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Assimil Swedish 1986 vs 2011 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5345 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes  Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 1 of 14 14 April 2012 at 5:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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As has been already discussed in other threads, in the past year Assimil has been updating some of its ‘sans peine’ courses. In the case of the Swedish course, this seems to be the first real update since 1986*, and I believe that after 25 years it was a reasonable choice to revise the text to keep the language fresh and current. Whether the result is a success or not it’s still to be seen (I haven’t got around to starting it properly yet), especially considering that on this forum the 1986 edition is often cited as one of the best of its generation (you can read more about the older edition here, here, here, and post 53 here).
*There have been several editions of Suédois sans peine but as the audio for all those editions has never changed, I must deduce they are basically the same. I’ve had the luck to be able to borrow both the old and the new edition of Assimil Le Suédois (thank god for libraries!) and I’ve decided to post an overview of the two editions. Hopefully this will be of some use to those interested in learning Swedish with Assimil. The first impression is that the new edition appears to offer a lighter workload (just by thumbing through the book the lessons looks noticeably shorter) and much less both in terms of audio (3 hours vs 4 ½ hours) and vocabulary covered (I’ve counted the lemmas in the glossary at the end of the book and they are about 2600 in the new edition vs 4200 in the old one). I believe that the length of audio and the richness of vocabulary offered by a course are not the only factors to consider when judging its quality, but the change seems to reflect the general trend, often lamented on this forum, of newer editions of a course to be less substantial than the previous ones even when claiming to take the learner to the same level of proficiency. If this apparent deterioration of the course is a drawback that particularly concerns you, and studying in German is a viable option, remember that at the moment the new edition is only available in French, whereas you can still buy the old one in German. Finally, one question that is often asked about Assimil is whether it is possible to study a third language after only learning French through Assimil French Without Pain. I don’t pretend to know the answer, but I’d like to offer some observations to help you decide for yourself. First, some preliminary remarks: I had dabbled with French for a long time before tackling it seriously using Assimil sans peine; my native language is another romance language, so French is relatively easy for me; I’m not a beginner in Swedish. That said, I’ve noticed that at the moment it’s still much easier for me to understand the Swedish part of Le suédois and to work out the little I don’t understand on my own rather than referring to the French explanations. I’m not saying that learning a language through French after only studying French Without Pain is impossible, only that it’s much more difficult than one would hope. Title: Le suédois sans peine Author: Jean-François Battail Year of first publication: 1986 Number of lessons: 100 Volumes: 2 Pages: 394 (Tome 1 Leçons 1-49) + 504 (Tome 2 Leçons 50-100) Audio: 8 CDs = 4 CDs Svenska på lätt sätt 1 (up to lesson 49) + 4 CDs Svenska på lätt sätt 2 Length of audio: ca. 4h 30’ Vocabulary: approx. 4200 words CEFR level: Tome 1= B1; Tome 2 = B2 Available in: French; German (as Schwedisch ohne Mühe and now available in one volume); and Dutch (as Zweeds zonder moeite only Tome 1 up to lesson 49) Index: Tome 1: Préliminaires……….IV Éléments de l’introduction enregistrés sur les cassettes Introduction……….V à VII Prononciation du suédois……….VIII à XX Leçons 1 à 49……….1 à 235 Appendice grammatical……….236 à 269 Index grammatical……….270 à 275 Lexique……….276 à 392 Tome 2: Introduction……….V à VII Leçons 50 à 100……….1 à 337 Appendice grammatical……….340 à 373 Index grammatical……….376 à 381 Lexique……….384 à 498 Beginning of lesson 1: Första lektionen - Hej! - Hej, Eva! - Hej, Michel! Hur mår du? - Bra, tack. Och du? - Tack, bra. … Beginning of lesson 50: Femtionde lektionen - Allmän mobilisering Mamma – Har ni glömt at vi har främmande i kväll? Skall huset vara i ordning måste alla hjälpa till. Sonen – Men mamma, vi har gott om tid! Jag tittar färdigt och städar sen vardagsrummet. ... Title: Le Suédois (Colletion Sans Peine) (French site) Author: William Fovet Year of first publication: 2011 Number of lessons: 100 Volumes: 1 Pages: 668 Audio: 4 CDs + 1 CD mp3 (same content but the audio is also divided into more than 2000 short files, one for each sentence, and you can visualize the text in your mp3 player) Length of audio: ca. 3h Vocabulary: approx. 