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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7155 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 1 of 14 12 July 2012 at 7:10am | IP Logged | ||
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I was re-reading this thread, "Quick! Your language library is afire" and started to think about what in my non-digital collection of stuff for language learning I value the most for whatever reason.
Although I have a few items in my collection which I treasure and have sometimes even spoken highly of here, I treasure most what little I have in hard copy for Inari and Northern Saami, and above all my copy of that kids' primer on Inari Saami, "Sämikielâ 1. Inarinsaame vieraana kielenä" considering that it's the only book that I have for the language. It evokes only happy memories of being in Sápmi and I look on it fondly like one's first love interest. That book was my introduction to the Saamic languages (if I don't count descriptive sketches of Saamic languages that I had read some time before) and is just that special since I picked it up on impulse at the gift shop after having just got my big prize in the "Davvin" series for Northern Saami. It would hurt me deeply to lose some other material (including reference manuals on comparative Slavonic linguistics) in my collection considering that it was obtained while travelling or at great expense thanks to its specialized nature, but ultimately much of it would be replaceable or substitutable. On the other hand, I can no longer find any available copies of "Sämikielâ 1". Not even Sami Duodji ry where I bought it lists it anymore. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5782 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 2 of 14 13 July 2012 at 1:30am | IP Logged | ||
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My most treasured book would not be language related, but as you mean language materials
I'll go for Francisco Matte Bon's "Gramática Comunicativa del Español"...I always learn something every time I dip into it. As for the other thread you mention I'd grab the linguaphone Spanish "Curso Superior" (even though far from treasuring it I barely use it yet) as I got it as an absolute bargain on ebay and there's no way I could ever afford to replace it. Edited by Random review on 13 July 2012 at 1:31am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5129 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 3 of 14 13 July 2012 at 3:58am | IP Logged | ||
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It's not a language course. It's the Reina Valera version of the bible, big, thick and
leather-bound. Back in the early 80s while living in Mexico, I was a member of a VERY evangelical church. That bible is so marked up with my own notes (in Spanish), it's a nice look back into my intermediate/early advanced years with the language. While I no longer hold to many of the beliefs of that particular church, it's interesting to see how I was thinking, both linguistically and spiritually. R. == 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4827 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 4 of 14 13 July 2012 at 4:43am | IP Logged | ||
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One of the most useful things I've bought in the last few years is a Sharp electronic
dictionary for English-German. It also has German-Spanish, which is not all that useful for me, but it is a bonus. I resisted getting anything like this for years, as I assumed they would only have a small vocabulary, but was convinced by it being demonstrated by friends who had them, and I was really impressed, and haven't regretted buying it for a second. It is very portable, reasonably robust, has a nice large readable screen, is intuitive to use, and a single AAA battery lasts an incredibly long time. I treasure it, partly because I have a strong feeling these aren't going to be available much longer. Although it impresses me, I suppose it's already "old technology". People are using their smartphones, and whatever else, these days, but I'm resisting that technology for as long as possible (why? is another discussion thread I think). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| viedums Hexaglot Senior Member Thailand Joined 4665 days ago 327 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French Studies: Vietnamese | Message 5 of 14 13 July 2012 at 7:25am | IP Logged | ||
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Last year I took a trip to Burma/Myanmar, partly to buy books for learning the language. Since the ethnic mosaic in Myanmar is so diverse, I was also looking for materials on the minority languages, especially Mon. I was curious about Mon because I’ve studied Khmer - both languages are Austroasiatic and have left a historical legacy.
