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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| BobMc Senior Member United States Joined 5429 days ago 36 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 19 26 February 2010 at 12:40am | IP Logged | |||||
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There are Assimil courses out there in French that I wish were available in Engligh, such as Brazilian Portuguese and Advanced German. I can not for the life of me figure out why companies like Assimil and Linguaphone don't go after Brazilian Portuguese. Brazil has 200 million people and is an up and coming economy, and there seems to be a fair amount of people in the U.S. interested in learning the language from a career standpoint. Yes, Rosetta and Pimsleur have offerings, but no one seems to progress that far with those.
Anyway, to my real question. Do current Assimil courses ever get discontinued? If I do plan to learn French someday, should I worry that some of the current courses with a French base language could get discontinued, or does that rarely ever happen? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5366 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 2 of 19 26 February 2010 at 1:29am | IP Logged | |||||
I would also be interested in Brazilian Portuguese. Why Assimil doesn't expand their market to English speakers in beyond me. They would have much more business in my opinion. I would definitely buy Russian and Portuguese. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| goosefrabbas Triglot Pro Member United States Joined 6149 days ago 393 posts - 475 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German, Italian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 19 26 February 2010 at 4:30am | IP Logged | |||||
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How many native English speakers think it's a good idea to learn other languages?
Of those, how many would put up the effort? Of those, how many would spend close to $100 on a course? English speakers aren't exactly the people you'd want to market a language course to. Sure, by the sheer number of English speakers it would be a good idea to target them. But if an English speaker already knows another language it's probably a common one like French, Spanish, or German, which Assimil has the most courses based in. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| TerryW Senior Member United States Joined 6138 days ago 370 posts - 783 votes Speaks: English* | Message 4 of 19 26 February 2010 at 8:29am | IP Logged | |||||
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Looking at the US Amazon pages for the "501 Verbs" book series, here is the "sales rank" (they list it in the "Product Details" section) at the time I'm posting this:
Spanish - Amazon.com Sales Rank: #983 in Books French - Amazon.com Sales Rank: #5,306 in Books Arabic - Amazon.com Sales Rank: #13,748 in Books German - Amazon.com Sales Rank: #19,795 in Books Portuguese - Amazon.com Sales Rank: #23,323 in Books Italian - Amazon.com Sales Rank: #40,903 in Books Russian - Amazon.com Sales Rank: #261,113 in Books Japanese - Amazon.com Sales Rank: #311,900 in Books These are the versions "with CD" where available, so sales of books without should really be added, which cannot be done rank-wise. I took the first occurrance of each language in the resultant listing on an Amazon search for "501 verbs." Since this is a snapshot of 1 point in time, there may be some anomalies in there, but I think this "index" could give a fairly good indication of relative interest in languages by serious language learners. I doubt people traveling on vacation would buy the 501 verb book to pick up some phrases. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Paskwc Pentaglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5458 days ago 450 posts - 624 votes Speaks: Hindi, Urdu*, Arabic (Levantine), French, English Studies: Persian, Spanish | Message 5 of 19 26 February 2010 at 10:28am | IP Logged | |||||
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Portuguese's popularity over Italian's surprises me. I know many people who don't know
where Portugal is and think Brazilians speak Spanish. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5234 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 6 of 19 26 February 2010 at 6:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
Linguaphone actually offered a wide range of languages some 20 years ago. Not only that, but they made non- English editions too. It wouldn't surprise me if the had a Brazilian Portuguese course back then.
Sometimes they will make new courses, eg. German With Ease instead of German Without Toil. But I don't know if they will ever stop selling a particular course without making a new one. Edited by tractor on 26 February 2010 at 6:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5234 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 7 of 19 26 February 2010 at 6:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
Couldn't exactly the same thing be said about French speakers? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5792 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 8 of 19 27 February 2010 at 11:34am | IP Logged | |||||
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Why don't Assimil release more languages for English speakers? Amazon's US sales rank again gives us a clue: (again, not that some of these have been released in more than one edition, which is also why TY and Colloquial have been excluded).
Title ; Rank (Spanish) ; Rank (French) 501 verbs ; 983 ; 5,306 Pimsleur ; 9,893 ; 38,230 MT Bgnnr ; 15,83 9 ; 26,232 Assimil ; 422,048 ; 325,160 Figures are slightly different in the UK, but Assimil still has a similarly low page-rank. Assimil isn't popular with English speakers, so releasing minority-interest languages isn't economically viable. OK, so they could put the price up a bit to account for this, but that would have the effect of giving people the general impression that Assimil is an expensive course. Edited by Cainntear on 27 February 2010 at 11:36am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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