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Best Short Courses ? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Universum Diglot Newbie AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4142 days ago 9 posts - 25 votes Speaks: English*, GermanB2 Studies: French | Message 9 of 11 02 August 2013 at 1:10am | IP Logged |
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For French, I used:
Michel Thomas Basic course (time: 8 days) Hugo's French in 3 Months. (time: 3 weeks) 3 weeks all up, and gives you a fairly solid foundation for future work. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6702 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 10 of 11 02 August 2013 at 10:43am | IP Logged |
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If I just want to get a taste of a language I prefer the Kauderwelsch series (in German) EXCEPT the volumes about German dialects, which are too anecdotal and unfocused to be of any value. The Assimil language guides (in French) seem to be at the same high level, but I have only got a few of those. Both series have good, clear grammar sections (although mostly limited to morphology), hyperliteral translations and in adition to that the usual thematic sections which you know from the Anglophone language guides. The phonetic introductions are always problematic because they take their point of depart in the base language of the book, and that can lead to some strangely looking phonetic transcriptions indeed. But English is the worst possible base language because of its own rotten writing system. I have a TY language guide to Bahasa Indonesia which I simply can't use because the prominently placed English 'phonetic' transcription makes the poor language look like a mixture of Kymric, Klingon and .. well, English, where the reality is that the orthography of Bahasa Indonesia is close to being the most regular and precise orthographic system in existence.
If I want to know more than the bare essentials I'll first read a real grammar through from A to Z and then start out translating and copying genuine texts using a good midsize dictionary and bilingual texts (although I might have to accept excerpts from a text book if even the simplest genuine texts about interesting subjects are to hard for me). I would not succomb to the tentation of using any textbook system as intended. Edited by Iversen on 02 August 2013 at 11:24am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jake Day Newbie United States Joined 5028 days ago 30 posts - 35 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 11 of 11 03 August 2013 at 5:12am | IP Logged |
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I kind of liked BBC - Mi Vida Loca for (Iberian) Spanish. It only takes about 10-20 hours, if I remember correctly. Edited by Jake Day on 03 August 2013 at 5:13am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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