2600 CEFR level: B2 Available in: French Index: Introduction……….VII Une méthode déclinée en deux vagues……….XI Les principaux sons du suédois……….XIII Leçons 1-100……….1 Appendice grammatical……….483 Index grammatical……….513 Bibliographie……….517 Lexique des expressions et locutions suédois-français……….520 Lexiques……….532 Lexique suédois-français……….533 Lexique français-suèdois……….600 Beginning of lesson 1: Första lektionen - Lotta har en fråga - Hej Lotta! - Hej fröken! - Hur mår du idag? ... Beginning of lesson 50: Femtionde lektionen - Enkla råd från akutmottagningen Mitt i natten ringer Ulrika till akuten. - Hallå, mitt namn är Ulrika Knutsson, får jag tala med en läkare? - Våra jourläkare är upptagna just nu. Du kan ringa igen om en timme, men jag kan kanske hjälpa dig, jag är sjuksköterska. ... 12 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5563 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 2 of 14 14 April 2012 at 6:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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It strikes me that many of the changes in the recent Assimil revisions - the collection
sans peine editions - (looking at L'Allemand, Le Danois and Le Néerlandais) stems from an attempt to make their courses conform to CEFR standards - that means that they focus more on the themes like ordering food and booking a hotel rather than sentences like 'My tailor is rich' or dialogues about homeless people in garages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tennisfan Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5358 days ago 130 posts - 247 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish Studies: German | Message 3 of 14 15 April 2012 at 5:28am | IP Logged | ||
ha! which Assimil was this? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5563 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 4 of 14 15 April 2012 at 8:59am | IP Logged | ||
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Its in German With Ease
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| ikinaridango Triglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6123 days ago 61 posts - 80 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, Italian Studies: German, Polish | Message 5 of 14 16 April 2012 at 12:06pm | IP Logged | ||
Have Assimil published a new Danish course? I've just had a look on their website and could only find the old Le danois sans peine/Dänisch ohne Mühe course from 1992. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5563 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 6 of 14 16 April 2012 at 5:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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No, sorry, my mistake - it is the 1992 one. I was looking at my Assimils and as I have
Le Danois with the new cover sitting with L'Allemand and Le Neerlandais and subconsciously linked it to the other two. I personally think having slightly more user friendly lessons in Assimil is a good move - a good number of people here, who are not hardcore polyglots, have complained that Assimils are hard to get into - making things more friendly doesn't in my view mean dumbing down. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kronos Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5259 days ago 186 posts - 452 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 7 of 14 16 May 2012 at 1:45pm | IP Logged | ||
Unfortunately the German course has also been changed. Originally Schwedisch ohne Mühe came out in two volumes, totaling about 900 pages, like the original French ones. About ten years ago they fused and condensed those two volumes into a new single one, 640 pages, apparently also including some minor revisions or updates of content. This is the edition in print in Germany now. The associated audio CDs are now sold in two separate sets that together cost an incredible 175 EUR; I cannot imagine that the earlier cassettes came at such an extravagant price. On top of that the audio appears to be still the original one (don't know if this is true, I saw it mentioned somewere), in which case the CDs would include plenty of audio files that are no longer found in the book itself. So what is available in Germany right now is a considerably shortened version of the old two-volume edition, but I do not know how it compares to the new Le Suédois except that it has about the same length. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5345 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 8 of 14 17 May 2012 at 10:59am | IP Logged | ||
As the book still contains 100 lessons and the audio used is the same, I actually thought that the only difference might be in the layout of the book. For instance, the two volumes have the same glossary at the back: if you publish just one volume you only need to print the glossary once and so you already save more than 100 pages. I may be wrong, of course, so we need someone who actually has Schwedisch ohne Mühe in one volume to tell us if the content corresponds to the audio. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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