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Quirky things in old language materials | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| FuroraCeltica Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6645 days ago 1187 posts - 1427 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 1 of 41 05 January 2012 at 1:17am | IP Logged | ||
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I was reading a Russian self taught course the other day, published in the 1970s. It said things like "When you visit the Soviet Union..." which I thought was rather quirky. I also have a self taught German course from about 1905 which spends several chapters teaching you to read the old gothic script. Is there anything in old language courses you find interesting?
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6377 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 2 of 41 05 January 2012 at 1:25am | IP Logged | ||
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A sentence for translation: "By 2000 the population of the USSR will reach 300 mln".
We were doing that exercise in 2006. xDDD 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6483 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 3 of 41 05 January 2012 at 2:21am | IP Logged | ||
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When I restarted my language learning I used some Romanian and Greek books which I had bought during the 70s or in the first years of the 80s. In both countries there has been a revolution and a spelling reform (in that order), so in Greek I still sometimes feel tempted to write one of the two lost aspiration signs and the two accent signs ( ` and ~) which have been abolished - for instance I still instinctively feel that the genitive plural ending should be written with a tilde. And in Romanian I still feel that there should be î's all over the place (for instance in cîine, dog) and not just in initial position.
In spite of these things I have kept several old dictionaries as they still have some relevant information. For instance my old fat Romanian Academy dictionary is the only one that for each verb indicates whether it has an infix or not - which is an essential piece of information, so I simply don't understand why my more modern dictionaries doesn't supply it. Edited by Iversen on 05 January 2012 at 12:49pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| NickJS Senior Member United Kingdom flickr.com/photos/sg Joined 4739 days ago 264 posts - 334 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 4 of 41 05 January 2012 at 2:48am | IP Logged | ||
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I've heard similar things about old Mandarin courses (Linguaphone?). Unfortunately I do
not own these, but it would be fun to see! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6936 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 5 of 41 05 January 2012 at 3:00am | IP Logged | ||
The quirks that I've encountered have been restricted to being blasts from the past for reasons beyond the author's control/knowledge. Here's the most memorable quirk from one of the narratives in one of the Czech textbooks on my shelf:
"What kind of results do your farmers get?" asks Mr. Martin, "and which plants do they cultivate?" - "The unified agricultural collectives have all of the required agricultural machinery. Their members work together and well for the most part. They cultivate in particular wheat, rye, potatoes, sugar beets, vegetables and fruit." Ahhh... life on the collective farm where we don't actually have shortages of equipment (that's just counter-revolutionary propaganda, you know) and work in harmony to build communism. 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5042 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 6 of 41 05 January 2012 at 3:03am | IP Logged | ||
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I love the dialogs in DLI Portuguese. The course dates from 1969. Anachronisms abound. There are references to travel by ship from New York, telegrams and cruzeiros, among many other anachronisms. I have acquired the language needed for modern life through other means. All in all, it's quite sweet to travel back in time via this course.
"Gilberto Borba and Silvia Leite meet on board the "SS Brasil" which is sailing to South America. 1. Hello, Gilberto, what a surprise! Are you returning to Brazil? 2. No, I'm on a vacation and I intend to be back within three months. 3. Where are you going? 4. I'm going to São Paulo. As you know, all my relatives live there. 5. When was the last time you were in Brazil? 6. It's been seven years. I imagine that there's been a lot of progress since then. 7. Although there are many things that could stand improvement, it can be said that Brazil has progressed considerably. 8. Shall we take a stroll to get acquainted with the ship?" Edited by iguanamon on 05 January 2012 at 3:22am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6159 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 41 05 January 2012 at 4:02am | IP Logged | ||
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The Assimil Italian without Toil has some very macabre news stories: kids being struck by lightning, people being run over...I alsways wondered why they chose them to include.
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| psy88 Senior Member United States Joined 5371 days ago 469 posts - 882 votes Studies: Spanish*, Japanese, Latin, French | Message 8 of 41 05 January 2012 at 4:08am | IP Logged | ||
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The Cortina French and Spanish courses have quaint vocabulary with references to steamships and the like. Personally, I like them, even though parts are definitely out of date. The Cortina explanations of grammar, however, are excellent.
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