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No-Time series - A. E. Van Vogt | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4911 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 9 of 19 02 December 2011 at 5:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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"In just 40 minutes a day for one month, you can learn a two-hour segment." Doing the maths, they expect you to listen to each 40 minute section 10 times. It must be packed.
Edit: I'm also surprised at the price. $99 for a 30 year old course. The same website also sells FSI courses for $250! Edited by Jeffers on 02 December 2011 at 6:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6013 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 10 of 19 02 December 2011 at 9:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
Bing only returns one hit for "200 language club", and it's a list of copyright registrations. Note that I only see two collaborators despite the fact that courses for several languages are included on the list: his wife Lydia and one "Guido Hauser", so it's fairly likely that's AE himself on the tape. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chris Heptaglot Senior Member Japan Joined 7123 days ago 287 posts - 452 votes Speaks: English*, Russian, Indonesian, French, Malay, Japanese, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Korean, Mongolian | Message 11 of 19 03 December 2011 at 3:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Horrendous website! I hope they didn't pay someone to design it with that intense yellow background.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4911 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 12 of 19 03 December 2011 at 5:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
There were several hits on Google for a search on "200 language club", one of which had an advertisement about language learning "while striding". 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| palfrey Senior Member Canada Joined 5275 days ago 81 posts - 180 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 13 of 19 06 December 2011 at 1:44am | IP Logged | |||||
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You can hear a sample (5 to 10 minutes) of the Japanese course here.
( http://www.learnoutloud.com/Audio-Books/Languages/Japanese/N oTime-Japanese/20210 ) I actually find it kind of intriguing, at least as a supplement to listen to while you walked around (or strode :). Though as DaraghM says, the audio transfer quality leaves much to be desired. Btw, if the information on that page is correct, then the author and narrator is, indeed, A.E. Van Vogt. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5228 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 14 of 19 07 December 2011 at 1:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, that's really impressive. Kudos, Mr. Van Vogt... Edited by mrwarper on 07 December 2011 at 1:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Dr. Peter Hexaglot Newbie United States Joined 5267 days ago 2 posts - 11 votes Speaks: English*, German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese Studies: Albanian | Message 15 of 19 29 January 2014 at 9:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Decades ago, I used to be a member ( = subscriber) of the 200-Language Club and I still have at least two dozen of the sets somewhere around my home. Ordinarily, each "album" was a set of 3 cassettes, but a few were multiple 3-cassette packages. There were several formats or types of "albums," but my favorites featured the "professor of linguistics," talking about the particular language or dialect and giving examples.
When I spoke with him in person, perhaps in the late 1980s or early 1990s, Mr. van Vogt denied being the "professor of linguistics" and, to me, he and the speaker on the tapes I just called my favorites sounded very different. He wouldn't tell me who the "professor of linguistics" really was, but maybe it was Guido Hauser, professor of German at Loyola University, New Orleans. However, I think Mr. van Vogt himself was the speaker on the vocabulary tapes. Yes, he was also the famous science-fiction novelist. I don't think these sets were anywhere near as good as FSI or Pimsleur for the main course, but the "professor of linguistics" tapes made a great supplement, providing cultural context, a bit of history, relationships to other languages, examples and explanations. I still listen to them once in a while, if I can find my cassette player. Sometimes they discuss a dialect for which not much learning material is available. After Mr. van Vogt died in 2000, Audio Forum (Jeffrey Norton) bought the rights and raised the prices pretty extremely. I find that very sad. I would happily pay the original prices, adjusted for inflation, to have more of the "professor of linguistics" expounding on any language I don't already have, even if the audio quality is not so good. In 2012, the Audio Forum languages courses were acquired by MPS Multimedia, Inc., but I don't see the 200-Language Club albums on the web site. I would also very much like to know the real name of the "professor of linguistics" and something about his background. 9 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 4054 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes Studies: German | Message 16 of 19 30 January 2014 at 3:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I purchased the complete set of cds for NO TIME German and Dutch from AUDIO FORUM during their final inventory clearance sale just before they ceased operations. I was quite disappointed with the product.
Although not stated by the retailer, the recordings had been transferred "in bulk" from the original, aging, magnetic tapes. As for many of the older DLI courses that were recorded during the same period, and that are now available on the Internet, the sound quality is quite unacceptable for what purports to be a commercial product. No effort was made to split the audio files into shorter segments, thereby leaving only one, long track per cd. I suspect that any existing mp3 versions are similar, single-track files. I converted the cds to mp3 files and tried using a file splitter to segment the material but, because of the overall quality of the course, lost patience and abandoned this project. We can argue endlessly the merits of using audio files recorded by native speakers who have no voice-training versus those recorded by voice-professionals. However, in my opinion, by virtue of his heavily-accented, flat, and stilted speech, Mr. Van Vogt set a particularly low standard in the field of language recordings. The mere fact that one speaks a given language is no guarantee that one can also design an effective, audio-only, self-instructional, language course. Despite all the good intentions that must have served as the impetus for this course, I found that the lessons themselves, for numerous reasons, are NOT well-designed. I retained my No Time cds for possible future use but, because there are vastly better opportunities available, I never returned to them and have no intention of doing so. I would cheerfully give them away for free to anyone who cares to pay the postage. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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