tobian Newbie Ethiopia Joined 5542 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English Studies: French
| Message 1 of 4 25 September 2009 at 7:17pm | IP Logged |
About 15 years ago, I used a book to learn beginner's French for a summer. Soon after I
dropped French and studied Spanish for three years. Today my Spanish is barely better
than my French (both are pretty bad). I've always thought the book I used for French
was my favorite foreign language learning book, and I've been searching for it, to no
avail.
I was wondering if anybody here has ever come across it and if so if you'd please tell
me more information about it. I only remember two details
1. It's cover (must be an old edition) was black, red and yellow. I'm pretty sure it
was a series for other languages as well.
2. The premise of the books is to follow an (English?) businessman who sets out to
learn French. Every chapter of the book is preceded by a small text in French
describing what this man did, or his coversations with his French speaking partner.
Then followed new vocabulary and exercises.
Sorry for the vague description but this is all i have.
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daristani Senior Member United States Joined 7147 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes Studies: Uzbek
| Message 2 of 4 25 September 2009 at 7:31pm | IP Logged |
Sounds to me like the "Made Simple" series, which indeed had covers in these colors and dealt with a businessman learning the language to visit the country he did business with.
The series (updated) is still in publication, and can be found on Amazon and elsewhere. Various forum members have said that they found the series quite good. (I like the books myself.) Originally, there were books for French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Russian, but I'm not sure if the Russian is still available.
For French, the British and American versions were a bit different; the American one had a larger format, dealt with an American (instead of a British) businessman, and most importantly, illustrated the French pronunciation with an imitated English spelling, while the British version used the International Phonetic Alphabet.
Check this and see if it looks familiar:
http://www.amazon.com/French-Made-Simple-understand-quickly/ dp/0767918592/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253899242&sr=1 -1
And it looks as if copies of the older version are also still available used:
http://www.amazon.com/French-Simple-Books-Eugene-Jackson/dp/ 0750602546/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253899242&sr=1-2
Edited by daristani on 25 September 2009 at 7:37pm
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tobian Newbie Ethiopia Joined 5542 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English Studies: French
| Message 3 of 4 25 September 2009 at 7:37pm | IP Logged |
Made Simple! That's exactly it.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
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fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 7149 days ago 1152 posts - 1818 votes Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto
| Message 4 of 4 26 September 2009 at 1:16pm | IP Logged |
I have Russian and Italian Made Simple in the American format and they are two of my favourite textbooks. I definitely recommend them. I prefer the American to the British format.
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