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Criticised Assimil programs | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5347 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes  Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 41 of 67 17 March 2014 at 11:11am | IP Logged | |||||
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@Cristina
No, it’s not wrong, just not the most common way to express those concepts. “Prima colazione” is unambiguously “breakfast”, but maybe 95%* of the time “colazione” is used on its own for the first meal in the morning. There remains a 5%* of occurrences where “colazione” is used for “lunch”, mainly in the phrases “colazione di lavoro” or “colazione d’affari”: as you can see it isn’t usually about a family noon meal, but a somewhat special occasion. Most Italians say “pranzo” for “lunch” in daily speech. So, the most common way to express the three main meals of the day, if no other information is available, is this: “colazione”: in the morning “pranzo”: at around noon “cena”: in the evening. Just remember these words are not totally unambiguous. From the Dizionario Garzanti (1987-2004):
* those percentages are not scientific, just a figure of speech which reflects my personal feeling for my mother tongue. Edited by Emme on 17 March 2014 at 11:11am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4636 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 42 of 67 17 March 2014 at 3:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
What they did was say that colazione was breakfast in one line, then pranzo as lunch in the same line. Then later in the lesson they typed colazione as lunch and pranzo as breakfast. I think they mixed it up in the exercises too. The last time I used the course was like a year ago, so I don't remember exactly each line that it was mentioned. There are many other typos in the book, but nothing as major as giving a word two different meanings in the same lesson. Edited by sillygoose1 on 17 March 2014 at 3:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| gregf Triglot Newbie Luxembourg Joined 3952 days ago 12 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Italian, Ancient Greek | Message 43 of 67 17 March 2014 at 4:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
Having just finished this book, I thought I'd throw in my two cents. The reviewer above obviously hasn't gotten very far in the book, because the entire storyline changes into a symposium about half-way through, with readings adapted from Xenophon's Symposium and Plato's Symposium. The last few dialogs even provide a re-telling of the Oddessy, followed by Socratic reflections on "true wealth" being in the soul, and the last bonus lesson contains the first 10 lines of the Oddessy in unadapted Epic Greek. I must say I've become completely enamored with this book, and I've been through quite a few Assimils: Spanish, Italian, Italian Perfectionnement, and now Grec Modern. The Grec ancien course is by far the best, with etymological and historical notes, musical interludes, poetry readings, etc. Now going back to the more "modern" language editions seems boring, (especially the modern Greek version, which does indeed seem stilted, from the first few chapters) simply because they don't contain as much cultural information. As for the sound, it also took me a little while to get used to the pitch accents. But compared to other readings you can find online in Ancient Greek, they were very well done, and really do add to the learning experience. Spend a day or two getting used to the pronounciation, and you'll see what I mean. People spend too much time arguing about Ancient Greek pronunciation anyway: after an hour, your brain will get used to different pronunciation schemes, as long as they're consistent. Finally, Ancient Greek is indeed a difficult language, and you shouldn't expect to learn the verbal system through the Assimil notes. That said, working through the whole book after you've got a fairly solid basis in the grammar (after the first 10 chapters of Hansen & Quinn, for example) makes for a much richer learning experience. As with many of their courses, Assimil's Grec ancien isn't really for absolute beginners. Bottom line: for my money, the Ancient Greek course is really really special. Edited by gregf on 17 March 2014 at 4:16pm 10 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| alang Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7221 days ago 563 posts - 757 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 44 of 67 17 March 2014 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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@gregf, Thank you for your input and advice. Latin is my interest for Ancient languages, then Ancient Greek. Your review of the program has me sold on it. I will buy it in the Italian base, due to the idea the Italians of course were heavily influenced by them and all back then. Any suggestions for an Ancient Greek primer, before Assimil? I feel Assimil is heavy for beginners. I have the Assimil Scandinavian languages in the German base, but intend to start off with something else like Pimsleur, TY, Lextra or Langenscheidt. This way I can avoid making less errors when I actually go through Assimil. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4889 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 45 of 67 25 March 2014 at 11:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
I made it to lesson 66 - so a bit more than half way through. I switched to Pharr, which starts right off with the Odyssey. I actually liked Le grec ancien for the most part; my biggest complaint is that it introduces far too much information at once for a beginner to assimilate it. I don't think it is designed for " A0 / false beginners" at all. I might move back to it now that I have a better understanding of the grammar. I might actually break up my critiques into two: Assimil courses that are frustrating for beginners (Ancient Greek, Turkish), and Assimil courses that are outright bad (Arabic).
quarreling? Edited by kanewai on 25 March 2014 at 11:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6379 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 46 of 67 30 June 2014 at 2:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am adding my review of Chinese With Ease that is in my log. Here it is for those interested:
Since I'm close to the last lesson of Chinese With Ease, I thought I'd comment on the quality of the course. I'm not going to actually speak of the quality of the lessons and the recordings, which are both good. The dialogs are sometimes funny as expected, the actors are good, and usually the vocabulary is helpful, everyday language. The problem I have found is that the second volume is riddled with errors. It was somewhat surprising because I don't remember the first volume being so bad. Specifically: 1) Tons of tone errors. I mean literally dozens and dozens. Also, can someone confirm or refute the following claim in Assimil that first appeared in lesson 102 (!). "Before a fourth tone syllable and before the classifier ge, qi1 (seven) and ba1 (eight) take a second tone." I've never heard of this before. If it's true, I have no idea why they waited so long to mention it. 2) Audio not matching the text. Sometimes, it was simply prices not matching (one kuai vs. two kuai). In one or two cases, there were whole sentences in the audio that didn't appear in the text. The biggest one though was an entire lesson not matching at all (lesson 79). I bought the audio from someone who bought the French version of the program so maybe that's the source of the differences. But I've never heard of the same generation Assimil audio differing across L1s. 3) Some translations where pretty bad or missing. Battery was translated as accumulator. I guess that's from French. There were some words that were never included in the dialogs or in the glossary in the back of the book that showed up in the exercises. Also, there was at least one dialog where part of the literal translation wasn't included at all. 4) The voices weren't consistent in the dialogs. For example, in lesson 44 the actors switched characters midway through the dialog. 5) Continuity problems/formatting problems. Some lessons that seemed to have several dialogs were not labelled/formatted as such. It wasn't always clear if the problem was the lack of formatting or a poorly written lesson that was actually supposed to be one dialog. All in all, still a very good course but obvously there was some shoddy work that I hadn't expected. It wouldn't have made me skip the course if I had known, but it did make the learning experience more fustrating at times than it had to be. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6379 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 47 of 67 30 June 2014 at 2:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
I don't remember too many errors but then again I did the course several years ago and I was already at a a level where I didn't need the translations. But I agree, it is a fun course and definitely worth trying! I also love the voice actors. They are very good and have lovely pronunciation. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4909 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 48 of 67 30 June 2014 at 3:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
It's off-topic, but I hate to leave a question like this unanswered. Learn Ancient Greek by Peter Jones is a simple and fun introduction. Before you get the idea that it's a dumbed down approach, he is the editor of the excellent Reading Greek course by JACT, as well as Reading Latin. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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