Did Rocket French make a minor mistake? (Specific Languages) Language Learning Forum

Did Rocket French make a minor mistake?
Tags: French
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Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages

Spinchäeb Ape
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4469 days ago
146 posts - 180 votes

Speaks: English*, German

Message 1 of 3

31 January 2013 at 2:12am | IP Logged

In the written portion of Rocket French they have a section where they convert statements into questions. Here's one such statement:

Quote:

Il y a de l'essence dans la voiture.

Their three ways to turn it into a sentence are as follows:

Quote:

Y a t-il de l'essence dans la voiture ?
Est ce qu'il y a de l'essence dans la voiture ?
Il y a de l'essence dans la voiture, n'est ce pas ?

Did they make a minor mistake with the second solution? Shouldn't "Est ce" be hyphenated as "Est-ce"? What about in the third solution. Shouldn't the ending use hyphenation as in "n'est-ce pas"?

(They also covered just using the statement as is, but changing the inflection in your voice.)
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vermillon
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4677 days ago
602 posts - 1042 votes

Speaks: French*, English^C2, Mandarin
Studies: Japanese, German

Message 2 of 3

31 January 2013 at 8:24am | IP Logged

Yes, and it should also be "a-t-il".
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Spinchäeb Ape
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4469 days ago
146 posts - 180 votes

Speaks: English*, German

Message 3 of 3

31 January 2013 at 11:37pm | IP Logged

vermillon wrote:

Yes, and it should also be "a-t-il".

Thanks. I thought it was missing its hyphens, but I wasn't sure if maybe there were exceptions. Rocket French also routinely fails to leave a space before question marks and exclamation points. (I made the change in the above quotes.) How can a language course make these dumb mistakes? It's annoying.

Don't get me wrong. Rocket French is good. Their audio recordings are entertaining and build useful vocab. Unlike Pimsleur, their audio comes with transcripts.

Their written course material explains things well. I'm surprised they let those dumb mistakes slip in.

Edited by Spinchäeb Ape on 31 January 2013 at 11:40pm

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