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Assimil Swedish 1986 vs 2011

  Tags: Swedish | Assimil
 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes Post Reply
14 messages over 2 pages: 1
Mareike
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 6222 days ago

267 posts - 323 votes 
Speaks: German*
Studies: English, Swedish

 
 Message 9 of 14
17 May 2012 at 12:22pm | IP Logged 
I've "Schwedisch ohne Mühe" published in 2003 in one book.
I bought the tome with one book and 4 Audio-CDs.
The book contains 100 lessons. The texts fits to      

"Title: Le suédois sans peine
Author: Jean-François Battail
Year of first publication: 1986 "

But, the book has only 604 pages plus empty sites for notes. Maybe they reduce the explanations?

The text of the latest french version is complete different to my German book version.

The audio is only for the first 50 chapters. If you want the audio for the last chapters you have to buy it seperatly. So you have 4 Audio-Cds for 50 chapters.
If you want to buy it new, it's expensieve the tome (100€) and maybe the second audio part (88€).

http://assimil.de/sprachen/schwedisch.php
On the left side you'll find some examples.

Edited by Mareike on 17 May 2012 at 3:43pm

4 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 10 of 14
17 May 2012 at 6:14pm | IP Logged 
Thanks Mareike for confirming that the texts in Schwedisch ohne Mühe correspond to those in Le suédois sans peine and that the audio is the same.

Who knows? Maybe they just printed the book with very small fonts, or maybe they just cut out some explanations that are useful to Francophones but pointless to speakers of another Germanic language.

1 person has voted this message useful



Kronos
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5259 days ago

186 posts - 452 votes 
Speaks: German*, English

 
 Message 11 of 14
17 May 2012 at 8:04pm | IP Logged 
Emme is correct: the appendices in both of the volumes are the same (I didn't take this into account -- my fault), which means the unique content runs up to about 730 pages only. This is still considerably more than the 604 or 640 pages of the new book.

On the Assimil site Mareike linked to there is a sample page covering the first three lessons. I tried to compare them with those of the old edition (which I have a copy of). These are the main differences:

- The texts are unchanged (just the line count is different)
- The new annotations are based on the old ones, but revised and slightly expanded
- The exercises are unchanged
- Fill-in-the-blanks: an additional one in Lesson 1, those in L2 remain the same; L3 is obviously cut off at page 12 in the sample
- The illustrations are the same
- New layout, but not dramatically different

The strange thing is that in the old edition Lessons 1-3 ran for exactly 10 pages, while in the new one the page count seems to be somewhere between 12 and 13 pages. Strange, because if this was the case with all the lessons, the lessons part alone would fill at least 700 pages, grammatical appendix etc. not even considered. So there remains a 'gap' of about 150 pages (at least), which I do not know the nature of.
1 person has voted this message useful



ikinaridango
Triglot
Groupie
United Kingdom
Joined 6123 days ago

61 posts - 80 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese, Italian
Studies: German, Polish

 
 Message 12 of 14
23 May 2012 at 4:09pm | IP Logged 
I've got the single-volume German-language edition too, and I think that what may, at
least in part, account for its smaller number of pages is the absence of the
wordlist/dictionary at the end, which the French edition seems to have.
1 person has voted this message useful



Kronos
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5259 days ago

186 posts - 452 votes 
Speaks: German*, English

 
 Message 13 of 14
23 May 2012 at 4:49pm | IP Logged 
ikinaridango wrote:
I've got the single-volume German-language edition too, and I think that what may, at
least in part, account for its smaller number of pages is the absence of the
wordlist/dictionary at the end, which the French edition seems to have.

Yes, I did take this into account in my calculation. The old edition had a wordlist of about 110 pages, duplicated in Vol. 2. Even then there is still a 'gap' of more than a hundred 'missing' pages remaining which I cannot account for.

However, it seems now that the substance of the old course and the later (German) one-volume edition is basically the same, at least not watered down. You also get to learn about 4,000 words with both. Too bad they changed that now with the new one.
1 person has voted this message useful



SaYwHt2
Triglot
Newbie
Belgium
Joined 5596 days ago

9 posts - 15 votes
Speaks: English, German, French
Studies: Italian, Russian, Dutch, Swedish, Croatian, Slovenian

 
 Message 14 of 14
12 June 2012 at 1:32pm | IP Logged 
I just wanted to thank everyone involved in this thread. I have been interested in learning Swedish for a long
time and decided to order the Assimil Schwedisch ohne Mühe course last week. I ordered the book and the
two cd packs separately from Amazon UK and am very pleased with what I see before me!

First of all, the book is a wonderful hardcover edition, which is a nice change from the flimsy new Assimil
editions (You know, the really new ones that don't have the nice red bookmark string!). Just flipping
through it, even if they've combined the previous two volumes into one, I can tell that this course is packed
with a ton of vocabulary and certainly seems to be more comprehensive than my 1980s editions of Assimil
Italian or German with Ease. It seems to be more along the lines of German without Toil and the older
editions in terms of content.

I have to agree with the general consensus that the new Assimil books, while still very effective, seem to lack
that "special something" of the pre-2000s editions. Maybe its a combination of getting rid of the old
binding and the slower pace in the new courses.

Anyway, my plan is to use the Assimil book and FSI Swedish, with the goal of hopefully achieving B1 at least.
Maybe it would be possible to reach B2 though with this course as well I think. Can't wait to get started and
thank you again for helping me pick the right course!


2 persons have voted this message useful



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