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Assimil Le polonaise differnet versions | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Neumanx Newbie Germany Joined 3344 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Studies: English | Message 9 of 15 10 April 2015 at 10:14am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello Speakeasy,
Thank you very much for your valuable comments. Me too, I am big fan of Assimil, and I have quite a large collection of Assimil courses. But one must indeed be careful with buying their new editions if one already has the previous edition. I know this by experience, since I made the error of buying the newest version of Assimil's Italian course ("Le Italien", 2014), which is somewhat different from the previous version ("Le Italien", 2004), but not enough so to justify the purchase. The overall course is the same, only the later lessons have some additional sentences, which accounts for the audio being (only) 10 minutes longer with truncate silence. I do not want to make such an error again, that is why I am asking here. So I hope we can find somebody on this forum who can tell about the newest version of Assimil's Polish (and, if possible, also Czech) course. By the way, Speakeasy, just so you know: My old account under the name 'neumanc' is no longer active. I changed my e-mail address because I finally wanted to use my account actively. I thought it would be useful to receive e-mail notification of replies. But I never received the reactivation e-mail, so I had to open this new account. I will update it in due course in order to reflect my current language learning interests. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kronos Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5060 days ago 186 posts - 452 votes  Speaks: German*, English | Message 10 of 15 10 April 2015 at 2:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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To provide an overview, Assimil has so far published the following courses for Polish and Czech:
1985 - Le Polonais sans peine (484 pages, 100 lessons, either app. 2:40 hrs or 3:10 hrs audio) 2003 - Le Polonais (546 pages, 100 lessons, either 200 or 186 exercises according to differing covers, app. 2:50 hrs audio) 2015 - Le Polonais (528 pages, 100 lessons, 186 exercises, audio listed as 2:20 hrs) Author for all three: Barbara Kuszmider 1994 - Le Tchèque sans peine (570 pages, 92 lessons, app. 3:35 hrs audio) 2015 - Le Tchèque (650 pages, 92 lessons, 183 exercises, audio listed as either 3:30 or 4:10 hrs) Author for both courses: Olga Spilar As I don't have all of these courses I have to rely on guesswork too. For the new Polish course there is a post and discussion on the French Assimil blog. It seems the lesson texts are largely the same in the 2003 and 2015 editions, but there are obviously some emendations introducing neologisms etc., and the audio has been newly recorded. It is an update, not a new course. About the recent Czech course I did not even find such a blog post. Somewhere I read that this course surprisingly still comes with the same audio material as the earlier one. If this is true, it cannot be more than an update, maybe revised notes, new formatting etc. As much as I like Assimil I am not an obsessive hoarder of all their editions and updates for a language. For me the main criterion whether to buy one of their courses is whether it has lots of additional content adding to what I may already have. This is the case with the 2003 Le Polonais course compared to its 1985 predecessor, but apparently not with the two 2015 editions mentioned here. Updates are fine though if only they would advertise them as such, and not in the ambiguous manner they do. By this time I won't buy a newly published Assimil course anymore before carefully checking whether it is really a new course or just an update of an earlier one. EDIT: I just see that the new Czech course includes a bi-directional glossary with all the vocabulary (the old course didn't have one). This would account for the 80 or so extra pages; for comparison: the glossary of the 2003 Polish course had 71 pages, and that course was a little bit shorter in lesson content than the old one for Czech. Edited by Kronos on 10 April 2015 at 5:14pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arnaud25 Diglot Senior Member France Joined 3641 days ago 129 posts - 235 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Russian | Message 11 of 15 13 April 2015 at 8:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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The new Czech is pretty identical to the old one.
What has changed is: a lexique at the end, the amusing drawings, a better "mise en page" with the blue colors. What has not changed: the texts. I have selected 7 or 8 lessons (I couldn't read all the book, so I picked randomly) and compared them: they were absolutly identical. So either I was very lucky or the changes are only cosmetical throughout the book. If you have the old edition, I advise you to think twice before buying. I couldn't check the polish, there was no "out of the pack" book available at the bookshop I've gone, sorry (will try next week again :)) Edited by Arnaud25 on 13 April 2015 at 10:18pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6396 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 12 of 15 14 April 2015 at 4:21am | IP Logged | ||
That's a known bug. The mods should be able to help you. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| neumanc Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 4811 days ago 11 posts - 41 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Dutch | Message 13 of 15 14 April 2015 at 11:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hello Serpent, thank you very much for directing me to that thread.
Thanks to Rhian and Iversen, I have again access to my old account, including my personal messages. I hope to contribute to this forum in the time to come. Many thanks to you all! @Arnaud25: Thank you for your visit to the bookstore. So I will not buy the new version of Assimil's Czech course. The only advantage I could possibly see in buying the new version is the newly added audio of the revision dialogs. The audio of the new course is about one half hour longer. But who knows how much remains after applying truncate silence with Audacity? The revision units are normally recorded with very long gaps. It seems to be even worse with the new Polish course, since the audio of the new version is about 20 minutes shorter. I am really curious if this is because of shrinking the contents of the course. In one of the posts on Assimil's blog linked by Kronos, there is a hint to a passage in the foreword of the new course according to which the course has been further simplified and cut down in vocabulary size in order to facilitate learning. If you have the possibility of comparing the two versions, I would be very glad and thankful. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arnaud25 Diglot Senior Member France Joined 3641 days ago 129 posts - 235 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Russian | Message 14 of 15 15 April 2015 at 11:21am | IP Logged | ||
When I read the discussion on the blog and compare with the 2003 book introduction, I can only conclude that the intro is exactly the same, but that they only introduced new typos (not sure of that). The simplifying and cutting down of the vocab is a reference to the 199x->2003 changes, not the 2003->2015 changes. Stay tuned...(sorry for my bad English, it's worsening by the day) Edit: I've gone to the bookshop during lunch time. First I have to say that I've checked the year of publication at the beginning of the book: it was written 2015, so I suppose that it's the new edition, but I can't be 100% sure with Assimil... So the new polish 2015 is almost identical to the polish 2003. Same texts, same drawings, different "mise en page" with the blue color. What has changed is the use of new words here and there in a few lessons: the word "letter" is replaced by the word "email", the word "television" is replaced by "television and Wifi", etc. There are a few drawings that have been changed. There are two new typos in the introduction, as the guy discussing on the blog has mentionned. That's all: basically the 2015 edition is identical to the 2003 edition, far more than the Czech, which contains new dialogues in the lessons of revision, new drawings and the lexique. I can say nothing about the audio tracks of the 2 books, it's impossible to listen to them in a bookshop. That's all, hope it will be useful anyway... Edited by Arnaud25 on 15 April 2015 at 6:09pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| neumanc Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 4811 days ago 11 posts - 41 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Dutch | Message 15 of 15 18 April 2015 at 2:03am | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you, Arnaud25, your information is very helpful. It shows that Speakeasy's warnings to
buy 'new editions' of Assimil courses without having done your due diligence upfront are absolutely justified. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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