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New Assimil Malgache! | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Guido Super Polyglot Senior Member ArgentinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6528 days ago 286 posts - 582 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, French, English, German, Italian, Portuguese, Norwegian, Catalan, Dutch, Swedish, Danish Studies: Russian, Indonesian, Romanian, Polish, Icelandic | Message 1 of 33 13 March 2011 at 7:33am | IP Logged | ||
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Assimil Malgache
There's also new versions for: Le Néerlandais (Dutch) (the other version had 85 lessons) Le Suédois (Swedish) (the old version was in two tomes of 50 lessons each) I'm still waiting for the Assimil Islandais... 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6142 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 2 of 33 13 March 2011 at 8:13am | IP Logged | ||
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How is it that they've come out with a course for Malagasy but not for Icelandic? I can't imagine that there
is much of a demand to learn Malagasy...at least not much (if at all) more than for Icelandic. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5453 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 3 of 33 13 March 2011 at 9:04am | IP Logged | ||
According to Wikipedia there are 20 million Malagasy speakers. There are a little more than 300 000 Icelandic speakers. Assimil is a French company and Madagascar is a former French colony. Iceland is not. 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5345 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 4 of 33 14 March 2011 at 6:27pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm always grateful for new Assimil courses, but for them to come out with this while there are no courses for most South Asian and several East European languages is a huge let down. I'd much rather see Estonian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Georgian, Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, Sinhalese, Sanskrit, Pali, Burmese, a full Thai course or many other languages than yet another Dutch course, of which I believe this is their third offering. I don't understand Assimil's disdain for Indian languages. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 5 of 33 14 March 2011 at 6:51pm | IP Logged | ||
As Tractor said, you forget that there are many French moving to Madagascar for purposes of international cooperation. France is, after all, Assimil's main market. By the way, do we have any Malagasy speakers/learners in this forum? Edited by Arekkusu on 14 March 2011 at 6:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Shenandoah Newbie United States Joined 5027 days ago 30 posts - 59 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 6 of 33 14 March 2011 at 11:01pm | IP Logged | ||
I've tried to do quite a bit of searching, and there is little about it here. Only 4 of us forum members have listed it in our profiles (two of us - myself included - on our "hit list," and the other two are beginner and intermediate). I consider myself "flirting" with it. I hope to extensively travel Madagascar one day - and if I can pull it off, do a stint in the Peace Corps there. Right now I only know a couple words. I'm trying to improve my French at the moment. When my French is strong enough, I will use French-based course materials to study Malagasy, since there is very little English-based. This Assimil (well, the older version until now) has been at the top of my wish list, but I'm not quite ready for it. Edited by Shenandoah on 14 March 2011 at 11:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 7 of 33 14 March 2011 at 11:48pm | IP Logged | ||
Be careful of anthropomorphising. I doubt Assimil "disdain" any languages. They do their market research and they produce what they think will sell. Somebody posted an email from Assimil which said that it takes something like 3 years to put an Assimil course together, and that's 3 years of several people's time. It's not cheap. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5345 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 8 of 33 15 March 2011 at 12:24am | IP Logged | ||
These decisions are made by human beings, not an automated algorithm, with human subjectivity a non-negligible factor. Assimil is not an obscure publisher catering to the needs of French provincials or colonists; they publish manuals from Egyptian hieroglyphs to Japanese and Chinese that are read by people all over the world. That they choose to revisit Dutch and Swedish, despite the abundance of materials for those languages, or tackle something like Malagasy while important languages like Bengali or Sanskrit remain neglected represents at the very least a crass oversight. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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