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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5664 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 25 of 35 10 April 2015 at 6:36pm | IP Logged |
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The Mandarin PDFs are 168MB, 220MB, and 272MB for Fluency 1-3 respectively. The zip file's about 660MB. The GSR zip files are 700MB, 900MB, and 1GB (x2, one for Taiwan pronunciation one for Beijing pronunciation). Altogether some 7GB to download. At least this time they used a lower bit rate for the mp3s, the original files with just the Taiwan speaker used 192kbps, the zips were 1.3GB, 2.4GB, and 2.6GB! Still, as a large portion of the mp3s are just silence, i believe there are better ways to compress it.
The Catalan course is much smaller, 3.6GB overall, though the audio isn't as crisp and clean as in the Mandarin course. It's interesting to hear your PDF files are so small, even the smallest Catalan PDF is over 50MB (the largest just over 100MB). The reason they're so big is because they're using vector graphics rather than text data. The quality is essentially the same, just the file size is much larger and you can't export any text (without OCR'ing it first). To be honest, a text file with all 1,000 sentences would've been fine for me, as that's all the PDF really is. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| chobbs Newbie United States Joined 4376 days ago 35 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 26 of 35 10 April 2015 at 6:48pm | IP Logged |
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These are the current sizes for the versions that I have ...
161M /data/languages/Chinese/Glossika /Level1/ENZHZS-F1-EBK.pdf 211M /data/languages/Chinese/Glossika /Level2/ENZHZS-F2-EBK.pdf 260M /data/languages/Chinese/Glossika /Level3/ENZHZS-F3-EBK.pdf 82M /data/languages/French/Glos sika/Level1/ENFR-F1-EBK.pdf 104M /data/languages/French/Glossika/ Level2/ENFR-F2-EBK.pdf 127M /data/languages/French/Glossika/ Level3/ENFR-F3-EBK.pdf 72M /data/languages/German/Glos sika/Level1/ENDE-F1-EBK.pdf 90M /data/languages/German/Glos sika/Level2/ENDE-F2-EBK.pdf 113M /data/languages/German/Glossika/ Level3/ENDE-F3-EBK.pdf 75M /data/languages/Icelandic/G lossika/Level1/ENIS-F1-EBK.pdf 95M /data/languages/Icelandic/G lossika/Level2/ENIS-F2-EBK.pdf 118M /data/languages/Icelandic/Glossi ka/Level3/ENIS-F3-EBK.pdf 63M /data/languages/Russian/Glo ssika/Level1/GLOSSIKA-EBK-ENRU-B1.pdf 85M /data/languages/Russian/Glo ssika/Level2/GLOSSIKA-EBK-ENRU-F2.pdf 100M /data/languages/Russian/Glossika /Level3/GLOSSIKA-EBK-ENRU-F3.pdf 45M /data/languages/Swedish/Glo ssika/Level1/GLOSSIKA-EBK-ENSV-F1.pdf 55M /data/languages/Swedish/Glo ssika/Level2/GLOSSIKA-EBK-ENSV-F2.pdf 67M /data/languages/Swedish/Glo ssika/Level3/GLOSSIKA-EBK-ENSV-F3.pdf *Wow* Never had the forum put random spaces in anything before, just the chopped sentences. - Chris Edited by chobbs on 10 April 2015 at 6:51pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7004 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 27 of 35 10 April 2015 at 11:23pm | IP Logged |
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Is the audio embedded in the pdf?
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| SomeGuy Groupie Germany Joined 4899 days ago 56 posts - 75 votes Speaks: German* Studies: Arabic (Written), Turkish, Mandarin | Message 28 of 35 11 April 2015 at 12:23am | IP Logged |
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No, its not embedded in the pdf!
It's in separated mp3 files. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| basica Senior Member Australia Joined 3335 days ago 157 posts - 269 votes Studies: Serbian | Message 29 of 35 11 April 2015 at 2:35am | IP Logged |
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Wow, your PDFs are significantly bigger than mine. I just took a look and yeah the folder containing the PDFs
is 20MB. So they're around 7MB each, and with mine at least I can copy/paste the text - I'm not sure if this is because mine just contain plain text as opposed to vector graphics or that my PDF reader auto OCRs it or whatever. The entire uncompressed folder containing the PDFs and all the audio files is 3.3GB and the total size compressed is 2.4GB. While 2.4GB is a size I'd consider reasonable - 7GB+ I agree is starting to push it in terms of being something acceptable. Even on a relatively fast internet connection that's potentially a few hours to download. The only thing I didn't particularly like (though I understand for security reasons why) is that you couldn't download it using wget/curl. I generally like to download things directly onto my NAS as I have a bad habit of forgetting I'm downloading something and closing the browser / turning off my computer midway through downloads. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| A Callidryas Newbie United States Joined 3385 days ago 7 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Persian | Message 30 of 35 11 April 2015 at 6:26am | IP Logged |
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I preordered the Farsi course in October but it looks to be at least a few more months before it will be published. In the meantime, I bought the German one out of curiosity (I had two years of German in school, but didn't learn much).
The Glossika ebook is 3000 completely unrelated sentences, each one written in the learner's native language, the target language and IPA. Each sentence is recorded in both the native and target languages. The sentences are based on learning verb tenses. By the looks of the course, I am guessing that the original Glossika course was used for teaching English verbs, and then later languages were imposed on this same format. The first 2000 sentences work progressively through these verbs tenses/voices: - to be - there is/are - can - present - present continuous - past - past continuous - present perfect - passive of most of the above On the Glossika site, they state that the course is for high beginners and they aren't kidding. If you are anywhere above a mid A2, there is a good chance you will find the sentences fairly tedious. Most of the sentences are a single clause, and there is very little interesting material in terms of vocabulary, expressions and discourse markers. I went through the first 2000 sentences and then had a quick look at the final 1000 sentences before deciding to give the package away. I haven't decided whether or not to cancel the order for the Farsi package. On the plus side, the recordings were very clear and Glossika offers packages for lots of the rarer languages. If you are learning an exotic language or if you like lots of disembodied drilling, this might be a good package to buy. Or if you really are just breaking into the A2 level, it might be great, I don't really know. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5664 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 31 of 35 12 April 2015 at 7:42am | IP Logged |
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I think the purpose of the course is to give you a basic set of sentences useful in daily life that you can recall and modify quickly. And also phrased as a native speaker would say it. While you might understand the vocabulary in the entire course, you might not be able to actually produce those sentences and use circumlocutions or less natural ways of saying things. You'll also have a large set of phrases on the tip of your tongue that you don't really have to think so much about how to formulate it.
I do agree that the 3,000 sentences is a bit misleading, many "sentences" are one/two word answers, things like "yes", "no", "ok", "no I don't", etc. but there is a lot of useful stuff in there, too. I've only used the Mandarin course, though. I'm also not so sure using the same set of base sentences for every single language is the best option. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Improbably Diglot Newbie Norway Joined 4735 days ago 34 posts - 87 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English | Message 32 of 35 12 April 2015 at 12:11pm | IP Logged |
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While a single set of sentences used across all languages might not be ideal, I can see why they're doing it like that, as it allows for more streamlined production of courses for a long range of languages, including more obscure ones. As for those seemingly pointless 'yes' and 'no' sentences, I believe those have been included specifically to add to the usefulness of that same set of sentences for languages where simple yes/no answers are not normally used (e.g. Finnish, where you have a negative verb that conjugates for person and number, and yes/no answers often include the verb of the question).
Personally, I also really like the focus on colloquial language. It's been particularly helpful for my comprehension of colloquial Finnish, since most other learning materials tend to focus on the standard language. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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