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Programs for Serbo-Croatian | ||
Tags: Serbo-Croatian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7377 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes  12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 9 12 April 2005 at 6:55am | IP Logged | ||
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What are the best programs for Serbo Croatian? I want someting that comes with tapes and goes to an intermediate-advanced level.
So far I have found the following programs, some of which have been discussed in other threads on this forum: Assimil Le Serbo-Croate sans peine I bought this one yesterday and must agree with Ardaschir that it is a very good program. The sound is slow and artificial but they use several native speakers and the text and structure of the course is well made and interesting. I think I could learn the language with that program, however I'd prefer something that is more intensive on audio and less on text. Linguaphone Serbo-Croatian Although Linguaphone does not advertise this course anymore, I am told they still sell it if you call. It seems very complete but I never tried any Linguaphone program. FSI Serbo-Croatian It comes with almost 50 tapes and two volumes and seems to me the closest to what I want. I wonder if it is comparable to FSI Spanish? Does anybody have suggestions or comments? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7257 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 2 of 9 12 April 2005 at 8:23am | IP Logged | ||
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Administrator, I hope I wrote in my recent post to Serobocroatian that the tapes for the Linguaphone course are as artificially slow as those for the Assimil course. I don't know why they did this, but you can solve it to a certain degree by listening to the tapes on a machine that allows you to speed them up somewhat, which helps some, but if you try to get the voices to a natural speed, they sound like Mickey Mouse. I know this kind of thing is irritating, but you can focus on the fact that you are getting excellent phonetic training with this kind of tape, and eventually you get somewhat used to the speed.
Since this is obviously to be the next language that you add to your repertoire, may I suggest that you experiment with learning it via the Assimil method in the fashion I have described in the past rather than with your own tried and true FSI method? If you give this a chance, you might find that it works even better for you. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| msherl Newbie United Kingdom Joined 7232 days ago 14 posts - 14 votes Studies: Serbo-Croatian | Message 3 of 9 22 September 2005 at 10:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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A few comments:
(i) I think the reason some linguaphone courses are spoken so slowly is that they sometimes came complete with their own special tape player, which had a control for speeding-up the rate of speech. I could be wrong about this, but it certainly rings bells. (ii) I tried the linguaphone course for Serbo-Croat. I would say that it seemed very complete, in the sense that there were many exercises (over 20) and plenty of spoken material. However, I stopped using the course about half way through, since I'd begun attending small group lessons and my ability to speak increased more rapidly and the linguaphone course then seemed too basic. The slow rate of speech was by that point annoying. (ii) I once estimated the number of words taught in the linguaphone course (by counting the number of words on one page of the supplied dictionary and multiplying up) and it came close to 2000, which seems very good to me. (iv) I would say, though, that the accents of the actors on the linguaphone course are the most beautiful of any course I've heard since. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7377 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 9 23 September 2005 at 12:06am | IP Logged | ||
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msherl, thank you for your input. Have you done this course to the end? What level have you reached in Serbo-Croatian?
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| czech Senior Member United States Joined 7195 days ago 395 posts - 378 votes Studies: English* | Message 5 of 9 23 September 2005 at 3:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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Msherl, what type of exercises does it have? Substitution? Translation?
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| msherl Newbie United Kingdom Joined 7232 days ago 14 posts - 14 votes Studies: Serbo-Croatian | Message 6 of 9 23 September 2005 at 7:49pm | IP Logged | ||
I stopped half way through for reasons mentioned above. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| msherl Newbie United Kingdom Joined 7232 days ago 14 posts - 14 votes Studies: Serbo-Croatian | Message 7 of 9 23 September 2005 at 7:59pm | IP Logged | ||
I think I probably know about 2000-2500 words. I can converse with my teacher on many subjects (eg. tourism in Croatia, what I did at the weekend etc.) but when I hear a native speaker I only catch about half of the words (unless they speak slowly for me). I can only get the gist of newspaper articles without a dictionary and can of course read any book with one. For example I occasionally dive into a book written in Serbo-Croat and can read probably 75% without a dictionary but then there are always words that I don't know which are crucial for understanding a sentence. However some of these words are fairly obscure. I will give as an example the 10 most recent words I learnt: to separate, eccentric, to plod, abbey, to blink, to disappear, an instant, mocking, to jump, to hum. So hopefully from that you can guess the kind of level I'm at. Edited by msherl on 23 September 2005 at 8:07pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| msherl Newbie United Kingdom Joined 7232 days ago 14 posts - 14 votes Studies: Serbo-Croatian | Message 8 of 9 23 September 2005 at 8:05pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm doing this from memory now as I don't have access to the course at the moment, but I seem to recall there are three types of exercise with every section: (i) Speaking: you fill in the gaps of a conversation you've already heard fully. (ii) Reading: you translate some sentences into English. (iii) Grammar: they give you a model sentence with, say, a couple of declensions. Then they give you a whole list of similar questions but you fill in the declensions yourself. In this sense it's learn by example, rather than understanding, though there are separate explanatory notes on the grammar. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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