Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6441 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 9 of 32 16 September 2007 at 6:59pm | IP Logged |
TDC wrote:
Hmm, maybe we could translate the older out-of-print courses? |
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Nope. None are old enough to have expired copyrights.
Copyright terms are currently far too long, and keep being extended retroactively.
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awake Senior Member United States Joined 6638 days ago 406 posts - 438 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Spanish
| Message 10 of 32 17 September 2007 at 3:50am | IP Logged |
Volte wrote:
TDC wrote:
Hmm, maybe we could translate the older out-of-print courses? |
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Nope. None are old enough to have expired copyrights.
Copyright terms are currently far too long, and keep being extended retroactively.
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That's certainly true in the United States, where corporations keep pushing extensions every time the deadline
comes up. The corporations basically pay off the politicians (legal bribes, er, campaign contributions and
such) to keep extending the duration of copyright protection. Disney, for example, is terrified that once the
copyright on mickey mouse expires, their brand will be diluted by all the uses of mickey that other people will
come up with beyond their control (It will probably take less than a day for the first pornographic mickey
mouse cartoon to appear on the internet). The irony is of course that Disney made fortunes off stores that were
in the public domain.
As for this question about using older versions of Assimil, certainly you would be hammered in the U.S. (and I
assume the EU, etc...). However, there may be countries which still have reasonable copyright statutes. I
wonder what the copyright laws in russia entail.
Of course, one could learn french first, and then use the french base language version of Russian with ease (it
may be available in other base languages too, maybe Spanish or German, but I haven't checked).
Alternatively (though more expensively perhaps), one could use the Linguaphone Russian course. Linguaphone
courses use the same basic approach as Assimil
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jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6911 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map
| Message 11 of 32 17 September 2007 at 7:46am | IP Logged |
Although I'd be happy to see a "Russian with Ease" (in English), I'm currently learning French partly because I want to have a look at their Russian course. Maybe they translate it into English before I'm finished. :)
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pythonbyte Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5930 days ago 26 posts - 28 votes Studies: French, German
| Message 12 of 32 19 October 2008 at 11:39am | IP Logged |
Assimil are currently producing a "Russian With Ease" based on "Le Russe". I wouldn't expect a publication date any day soon though but definitely one for the future when i eventually start learning Russian.
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alindhqra Triglot Newbie Greece Joined 5278 days ago 2 posts - 4 votes Speaks: Serbian, English*, French Studies: Russian
| Message 13 of 32 15 June 2010 at 1:42am | IP Logged |
I think it's a matter of pride for Assimil... that's probably why there are so few English-based courses on sale, even though the English market would probably increase their sales 10-fold!
English surpassed French as the default international language over the last 50 years. So the thinking must be: stuff you, if you want to learn Ancient Greek, Russian, Hieroglyphics and Telugu, you'll have to learn French first!
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Gregy1727 Triglot Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6537 days ago 98 posts - 117 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Afrikaans
| Message 14 of 32 15 June 2010 at 11:16am | IP Logged |
Indeed. I have to admit, Assimil is one of my driving forces to learn French.
Edited by Gregy1727 on 15 June 2010 at 11:19am
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datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5587 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French
| Message 15 of 32 15 June 2010 at 7:57pm | IP Logged |
alindhqra wrote:
I think it's a matter of pride for Assimil... that's probably why there are so few English-based courses on sale, even though the English market would probably increase their sales 10-fold!
English surpassed French as the default international language over the last 50 years. So the thinking must be: stuff you, if you want to learn Ancient Greek, Russian, Hieroglyphics and Telugu, you'll have to learn French first! |
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I also think that may be a reason...but it appears selfish to me because they are isolating themselves from a huge English speaking based market.
some courses I'd suggest for English base:
Advanced Italian
Advanced German
Brazilian Portuguese
Russian
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Kugel Senior Member United States Joined 6540 days ago 497 posts - 555 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 16 of 32 15 June 2010 at 8:31pm | IP Logged |
As people become more tech savvy I hope that homebrew Assimil courses, or any language course for that matter,
become the norm. I wonder why all these linguistic students don't do huge projects, something similar to Assimil
programs, for senior year assignments or portfolios at the graduate level.
Along with the linguistic departments, shouldn't the students be doing this?
Assimil obviously isn't going to step up to the plate. And it's not like expensive laboratories and large grants are
needed to construct these programs. Besides, aren't graduate students in the humanities slave labor?
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