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Teach Yourself | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| pfwillard Pro Member United States Joined 5493 days ago 169 posts - 205 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 17 of 71 15 December 2009 at 3:09am | IP Logged | ||
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Followup to pookiebear79's comment: I see that there is a pre-order for a $26.00 Yiddish audiobook and a $66.00 complete course. Warning: TY CDs are of limited value on their own. I will probably buy TY Yiddish just out of curiosity.
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| Chris Heptaglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6915 days ago 287 posts - 452 votes Speaks: English*, Russian, Indonesian, French, Malay, Japanese, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Korean, Mongolian | Message 18 of 71 13 January 2010 at 6:51am | IP Logged | ||
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I never managed to get back to you folks on this - sorry - been really busy! I'll answer the questions I can now...
* I hate the Teach Yourself series... :) So, don't use it. Simple. * Perhaps they could correct the sigma problem with the Ancient Greek course. I would also love to see a "Teach Yourself Tamil". I can't speak for the Greek course, and as for Tamil, whether TY release a title depends on projected sales for a particular language, as far as I know. I wish they would do a Mongolian volume, but they won't for that reason. I've already suggested it. * I wish they would fix the audio. There is way too much English on them. Actually, it would be nice if there wasn't any English on them. I would just want the dialogues recorded on them. I think the amount of English depends on the course. I don't think there is too much English on my courses, but as someone points out further down, Audacity allows you to fix the problem. * They could use the scripts for all of the languages such as Japanese and Korean. That would be nice instead of Romaji in those. I am pretty sure the Korean course uses hangul, but I haven't seen the updated Japanese course. Again, I have nothing to do with those volumes, so I can't make fair comment. I don't work for Hodder. * Hmmm... will they be selling the older versions at a discounted price? I doubt it! * I hope that making them more "user-friendly" doesn't mean even less of the target language on the recordings No. By more user-friendly, I mean that extra insights and learning tips have been added, and self-check tests are also available at the end of every unit. The fonts have also been changed, making them easier on the eye and less cluttered. * Will there be more audio material, or is it just an expansion of the text? And most importantly, will anything be taken out? I think it depends on the particular title or author what, if anything, is taken out, but from the brief I have been working on for the re-release, all the changes are geared towards expanding the texts, not reducing them. * I have both Teach Yourself Indonesian and Teach Yourself Malay, both of which were written (joint written) by Chris. I have a feeling he has written some others. No, just those, although I have been writing language teaching guides on and off, and I've been working on a book about learning languages for about 8 years now. * What's the difference between the two "Bahasa" courses? Is the Malay one just a translation of the Indonesian one or do they contain radically different material? I quite like TY Malay and I've been debating whether to get the Indonesian version. As the two languages are really two forms of the same language, there is bound to be similarity. There's no sense in re-inventing the wheel after all! With the exception of Linguaphone, I don't know of any publishers with both a Malay and Indonesian course that isn't basically the same. However, when TY Malay was being written, or should I say 'rewritten', it began to take on a life of its own, and I feel it now has its own identity. * I am not sorry I have them both. Thanks, fanatic. * The same goes for Colloquial Indonesian and Malay. They are practically the same book--even closer than Teach Yourself. If you want to see ones that are really close - practically twins - look at the Singapore Times courses! * Can any explain the difference between the older black cover editions and the more recent white cover editions? Are the exactly the same content just reprinted? or is there different content? The 'Complete' ones are the new ones with additional content. Which ones are the 'black' ones? Do you mean the ones with the collages or the ones with the abstract covers? * Followup to pookiebear79's comment: I see that there is a pre-order for a $26.00 Yiddish audiobook and a $66.00 complete course. Warning: TY CDs are of limited value on their own. I will probably buy TY Yiddish just out of curiosity. I'd shop around first. That seems a little steep. You may get a better deal ordering from the UK. Hope I answered people's questions. Back to proof-reading... 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6376 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 19 of 71 13 January 2010 at 8:06am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm trying out Teach Yourself Cantonese at the moment. It's a pretty good book, so far. I like it. Some Audacity editing makes for good audio material. The two gripes I have are:
1: There's a slow version and then a "natural" version of each dialogue. This isn't so much a problem with the material that's there as a waste of space. I'd much prefer double the amount of audio and no slow versions. 2: There's no translation of the dialogues. I find this very annoying. I guess there's some pedagogic rationale behind it, but it really doesn't work with how I want to learn. I assume all TY programs have these two features? As I said, apart from this, I do quite like the course. It's not as academic and dry as some others might be, though I guess that depends on the author. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| gogglehead Triglot Senior Member Argentina Joined 5869 days ago 248 posts - 320 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Russian, Italian | Message 20 of 71 13 January 2010 at 10:07am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't think that that TY series is all that bad. I do agree, however, that some editions are better than others.
I tend to use the newer editions to break into the language if I have absolutely no grounding it, and then use the older versions, which are much more extensive. The older versions (from the 50s and 60s I think) are easily available from charity shops and second-hand stores, I bought a whole bunch of them in the UK for about a pound each. I do agree that I could not use them exclusively though, for a popular language that has lots of resources available, I would mix up half a dozen resources or more. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 5919 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 21 of 71 13 January 2010 at 10:37am | IP Logged | ||
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I have TY Finnish, and it has neither of those two issues. It seems basically fine. The chapter titles are read in English and Finnish and there's some other English, but it's not too bad. TY Finnish remind me of every other beginner language textbook I've read. The audio recording quality is fine.
Oddly, they added a brief advertisement at the beginning of the CD that is recorded with a nasty hiss, but I just didn't copy that track to my iphone. It's printed like a paperback, so the paper has a cheap feel to it. I'm a beginner, so if there were Finnish errors in this course, I would never know. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| pfwillard Pro Member United States Joined 5493 days ago 169 posts - 205 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 22 of 71 14 January 2010 at 1:52am | IP Logged | ||
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What is the legality of modifying TY recordings? I am in the US and I've paid full price for new copies. I would like to dissect out the the dialogs from the English narration.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6496 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 23 of 71 14 January 2010 at 3:17am | IP Logged | ||
I don't think there would be a problem if you are modifying the recordings for personal use. It's not like you're trying to resell them or replace the original. You bought it you can break it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Genocyde Groupie United States Joined 5566 days ago 56 posts - 75 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Mandarin, Persian | Message 24 of 71 14 January 2010 at 4:10am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm a fan of the Teach Yourself series, of course, I can only speak for the Russian since it's the only one I have, and I'm not that far into it, but so far, I like it.
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