First a bit of background on Mon. There was a fully functioning Mon state in the early modern period (around 1500 or so) – earlier than that is controversial. In any case, because they speak an Austroasiatic language, the Mon people have a strong claim to inhabiting the region earlier than their Burmese- and Thai-speaking neighbors (let’s ignore the difference between speaking a language and belonging to an ethnicity here, of course many people were multilingual and at various points adopted new languages etc.) There are inscriptions which constitute “Old Mon”, and there is also Middle Mon, rather like the situation with Khmer (Old Khmer being the language of Angkor.) The number of Mon inscriptions that have survived is much smaller than for Khmer, however, which parallels the difference in the archeological legacy – impressive for Khmer, minimal and obscure for Mon. From a synchronic perspective, Mon has a register distinction between clear and breathy vowels – this is typical for Austroasiatic languages. In my Yangon hotel I consulted the yellow pages for bookstores in Moulmein, the capital of Mon state – challenging enough to do this in Burmese! After an extremely bumpy train ride through an ocean of paddy fields, I settled in and went out in search of these places. The most prominent store had only a handful of Mon books, but luckily an English teacher from the local university happened to be around and made enquiries, then took me on his motorcycle to a stall in the market, apparently the only place specializing in Mon publications. The teacher told me that just five years or so previously, people would have been afraid to speak Mon in public, although this has now changed. I came away from the stall with several Buddhist texts and works of popular history – in retrospect I should have got more. After attempting to read them, I have concluded that to actually learn this language I would need to work directly with native speakers. For one thing, most textbooks for Mon actually focus on writing. It turns out that Mon spelling has become quite irregular, there can be 6-7 ways to spell a given word. This reflects its status as a non-state language, there is no one to establish spelling norms that reflect the current pronunciation. And it turns out that beyond a general structural similarity, there are few obvious cognates between Mon and Khmer. These books are just sitting on my shelf and I don’t particularly treasure them, but getting them was kind of an adventure. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6150 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 6 of 14 13 July 2012 at 1:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think my most treasured item, as its probably the rarest I own, is a first French edition copy of Jorge Luis Borges 'El Hacedor' from 1965. The book was released as DreamTigers in English. The book is a parallel text with the original Spanish on one side and the French translation on the other.
Edited by DaraghM on 13 July 2012 at 1:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5344 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 7 of 14 15 July 2012 at 2:12am | IP Logged | ||
Your entire post is very interesting. My excuses for diverting this thread from its stated object, but I must ask, what has been your experience with Burmese? What can one expect to read in this language? As for the topic of the thread, I don't have a single piece of favorite material. I love my Assimil collection, my beautiful, mint, four volume textbook Learning Russian by Nina Potapova from the 1960's -one of the best courses I've used or seen for any language, indeed the golden age of language study, my copy of Hartleben's Die Kunst, die polnische Sprache durch Selbstunterricht with newspaper clippings and a petal from 1915 still attached to it, my Sanskrit manuals from India... my whole personal library. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| viedums Hexaglot Senior Member Thailand Joined 4665 days ago 327 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French Studies: Vietnamese | Message 8 of 14 15 July 2012 at 5:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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I studied a year of Burmese formally. Since my visit I’ve been very busy with work, so I haven’t really had the chance to use what I picked up there. I would probably need to go and live in Myanmar in order to improve my command of the language enough to read freely. Here are some thoughts about Burmese literature and about what to use if you’d like to learn the language.
Pre-modern literature is rich, but difficult to access. A lot of it is heavily Buddhist, with for instance storylines taken from the Jatakas. Modern literature is surprisingly strong – although the Burmese economy is a disaster and the country was very isolated for a few decades after 1962 when the army took over, the intellectual class has survived and continues to produce literature and art. Contrast this with Cambodia, where the Khmers Rouges just exterminated such people and there is no literary scene at all to speak of now. The post-1962 isolation may also have acted to strengthen the interest in literature, because Western pop culture was kept out, other creative outlets were stifled, people read for hidden subtexts against the regime, etc. There might be parallels here with the situation in the former Soviet Union, and there’s an obvious contrast with Thailand, where people have better things to do than write fiction and poetry. It’s hard to name any famous writers, however. A place to start in English would be some recent translations of Burmese fiction done by Ma Thanegi. John Okell’s textbooks, and after that Okell and Allott’s Dictionary of Grammatical Forms, are essential for learning Burmese. The Myanmar English Dictionary by the Myanmar Language Commission is also excellent. Very handy is Nance Cunningham’s small Burmese English dictionary, and she’s just produced an interesting parallel text for learning (see link below). Being Eaten Alive 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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