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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Tydin2 Newbie United States Joined 5504 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 1 of 10 29 October 2009 at 2:33am | IP Logged |
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Just because I'm curious, what is in your personal library, pertaining to language learning. My own is relatively small considering I have no real income, because I am a teen. The books I have as of now are as follows; "Chinese through Tone & Color", "Oxford Japanese Grammar & Verbs", a Japanese dictionary and "Japanese From Zero! 1".
I would love to hear any recommendations you may have.* 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7155 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 2 of 10 29 October 2009 at 4:27am | IP Logged |
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As much as I'm convinced that someone like Iversen (to name one) has a bigger personal library for language-learning, I don't want to bore anyone by putting down a complete list of my library here. If anyone were genuinely interested in what I have (i.e. with full bibliographic information), I'd let it be known via PM.
A quick look at my bookshelf and some boxes in my room show that I have courses, dictionaries, readers, recordings, reference manuals, and/or textbooks for the following languages: Czech Estonian Finnish French German Hungarian Lithuanian Mongolian Polish Romanian Russian Serbo-Croatian (includes any stuff that bears in its title "Croatian" or "Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian") Slovak Slovenian Turkish Ukrainian I got most of the French and German stuff when I was studying those languages in school and university. The material for the other languages has built up since my days in university. The distribution of material that I have is also uneven as my collection of Polish learning materials is massive compared to what I have for Slovenian, as an example. I also have a few general-interest books on linguistics (including sociolinguistics) as well as a couple of more technical books on Slavonic languages and another on Uralic languages. Lastly I also have a curiosity in the form of Lonely Planet's phrasebook for Central Asia which focuses on Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Pashto, Tajik, Uigur and Uzbek but also touches on other languages such as Burushaski, Khowar, Russian, Turkmen, and Wakhi 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7375 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 10 29 October 2009 at 6:09am | IP Logged |
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I have so many books about language, linguistics or just language programs that I ran out of bookcases long ago. But at the end of the day, what matters are really good books more than the quantity of them. It certainly is nice to be able to go from one to the other to read about a specific problem in the book where it's best explained, but you can be fine with few books you read often until you really master the contents.
If you wish for specific recommendations you need to start a thread saying "Which book for Japanese Grammar" or "Which book for Chinese vocabulary", otherwise people here will gloat about their personal libraries like I did and this won't help you much I guess! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5566 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 4 of 10 29 October 2009 at 7:06am | IP Logged |
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I also have multiple bookcases worth of language books, including dictionaries and coursebooks for dozens of languages I don't plan on ever studying, general linguistics texts, and of course plenty of language materials for the six languages I actually am studying, plus some for languages I'm just flirting with and hope to get into later (mmmmm...Dutch is so cool). It's a collection I've been building up since I was 12 and I first started making money delivering newspapers. And hopefully it will be growing today when I receive my copy of the Assimil course for Japanese!
I see you are studying Mandarin, so I can offer some recommendations for that language, as I am also studying it. First of all, you definitely want a copy of James Heisig's Remembering the Simplified Hanzi or Remembering the Traditional Hanzi (depending on which system you're learning). It is, hands down, the best method I have come across for learning Chinese characters quickly and accurately. And as for grammar books, I find Schaum's Outline of Chinese Grammar to be an excellent guide to Mandarin grammar. If you are looking for a general coursebook, I still have and still use my Integrated Chinese books from college. It's a really good course, though admittedly I have not tried any other Mandarin courses to compare it to. I am just starting out on Japanese, so I can't give you any recommendations for it besides James Heisig's Remembering the Kanji. The hanzi books I mentioned earlier are based on it, and I have been racing through the kanji using it. Edited by Levi on 29 October 2009 at 7:11am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6702 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 10 29 October 2009 at 10:57am | IP Logged |
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I do have a decent private library, and I once even published a photo of it because someone wanted to see it. However it is better to have the right books than a lot of books. I have bought a lot of dictionaries and grammars that I rarely use, because I couldn't get something that was really perfect - if I then later find something better I mostly keep the old books for reference and comparison.
With dictionaries I generally want a small pocket size one (like the micro ones of Collins or Langenscheidt) plus a medium sized one in each direction, but many of those I have bought are somewhere in between - and therefore not really suited for any particular purpose. But those were the ones I could find. And grammars are even more problematic, - I recently visited Albania and found a number of reasonable comprehensive dictionaries, but not one decent grammar. And even my searches on the internet didn't bring up anything really tempting. I have learnt to be sceptical about grammars (and dictionaries) written for speakers of my target language who need to learn a reference language like English, - but when I visit a book store somewhere that's the kind they usually have in stock. The internet is often a better place to search, but the transport expenses are scary and I can't check the books personally beforehand - the reviews at Amazon are useful, but not like having the book in my own hands before I buy. Without these problems my language library would be less than half its present size. Edited by Iversen on 29 October 2009 at 10:58am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5668 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 6 of 10 29 October 2009 at 11:56am | IP Logged |
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I have to agree with some of the others on here. Quite often, the more books you have the less chance there is that you will read them. It reminds me of an documentary I once saw on TV (and no doubt those with children can confirm this happens): two small children were put in a room with dozens of toys; they ran around for a few minutes picking a few up and putting them down, but pretty soon sat down bored and played with none of them. Later on, they were put in a room with just a couple of toys, and they played merrily for hours.
Having experienced the same problem with language books, I have been pretty ruthless and thrown many of mine out, and kept only those I really treasure. Most often these have been the "classics" (Assimil for various languages, for example) or reference grammars and dictionaries. For new purchases, I have over the past year got into the habit of promising to give them to specific friends within a given time period. This means I either have to finish them, or have wasted my money. For those few which turned out to be great, I have willingly bought a second copy when the deadline hits so I could fulfill the pledge and keep a copy for myself. One thing I would say about your money concerns limiting your library is that a great many learning materials are available second hand. For example, some time ago (after seeing a recommendation by Prof Arguelles) I bought the "Made Simple" series for 4 different languages for only 1 pence each (from amazon.co.uk). Indeed, many of my favourites have turned out to be out-of-print and were purchased 2nd hand, or were completely free (such as DLI and FSI courses). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| jondesousa Tetraglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/Zgg3nRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6263 days ago 227 posts - 297 votes Speaks: English*, Portuguese, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Mandarin, Spanish | Message 7 of 10 29 October 2009 at 12:40pm | IP Logged |
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Like Splog, I also have purchased many items second-hand. I find that Library booksales are a great way to expand one's library for very low cost (books are generally sold between $1-$3US). I wouldn't want to waste anyone's time with a long list of books, but if someone wanted to know what I have for a specific language, that would be easier (and much shorter).
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| DavidW Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6525 days ago 318 posts - 458 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French, Italian, Persian, Malay Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Portuguese, German, Urdu | Message 8 of 10 31 October 2009 at 1:13pm | IP Logged |
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When I first began to study languages, before I had fixed on a pattern of study, I would buy a lot of materials for the languages I was studying. Dictionaries, grammers, verb congugation books, text books, phrase books, vocab books, flash cards.. and it would get quite expensive. Now I try to get hold of a couple of linguaphone/assimil type courses (from ebay.co.uk or abebooks), and an audiolingual course (often a downloaded FSI course or I buy the textbook from abebooks), and that gets me going. I find the grammer explinations in these materials enough, and I rarely find use for dictionaries in my studies. I have these materials for all the languages I study, and a few which I don't (yet..), like Greek, Chinese and Japanese. For advanced study I read online, download audiobooks, or find people to speak with. Edited by DavidW on 31 October 2009 at 1:14pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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