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Catalan - Why so few resources? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Spanishdream Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5114 days ago 11 posts - 14 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Spanish, Italian | Message 1 of 26 09 October 2011 at 6:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi there, I'd like people to share their Catalan resources if it's not too much trouble.
I'm really struggling to find resources to learn from. I have been on www.parla.cat but I'm not a big fan really. My favourite method of learning has been with Michel Thomas, does anyone have a course similar to his method of learning with Catalan? Thanks. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5457 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 2 of 26 09 October 2011 at 7:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Why so few? There are only a few million speakers and most of them are bilingual.
Don't know of anything similar to Michel Thomas, but here are some other suggestions: Assimil El catalán sin esfuerzo (Spanish) Assimil Le catalan (French) Teach Yourself Catalan (There is an old version (book only; quite good) and a newer one (new book + CD)) Colloquial Catalan Digui Digui Curs de català per a estrangers (textbook + handbook in English + audio; probably out of print) Edited by tractor on 09 October 2011 at 8:07pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Spanishdream Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5114 days ago 11 posts - 14 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Spanish, Italian | Message 3 of 26 09 October 2011 at 9:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well there are many more speakers of Catalan than Welsh, but I can find so many things to learn Welsh. I would have thought that the Catalan government would be trying to promote the language more. Thanks for the suggestions, but I already know them. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| July Diglot Senior Member Spain Joined 5277 days ago 113 posts - 208 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishB2 Studies: French | Message 4 of 26 09 October 2011 at 9:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I just want to learn to understand Catalan as well as a native Spanish speaker, so that
I know what's going on when I visit there, but I'm not too worried about learning to speak it until I get my Castellano perfect. Tractor has mentioned all the textbook-style Catalan resources I know. I have been enjoying the Assmil book, even if it is from 1979. It moves quite fast, but it's well thought out. Remember that you can also watch Catalan TV online if you look carefully. There's also http://www.tv3.cat/ which shows Catalan shows. I hope you can watch them outside Spain. There are also a number of DVDs available from Spain which have a Catalan soundtrack (for example, I have Heroes Season 1 and the Harry Potter movies dubbed into Catalan, which have been very helpful). That way, you can get the hang of listening to the language. Good luck. It really is such a beautiful language. Edited by July on 09 October 2011 at 10:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5770 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 5 of 26 09 October 2011 at 9:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
Are you by any chance looking for material that has English as source language? I just remember that in Barcelona, there were as many textbooks for Catalan as for Castellano. But the source language for all or almost all of them was Castellano. http://catalunya-lliure.com/curs/catala.html http://www.ub.edu/slc/es/esslink.htm May be a start. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5134 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 6 of 26 09 October 2011 at 10:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm guessing that if you're asking for Michel Thomas-like resources, you're not too far along in your Catalan studies, but...
If you are looking for authentic Catalan resources, there's plenty out on the net - radio, TV, you name it. For instance, I have "Catalunya Radio" post all its updates to my Facebook news stream. I get several updates a day with usually interesting stories and links to the streaming broadcast. Twitter is another good option for resources. Sign up and follow elperiodico.cat or another newspaper, for example. R. == 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5457 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 7 of 26 10 October 2011 at 12:26am | IP Logged | |||||
tv3.cat is available outside Spain. A few programmes are restricted to Spain though. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6015 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 8 of 26 10 October 2011 at 12:35am | IP Logged | |||||
There's a number of factors. 1) Languages studied vary by country -- the "big" languages are studied everywhere, but all the popular "small" languages are within the country's sphere of influence. So Assimil (a French company) produces resources for small languages such as the regional languages of France and the languages of former colonies, but not Welsh or Galician. 2) There are a lot more language books published in the UK than in Spain. Assimil is fairly popular, but the big one seems to be Pons. It looks a bit like a cross between TY or Colloquial and the sort of "magaziney" stuff you get in most classroom textbooks, but I've never used it. 3) In the UK, the first reaction of most people who want to learn a language is "I'll buy a book and see if I like it before I spend money on classes". In other countries people seem to look at classes as a first option. Resources-wise: The textbook that seems to be most popular for Catalan is Veus, but this is one of those all-in-the-language ones designed for use in adult education classes. This means you can spend a lot on textbooks and workbooks even before buying any audio, which is quite expensive as it's priced as a classroom set. There is nothing MT-like as far as I know, unless you were to find a private language teacher who is a massive MT fan and who also speaks Catalan and hire him to teach you.... ;-)
TV3's domestic stuff can be watched from the UK, but dubbed programmes are only viewable from Spain. Edit: removed false claim that Pons is a Spanish company -- see later posts. Edited by Cainntear on 10 October 2011 at 7:18pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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