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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| stephenk Newbie United States Joined 5524 days ago 28 posts - 33 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Gujarati | Message 1 of 5 19 March 2009 at 3:52am | IP Logged | ||
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Professor,
I recently viewed your Youtube videos and I found myself with several questions to ask. The most important question came to me after viewing your insightful video on your scriptorium method. I'm currently learning Gujarati and I find the lack of materials a bit disheartening. I have Teach Yourself Gujarati and Colloquial Gujarati. Neither of these methods go into great detail the script, nor do they give any information about learning the script. How can a complete beginner use the scriptorium method and still have it be useful? I'd also like your advice on the two books. Should I use them together or should I finish one before starting on the other? They seem to have a very similar format, but I think having both will be able to clarify some concepts for me. Also, if you have any more advice or encouragements, it would be extremely grateful. I hope that I can make some progress with these two courses - they're pretty much the only decent resources that I could find on Gujarati! Sincerely, Stephen Kelly 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7034 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes  | Message 2 of 5 21 March 2009 at 12:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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Mr. Kelly,
There are more Gujarati resources out there. Watch my Central Institute for Indian Languages (CIIL) review - they make an intensive course for it. You will certainly want to get: H.M. Lambert. Gujarati Language Course. (Sonex Publications, 1985), which comes with 5 hours of recordings. It is more systematically scholarly and thorough than either the Colloquial or the TYS course, though Rachel Dwyer's book looks to be quite solid. For the time being, Colloquial and TYS are what you have now and you describe yourself as a complete beginner having difficulty coming to terms with the script and wondering how to work through these two books... Well, Dwyer's book at least seems to me to have a relatively decent introduction to the Gujarati script and sound system. Perhaps you ought to concentrate on really mastering that one chapter first and foremost? Then, for as to how to work through these two courses, rather than doing one first and then the other, I would recommend that you use them together, either skimming them in their entirety time and again, going deeper each time, or more selectively seeking out the information you want (as Moses McCormick describes doing) in one book to compare what the other says about the same topic. You may also want to investigate some software products. EuroTalkInteractive has a simple program for learning words and sounds, which might well help you with the script. There are also probably a fair number of other CDROM's you could track down, designed mainly for diaspora families. Some of these might be good, but I feel compelled to warn you that all the Indian language learning software I myself have ever ordered has been defective. Maybe I have just had a run of bad luck, but after getting my hopes and expectations up and being defrauded multiple times, I will not spend any more money on these products until I am shown one that functions properly. I do not know where you live, but if you can possibly visit a city that has a neighborhood with Indian stores, then it would be very much worth your while to go there. Here in Berkeley, California, there are a number of shops that look like general import stores for food products, clothing, or musical instruments, and although you would never know it from the signs or window displays, some of them have large selections of books as well. You can probably find many useful texts there, and in particular I think you would benefit from getting a series of progressive readers intended for grade schoolers and containing culturally relevant folk tales and the like in large, clear print. I know that the store nearest here has such series for Sanskrit, Hindi, and Panjabi, and I am 90+% positive that I have seen them for Gujarati there as well. Likewise, if you have access to an interlibrary loan system like Link+, you may be able to borrow some children's story books from, say, the San Francisco Public Library, which has a decent selection. These would be very good for getting you into the script. I hope this information is helpful to you and I wish the best of success in your studies, Alexander Arguelles 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| stephenk Newbie United States Joined 5524 days ago 28 posts - 33 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Gujarati | Message 3 of 5 21 March 2009 at 2:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Professor Arguelles,
Wow, it is indeed great to hear about the other courses. I am particularly interested in finding the course by H.M Lambert. I fear that both Lambert's book and the CIIL book will be hard to find. In the case with the first, if I manage to find the book, I highly doubt I'll be as lucky with the Audio. I notice that you have quite a collection of older language learning books. I'm assuming some of them must have been your father's. As for the others, where do you manage to find them? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7034 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 4 of 5 24 March 2009 at 6:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes, in point of fact, my father is forever acquiring new materials and so purging his shelves to make room, and he always gives me a chance to take anything I want before he heads off to the used bookshops to sell the rest off, so I have already inherited many tomes from him. However, he has never had much use for recorded materials, so all that I have in that regard, as well as still the great majority of my own collection, is the result of my own decades of active hunting and acquisition. Indeed, at last count I had methods, manuals, recordings, etc., etc., for the study of 150+ different languages in my personal resource center. I myself have never gotten to use most of the material and I never will, but I hope to make it the focal starting point of a comprehensive institutional resource center not too many years down the road. In the much nearer future, however, I will offer webcam coaching and consulting so that people in your shoes can learn about, access, and sample materials like these Gujarati recordings by studying with me one on one despite distance and physical separation.
AA 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| stephenk Newbie United States Joined 5524 days ago 28 posts - 33 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Gujarati | Message 5 of 5 24 March 2009 at 7:59pm | IP Logged | ||
That would be greatly beneficial. I'll be on the lookout for further updates about that from you. I would surely jump at the chance when such a program becomes available. I think it would be great to study with you, not so much to access the materials, but because I believe that with one-to-one coaching from you, I could learn valuable study techniques that will benefit me in all languages that I plan to study after I reach the level I'm looking for with Gujarati. After Gujarati, I plan to move on to Hindi, Kannada, Panjabi, Bengali, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, and Arabic. Since I'm 19, I feel that I'm in the perfect position to learn a solid foundation of language learning techniques that will carry with me throughout my life. On another note, I've been lucky enough to find the book with the original five audio tapes. I can't wait for their arrival. It was a pretty expensive buy, but I'm sure it will be well worth it. I will need to look into how to upload and edit cassettes digitally. I fear that five hours spread across five tapes would involve a lot of pausing, rewinding, and forwarding if used correctly during study. I don't want to subject the tapes to too much of that when I could simply have a digital copy that I can abuse however much I'd like. Edited by stephenk on 26 March 2009 at 10:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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