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Assimil Adventure: 6 languages at a time | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 25 of 94 26 August 2012 at 5:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's awesome to see a comparison of various assimil courses, thanks. I' looking forward
to continuing. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 26 of 94 26 August 2012 at 8:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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This looks like a very interesting experiment. I enjoy Assimil very much, and I have
completed Russian with Ease, and you're tackling quite a few languages I enjoy or have experience with (I have studied Latin myself for five years, and Norwegian is close to one of my target languages - Swedish). I also want to pick up Swahili at some point, but when I don't know. I personally have two other Assimil courses waiting for me: Le Breton and L'Hébreu. (For Hebrew I also have the Routledge course, which is important, as it will teach me how to write without niqqud). It might be interesting to diversify for myself into more Assimil courses, but I will be short on time to do it because I am spreading myself thin as it is. Nevertheless this is entertaining to read! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4676 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 27 of 94 26 August 2012 at 8:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ah! Which Breton course do you have? This one is in my hit list (having grand-parents living in Britanny..), but somehow it didn't make it to the list of languages for this experiment. Perhaps we could start it together some day if you're interested.
For Hebrew, did you mean "read" without niqqud? I don't know anything about Hebrew, but if it's like Arabic vowel notation, I guess "writing" without it you simply need to... not write it, while of course reading is quite another task. Anyway, thanks for the encouragement, I'll try to post another week tonight if I find enough time. If this goes well until the end, I'll be tempted to use Assimil for other languages, but probably not that many as I'd surely like to continue studying those first. Five months is surely not so long and I think it's worth a try. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 28 of 94 26 August 2012 at 8:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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Oh yeah, I mean reading. I think all my other languages are taking their toll on my
English, I'm not used to these silly mistakes. Oh well. Yes, Hebrew uses an abjad script like Arabic, but of course with a bunch of details that differ. You can use some consonants as vowels, although the details escape me at this time because I haven't really used the materials yet. I was originally planning to do Hebrew around this time, but I changed my mind and have been studying Swedish instead. I don't regret that because Swedish feels very very easy. I only have Le Bréton sans peine, but there's a Colloquial Breton if you like it. I also have a Vannetais-French (and vice versa) dictionary (Vannetais being a dialect) and a grammar of the language. It's a modern Assimil course, but it's pretty rare I think - I do not know if the website sells it. Anyhow, I bought these over the summer when I was in Brittany itself - I spent 6 days in Brest. You'll have to check Assimil if it's available. It is a new Assimil version, although it does not come with an mp3 pack of CDs, which irritates the everliving f**k out of me. However, I suspect you might get slightly more mileage out of the material than I do. The materials are French based, which should give YOU no trouble, but despite my knowledge of French being quite decent I am in no way a truly fluent speaker - I just get by and understand :) Edited by tarvos on 26 August 2012 at 8:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4676 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 29 of 94 26 August 2012 at 9:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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Is it the book by Di Kervella? If so, that's probably the one I'd be interested in using, as well as perhaps "Ni a gomz Brezhoneg" which is often cited on Breton-learning websites.
Indeed, Breton should be easier for a French than for a Dutch, considering the many borrowings and also the method being written in French. Anyway, that may have to wait until earlhy 2013... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 30 of 94 26 August 2012 at 9:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes, that is the one, Divi Kervella is the author.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4866 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 31 of 94 26 August 2012 at 11:07pm | IP Logged | ||
When I studied Persian I found that the Hebrew abjad can be mapped onto the Arabic one almost completely. A "v" can also represent vowels O and U and I is expressed by a letter that also functions as "y". A and E are a little more complicated... If you plan on learning Hebrew, it's very advisable to read without niqqud right from the beginning. Seeing as you mentioned it, you probably already know that. Edited by druckfehler on 26 August 2012 at 11:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5530 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 32 of 94 27 August 2012 at 3:53am | IP Logged | ||
I've sent you a PM with the two Anki decks and a handy PDF summarizing the phonetic characters. The deck for Assimil has cards up through lesson 28. (It's getting pretty time-consuming to create these.) Watch out for the biliterals. There's a lot of them, and you may need to use mnemonics. BEGIN SANITY DISCLAIMER A word of warning. The Anki deck for L'Égyptien hiéroglyphique is designed around my personal goals. I'm deliberating try to "overlearn" the course and commit most of it to long-term memory, so that I can stop and start my studies at will over a period of years. In other words, my experiment does not have the same goals as your experiment. When I did New French with Ease, I made no effort whatsoever to overlearn. I paid with 40-minute study sessions during the combined active+passive wave. But in the end, I came out speaking French. So overlearning Assimil definitely isn't necessary. But I want to know what happens if I do. So what's the practical upshot of all this? Basically, you should make aggressive use of the "Easy" and "Suspend" buttons when using this deck, and only focus on those cards which are important to you. If you suspend or delete 50% of the cards, you're probably doing it right. Also, don't feel obliged to fail a card because you couldn't give the transliteration. I'd recommend reading the hieroglyphs, trying to come up with a transliteration, and then doing the translation. The only thing that should count for passing the card is whether you can translate; the transliteration practice is a free bonus. END SANITY DISCLAIMER OK, I hope that's enough to help preserve whatever sanity you have left after your 6 daily Assimil lessons. :-) That said, my experiment is going well. At this point, I can look at 85+% of the lines of hieroglyphics in the first 28 lessons (with the transcription hidden), read them off, and translate them. And I know the review chapters pretty thoroughly. Clearly, overlearning a single Assimil course is a viable strategy, especially for people who've already learned a language to near-fluency before. (Folks who are working on their first non-native language are probably better off finishing the course, even if they cut corners like I did.) By the way, this course rocks, even when it kicks my butt. The lessons continue to get more and more interesting. And I'm vaguely amazed that I can now pick up books in a non-Indo-European ideographic language and understand snatches here and there. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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