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New Assimil Malgache! | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| egill Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5696 days ago 418 posts - 791 votes  Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 9 of 33 15 March 2011 at 1:23am | IP Logged | |||||
Assimil is first and foremost a business and they seek to make money. They have no obligation to make sure all languages, including ones with little to no demand for are not neglected. This has more to deal with market forces than it has to do with "disdain". The idea that the company has some kind of personal vendetta against certain languages is laughable. I would personally be ecstatic to see an Assimil Icelandic, but I think the demand simply isn't there. I think as language enthusiasts, we sometimes tend to overestimate our own importance and forget that our interests don't necessarily line up with the market at large. 8 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5585 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 10 of 33 15 March 2011 at 1:50am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'd love to see Russian personally, but I'll wait. I won't be buying Malagasy :D
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| magictom123 Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5593 days ago 272 posts - 365 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 11 of 33 15 March 2011 at 12:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I wouldn't mind seeing a 'Using Italian' course with an English base but I don't think it
will happen any time soon. 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 12 of 33 15 March 2011 at 2:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
True. But they publish materials that only appeal to self-learners. In the English-speaking world, you will find many teachers using Teach Yourself or Colloquial as student textbooks for group classes. Even some universities do, and this often helps support publication of less popular languages. (Routledge's Colloquial Basque was written by lecturers from the University of Nevada in Reno, and is used as their course text. This gave it a modest guaranteed audience, making the whole thing slightly more economically supportable.)
If they chose to "revisit" those languages rather than continuing to sell their current version, there must have been a reason. If they could maintain the same level of sales by simply continuing to sell their existing products, they would do so, as making a new course is expensive. How do you decide which course to buy? For many people, "old" is equivalent to "out of date". Many web shops list the first publication date of a product in a very prominent place. As for "neglected" languages -- they are neglected by consumers, not by publishers. Publishers follow the demand. But again -- Malagasy is a language of the old French empire. I haven't ever seen a Malagasy book in a bookshop in Edinburgh. Bengali, Sankskri and Panjabi are languages of the old British empire, and they're in bookshops across the UK. And I've never seen books for most of the languages of the ex-Soviet states, but most of them are available in all good bookshops in Moscow. Assimil know their market. However "international" they may be, their core audience is the French. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| bushwick Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6244 days ago 407 posts - 443 votes Speaks: German, Croatian*, English, Dutch Studies: French, Japanese | Message 13 of 33 15 March 2011 at 8:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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dunno, it's not as black and white as you put, altough both points have some truth in them.
yes, they are a french market, but ocassionally their products' audience seem to be small at best, like the already mention Ancient Egyptian. not to mention the various regional French languages and dialects that get a whole sans peine treatment. also, the colony argument doesn't stand us well, as their support for african languages is generally low, i.e. no lingala, when I suppose most expatriates there would be French. in any case, we don't know their modus operandi. but you have one more person who greatly longs for an Assimil Islandais, I'd jump at it. you can always start a petition :D 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 14 of 33 15 March 2011 at 9:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think Bushwick is quite right: It's not black and white and we don't know their modus operandi.
Assimil is a French company and their home market is not only their most important in terms of profit, but also the market they know best. There they have a network of resellers, and they know what will sell or not. I guess that their "regional language" courses sell quite well in their respective regions. The Dutch course probably sells relatively well in Belgium, which is most likely part of their "home market". It may be important to them to have wide range of languages in order to be the number one choice and market leader in France. That may justify publishing a few titles with low sales. They also need capable and willing authors as well as actors (for the audio). Overall, Assiml's interest in the anglophone market seems surprisingly low. It's a potentially huge market, and it's quite easy to adapt the courses from a French base to an English base. All Assimil does is to translate the French translation of the dialogues and make a new set of grammar notes. For instance there is no "Assimil Using German", and the market for such a book is probably much larger than the market for an "Assimil Le Islandais". On the other hand, there are many strong competitors in the English speaking world: Teach Yourself, Colloquial, Linguaphone, Baron's, Rosetta Stone, Living Language, Made Simple, Berlitz and Hugo to name but a few. 1 person has 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 15 of 33 15 March 2011 at 9:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm guessing Assimil may occasionally decide to publish a book for a lesser known language in part because it was handed a well-written, yet cheaply-acquired lesson plan, and in part because publishing it at a low cost and in low numbers presents an interesting publicity event.
After all, their book on Malagasy has triggered a lengthy discussion here, yet I suspect none of us will buy it. Edited by Arekkusu on 15 March 2011 at 9:56pm 2 persons have 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 16 of 33 16 March 2011 at 10:42am | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, I suspect this (publicity) is one of the key reasons. The regional languages of France no doubt sell reasonably well on their own terms, but probably generate a lot of goodwill among people in those regions (whether they speak the language or not). Assimil therefore become the "good guys" and get lots of free press (see also Rosetta Stone's "Endangered Language Program"), making people more likely to buy their other products. I've always thought that if Assimil wanted to make it big in the UK market, releasing a range of Celtic language courses would be the best way to grab media attention and avoid becoming just another French/Spanish/Italian course among dozens on the shelves. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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