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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| alancairns Diglot Groupie Canada Joined 6106 days ago 49 posts - 51 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 1 of 9 31 August 2008 at 5:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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Next June I will be having a holiday in the Balearics (details tba). My Spanish is quite solid, but I'd like to speak at
least a little Catalan. Materials seem pretty sparse. Can anyone advise me what is the best approach? Alan 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| goosefrabbas Triglot Pro Member United States Joined 6184 days ago 393 posts - 475 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German, Italian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 9 31 August 2008 at 8:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've heard that Assimil's "El Catalan Sin Esfuerzo" is very good. I couldn't find any other decent-looking materials for learning Catalan.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| alancairns Diglot Groupie Canada Joined 6106 days ago 49 posts - 51 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 3 of 9 01 September 2008 at 2:36am | IP Logged | ||
Thanks. I have looked at that, but it is hard to find here in Canada. Amazon doesn't have it, and amazon.com has only the book, not the CDs. I guess I'll just have to look round a bit more. Alan. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6519 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 4 of 9 01 September 2008 at 3:56am | IP Logged | ||
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If your Spanish is rock solid then you probably don't need a regular course. A lot of exposure, preferably in combination with some bilingual texts, will soon make it possible for you at least to read the language. After that you should listen to Catalan TV and radio through the internet until you also can understand the spoken version, and finally you could study some of the small books that compare Castillian and Catalan to learn some of 'the false friends'. My guess is that you don't have native Catalan speakers around you so try to think in the languages, single words first, later full sentences, and then you can finetune your pronunciation when you are there. If - and that will be a problem for you - IF you can persuade the local people not to speak in English to you! The Balearic Islands are full of tourists, and nobody expects any tourist to speak Catalan. Edited by Iversen on 01 September 2008 at 3:58am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5827 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 6 of 9 01 September 2008 at 7:19am | IP Logged | ||
Waste Of Time. I bought one of the Talk Now! series several years ago and it is atrociously bad. The coverage is much sparser than many of the most basic printed phrasebooks. The stuff's all template as well -- a native speaker just fills in the gaps and they call this a "course". It makes no attempt to address the peculiarities of a language and many of the phrases are hideously unnatural as they attempt to translate something that really doesn't translate. (I got laughed at once for this!) Many of the vocabulary items it teaches are international, so you really don't need to be taught them in order to know them. Most people are able to guess "taxi" and "train", and any Spanish speakers will be able to have a good guess at aeroplane, too. Talk Now! is all talk and no... well... talk. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 6831 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 9 01 September 2008 at 3:17pm | IP Logged | ||
Amazon.fr has it: link. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| random_man Triglot Newbie Brazil Joined 6094 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, French | Message 8 of 9 05 September 2008 at 8:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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Someone once suggested me to download on emule a catalan course called "El Català Diari", which was distributed by a catalan newspaper a few years ago and directed to people interested in applying for a language certificate exam. It's not really a commercial course and has "Generalitat de Catalunya" in the credits. On the other hand, downloading it may still be a copyright infringement, although I couldn't find in the course presentation any restriction on distribution.
I only briefly looked at the course. It's all in catalan but you can follow with a good knowledge of Spanish and an online dictionary. The format is html/flash and includes lots of audio and exercises. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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