to get the meaning of the text. In short, I think it's a fine introduction to Russian, especially at the price, but don't think it will take you all the way to fluency. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7013 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 14 of 58 15 November 2006 at 6:21am | IP Logged | |||||
That's exactly what I do. My wife despairs of my TY collection. She's right when she says that I'll never learn them or need them in any way, but they're just fun to look through. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lady_skywalker Triglot Senior Member Netherlands aspiringpolyglotblog Joined 6888 days ago 909 posts - 942 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, French, Dutch, Italian | Message 15 of 58 15 November 2006 at 6:43am | IP Logged | |||||
Same here. I have a fairly sizeable collection of TY and other language-learning books, including ones for languages I probably won't have the time/patience/desire to tackle in any great length (eg. Tibetan, Persian). I sometimes just like learning a few phrases and words here and there and learning about the languages themselves, rather than learning the languages. Every time I add a new book or language to my collection, I can read my partner's mind. I know he despairs every time I make a random observation about a language I'm not studying as he fears that I am deviating too much from learning Dutch and feels that I should focus my attention on learning or perfecting two or three foreign languages. The minute I suggest anything that doesn't fall into the major languages category and isn't a European language, he begins to twitch. :p Maybe he's got the right idea of how to attain fluency but I'm far too curious to settle for a very select few languages. I'd rather have a basic understanding of many languages than near-native fluency in two. I know what they say about 'jack of all trades' but, personally, I'm happy being one. Back on topic.... I'm wondering if the Teach Yourself courses have changed over the years. For example, is the TY Dutch course being published now bear any resemblence with earlier editions? Have the learning methods and exercises changed dramatically since the Teach Yourself series started? I've seen a few copies of the older Teach Yourself books in the library I used to work for and I noticed that the Romanian course has changed significantly over the years (although I don't have a copy of the latest edition to compare them with). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 7142 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes Studies: Uzbek | Message 16 of 58 15 November 2006 at 8:17am | IP Logged | |||||
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I have an old copy of "Teach Yourself Dutch", by H. Koolhoven, which I bought in Australia a few years ago. The initial printing was in 1941, with a new edition published in 1952. It's 222 pages long, with 34 lessons.
The book is very different from the current "Teach Yourself Dutch". For one thing, it's a small, very good quality hardcover, just a bit larger than pocket-sized, so it was a) truly handy to carry around with you and b) unlikely to fall apart at the binding like the current version. The contents are also quite different: there are no cute illustrations, and the chapters are arranged by grammatical topic rather than canned conversational types. I would say that, overall, it's more concentrated and more detailed than the current book, and that, in general, the Teach Yourself books have been both "dumbed down" and "prettied up" over the years, which is one reason I'm partial to the older ones, and tend to buy them if I see them for reasonable prices, even if I have no great desire to learn the languages in question. (My first Turkish book was the marvelous "Teach Yourself Turkish" by Geoffrey Lewis, which was a short but exceedingly clear and very rigorous introduction to the language.) The older, hardcover Teach Yourself books are still available in used book stores and on sites like www.bookfinder.com, and are nice - and sometimes even useful! - curiosities for language enthusiasts. Edited by daristani on 15 November 2006 at 8:35am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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