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Assimil Hebrew and Yiddish (new releases) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| jpazzz Groupie United States Joined 4839 days ago 54 posts - 76 votes  Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 5 15 July 2015 at 10:00am | IP Logged |
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Hello, Recently Assimil has released English base versions of Hebrew With Ease and Yiddish With Ease. I wonder if any of you have tried these courses, and if so, what might might be your reactions to them?
Thanks for your time. Best, John 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| akkadboy Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5202 days ago 264 posts - 497 votes Speaks: French*, English, Yiddish Studies: Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Welsh | Message 2 of 5 15 July 2015 at 2:45pm | IP Logged |
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I used the Yiddish course (the French version) and found it very good. I did 5 years of German in highschool though and it obviously helped.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Gallo1801 Diglot Senior Member Spain Joined 4696 days ago 164 posts - 248 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), Croatian, German, French | Message 3 of 5 16 July 2015 at 6:13pm | IP Logged |
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Literally got the Hebrew course in the mail two days ago. Focusing on other languages
atm, but it looks promising! They keep the nikud the entire book, which is something I've always wanted in semitic abjad learning methods. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| jeronz Diglot Newbie New Zealand Joined 4652 days ago 37 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Yiddish, Latin, German, Italian | Message 4 of 5 17 July 2015 at 12:07pm | IP Logged |
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I am working through the Yiddish with ease course (about a third of the way in) and I
don't have very positive feelings about it so far. Some thoughts: - I have found that it progresses extremely slowly, there is not much dialogue content per lesson, and there is too much repetition of words within each lesson. For example, lesson one has two lines (two ways of saying hello), Lesson 10 six, lesson 50 has 11 and the final lesson, lesson 85 has 15. Compare this to Italian with ease, a fairly typical assimil course, which has 9 lines in lesson one, 13 in lesson 10, 15 in lesson 50 and 14 in lesson 105. It does seem to speed up at the end. Each line is also subjectively a lot denser with the other assimil courses I've used (spanish, french and Italian). A fairer comparison may be against another assimil course for a language which uses a non-latin script such as ancient greek, although I do not have experience with any of those courses. The caveat for anyone reading this is that I have studied Hebrew in the past and so am familiar with the alphabet/alefbet and I suppose they may have chosen to start slowly for this reason. - Some lessons are entertaining, although many are boring or are the typical "hello my name is so and so, what is your name, how are you, I am good thank you" conversations you find in other books but not what I've come to expect from assimil! - It only has 85 lessons. As the first several lessons have very few lines each I wish the course was longer. Looking through the assimil website for other courses with non- latin scripts I can see that the ancient greek course has 100 lessons and the Japanese course 98. - They spend far too much time explaining grammar. I estimate that each review lesson is roughly twice as long as the standard. They do seem to have ~3000 words listed in the back but I feel like a large chunk of the learning is done through the review lessons and not by "assimilating" through the normal lessons and I wonder how much I would retain at the end of the course. - Overall I find going through the course a bit of a chore. Taken together I have serious doubts about the B2 stamp on the front. - The recordings are very well done in typical assimil style. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| jpazzz Groupie United States Joined 4839 days ago 54 posts - 76 votes Studies: Russian | Message 5 of 5 22 July 2015 at 6:31am | IP Logged |
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Hello all, I've been away for a few days, so I just read the responses. Thanks to all of you who took the time to respond...quite helpful.
Cheers, John 1 person has voted this message useful |
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