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Courses for Reading Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Michael K. Senior Member United States Joined 5731 days ago 568 posts - 886 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto | Message 1 of 25 21 January 2012 at 3:22am | IP Logged |
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I'm more interested in learning to read languages than speak them, so I was wondering if we could put together a list of courses with the purpose of learning to read the target language. There are some languages that I'm particularly interested in.
By Karl Sandberg: French for Reading German for Reading Spanish for Reading Regrettably, his German course is out of print and very expensive on the used book market. By April Wilson: German Quickly Language reading courses I'm interested in: Portuguese Latin (most Latin courses probably focus on reading) Russian Italian Add any other reading courses that you want. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6472 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 2 of 25 21 January 2012 at 6:45pm | IP Logged |
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Indeed, most Latin courses focus on preparing you to read the language. However, most do
so through the grammar + translation method. If you'd like something more easily digestible, try "Lingua Latina", which is direct-method. Through some amazing planning, you start immediately by reading Latin and understanding it (the entire book is Latin reading, while most textbooks only feed you select passages) and by the end of the second volume you should be able to read original Latin passages with the same intuitive understanding. This is a comparatively long way to learn Latin though. If you need/want to learn to understand Roman authors as quickly as possible (to boost your motivation), I created a program that only takes 25 classroom hours to gain that ability. Edited by Sprachprofi on 21 January 2012 at 6:46pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Opensecret Triglot Newbie United States Joined 4694 days ago 20 posts - 30 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Russian, Mandarin | Message 3 of 25 21 January 2012 at 8:09pm | IP Logged |
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For Portuguese, you first have to decide European or Brazilian. The written languages are very similar, but the pronunciation differences are bigger than between, say British and American English. I like Sue Tyson-Ward, Teach Yourself Brazilian Portuguese. Get the cassettes and spend some time listening before starting the text. Otherwise, you're likely to get a very misleading impression of how the language sounds. For example, the first phrase in the first dialogue in the Brazilian Portuguese book is "Bom dia." To an English speaker, it looks as if you'd pronounce it "bomb dee-ah." You probably wouldn't guess that "bom" sounds like "bon" in French, and "dia" is pronounced as if it were spelled "gee-ah." There's a parallel volume, Teach Yourself Portuguese, for the European language, and I'd guess that it's also good.
For Russian, my favorite book is the Assimil book which I've used in the French version (Le nouveau russe sans peine). Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be available in English, though you might be able to track down on-line a copy of an older version called Russian Without Toil. Though I've only skimmed it, I think the New Penguin Russian Course is probably the best current book for English learners, but I don't know if it has any audio. Russian has some sounds that don't exist in English, and you need to hear it to get the rhythm of spoken Russian. The Penguin book starts with a useful lesson on the sounds associated with the Cyrillic letters. Even with that, you're not likely to get the difference between 'OH' and 'OHA' (he and she) without hearing them. For Italian, I like Vellacio's Teach Yourself Italian, similar to the Teach Yourself Portuguese. It comes with text and audio. Of your four languages, I think Portuguese is the easiest for English speakers, though Italian is close. (Italian still retains plurals that are closer to Latin; Portuguese forms plurals with s, as in English.) And once you have one Romance language in hand, the others come pretty easy. Latin and Russian are both grammatically complex, but Latin has a familiar alphabet and more familiar vocabulary. With Russian, you can probably get the Cyrillic pretty much down in an evening, but grammar and vocabulary are a long slog. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Michael K. Senior Member United States Joined 5731 days ago 568 posts - 886 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto | Message 4 of 25 21 January 2012 at 10:33pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks Sprachprofi & Opensecret.
I was figuring just using Assimil or TYS, but I didn't know if there were any other courses out there that just focused on reading. I don't think the Penguin Russian course comes with audio, but I've heard good things about it. Edited by Michael K. on 21 January 2012 at 10:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 5 of 25 22 January 2012 at 12:53am | IP Logged |
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once you're past the beginner level, the gloss site is a great resource for learning to read: http://gloss.dliflc.edu/Default.aspx some lesson types like structural or discourse are especially good.
for Italian, Come leggere is a very good one, though it's better suited for classroom study or just studying in pairs. Though really with so many Romance languages, my advice is just to readreadread them. and maybe check out the book "The Seven Sieves: How to read all the Romance languages right away" or anything about the development of Latin. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Michael K. Senior Member United States Joined 5731 days ago 568 posts - 886 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto | Message 6 of 25 22 January 2012 at 1:38am | IP Logged |
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Thank you, Serpent.
Have you ever read the book "From Latin to Romance in Sound Charts"? It deals with Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese, so I think I would find it interesting. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 7 of 25 22 January 2012 at 5:57am | IP Logged |
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Oh thank you! It looks really good. I love the vulgar Latin forms.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Antanas Tetraglot Groupie Lithuania Joined 4814 days ago 91 posts - 172 votes Speaks: Lithuanian*, English, Russian, German Studies: FrenchB1, Spanish | Message 8 of 25 26 January 2012 at 12:23am | IP Logged |
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For learning (reading) Italian there is an old German language based course:
Methode Mertner: Italienisch by Robert Mertner By the way, he also published courses for other languages, such as Spanish, English, French, and even Czech. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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