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Old Teach Yourself Danish? | ||
Tags: Teach Yourself | Danish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5563 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 1 of 4 07 March 2012 at 5:40pm | IP Logged |
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Picked up a curiosity today - the old yellow/blue era Teach Yourself Danish by H.A.
Koefoed together with 5 Linguaphone records that look like they record the examples from the book. Anyone know anything about this? Is it any good? Hopelessly out of date? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6701 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 4 08 March 2012 at 12:44pm | IP Logged |
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Generally the old TY books are more concentrated, better organized and less burdened with multiple choice or permutation drills and other irrelevant games. However I haven't seen the Danish one so I can't tell you whether the pronunciation and/or expressions and/or words are out of date. Given that the yellow/blue series has appeared during my own lifetime I would expect a more distinct pronunciation then the one used today (especially in modern Danish films, which are marred by excessive mumbling), but still something which wouldn't raise any eyebrows. For beginners this must actually be a positive thing. Concerning expressions and vocabulary you could quote a few typical sentences here and I'll give you my opinion - if you can't get an authoritative assesment of the whole book from somebody who knows it well.
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| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 7142 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes Studies: Uzbek | Message 3 of 4 08 March 2012 at 9:04pm | IP Logged |
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Elexi, your question has had me pulling out most of my remaining hair for the last day or so. I know I've seen a comment somewhere, I think in one of the books in my house, to the effect that the old "Teach Yourself Danish" is the IDEAL foreign language textbook, but I haven't been able to find the citation, despite having wracked my brain and thumbed through various books in search of it. (I'd thought it might have been in "The Art and Science of Learning Languages" by Gethin and Gunnemark, but haven't been able to find it there.)
I don't recall the specific reasons for the praise of this particular book, but think it may have derived from the clear phonetic description (with IPA for the vocabulary words) and the reading selections that began each lesson. Given the age of the book and the relatively small number of people who learn Danish, I would suspect that the audio materials you have may well be fairly rare, and that it might be useful to digitize them (hint, hint!), since audio materials for older language books are generally hard to come across. If I can find the reference that's been nagging me, I'll add it, but I am certain that at least someone writing on language has, whether justifiably or not, praised this particular book rather highly. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| HMS Senior Member England Joined 5105 days ago 143 posts - 256 votes Speaks: English* | Message 4 of 4 09 March 2012 at 6:06pm | IP Logged |
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Iverson, a question if I may:
How difficult do you perceive the Danish language to appear to an English-speaking non-Danish speaker? I am fascinated with scandyhooligan languages and have tried to "dabble" in them all. Swedish was the only one I ever felt I made any progress in though. (Not enough progress to register even a flicker on here I might add though). With Danish I found (what appeared to me anyway)the total difference in pronounciation from the written word. I'm aware English poses similar problems for learners. Edit: Thankyou. Edited by HMS on 09 March 2012 at 6:07pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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