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Esperanto and Spanish

de number2, 26 janvier 2009

Messages : 39

Langue: English

ceigered (Voir le profil) 28 janvier 2009 11:38:53

Anyone used Michel Thomas? That works well.
That comes in Spanish, French, German, Russian, Dutch, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic etc, but only Spanish French and German are actually by the man the courses are named after.

Miland (Voir le profil) 28 janvier 2009 14:09:57

ceigered:Anyone used Michel Thomas? That works well..
I worked through the basic French and German courses and they seem pretty good - but I believe one would have to do the advanced 'vocabulary' courses (which I haven't) to be able to survive in the languages. Still, excellent 'first looks' at the languages IMHO. There are also some good Youtube videos about Michel Thomas and his methods.

robinast (Voir le profil) 28 janvier 2009 19:28:45

I use the "Instant Immersion Spanish Deluxe v2.0" and I like it. Among other things, it also offers quite a lot of pronunciation exercises (incl speech recognition). I bought it for $40 last year, but now the Amazon.com seems to offer the program for $12... There's a version v3.0 also available (about $30).

Amike,
Harri.

Senlando (Voir le profil) 28 janvier 2009 19:51:02

ceigered:Anyone used Michel Thomas? That works well.
That comes in Spanish, French, German, Russian, Dutch, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic etc, but only Spanish French and German are actually by the man the courses are named after.
I use the Michel Thomas method for Spanish, I quite like it, but i think it would be hard to learn just using it, I use it more to reinforce what i learn in class, or to actuality learn ahead, so when i get to the new concepts in class, i already have a good grasp of the idea to start with, so in that way it works well for me.

Also, I've found the Michel Thomas, Pimsleur Courses, and Rosetta Stone (though I've never figured out how to use it on my pc) on torrents at mininova. Its probably morally wrong, but then again charging $500 for a audio course is also in my opinion. Anyways i would first download it (depending on the copyright laws of your country), and see if its worth buying before i dish out that kind of cash. Besides it's always good to have the book.

On second thought i did find the Pimsleur audio course somewhere on the internet where ONE (haha) can stream it only for 75minets at a time, but it would be a good way to try it out first before you buy it. I can't find it right now but I'll keep looking and then post it later.

ceigered (Voir le profil) 29 janvier 2009 03:12:36

A more morally correct way to go about previewing all these audio courses is to check on iTunes for 'demos' or 'previews' (although last time I checked all free demos etc were affected by the price increases and now cost a small amount).

Or just go on iTunes and download all those awesome podcasts, like 1 minute languages etc, you get a small dose of the language so you can see if you like it or not.

And Michel Thomas works for some languages better than others. I'd say that his accent still comes through in his French, German, Spanish and Italian.
The best courses for the Michel Thomas method IMHO are:
-Dutch
-German
-Japanese

You'll probably notice that two are Germanic languages (although both have the 'SVOV2' order or whatever it is) and that one is grammatically a simpler language, this probably influences things quite a bit.

What I ultimately want is something like 'Michel Thomas Norwegian (Bokmål)' - you'd definitely be more than conversationally fluent at the end of that course lango.gif

jawq81 (Voir le profil) 29 janvier 2009 13:20:09

For those who are more interested in Latin American Spanish than in European Spanish, the following link gives a review of three software packages. One of them, Learning Spanish Like Crazy, appeals to me. Has anyone tried any of them?

http://www.best-spanish-software.com/reviews/index...

jawq81 (Voir le profil) 29 janvier 2009 13:49:21

One thing that I should have added in the above post is that amazon.com will give much better Customer Reviews on these courses than will the individual web sites (which are aimed primarily at selling the courses).

mvk20 (Voir le profil) 29 janvier 2009 19:38:05

erinja:I had some not-very-nice experiences with Esperanto, as a student. I started learning in the summer between middle school and high school, using a postal course - on paper. ... I don't really want to get into it; I've had enough of that.
I certainly understand where you're coming from - high school students are ridiculously cruel because of how insecure they are themselves. I've been teaching them for ten years and things are no different than when I was a student myself.

I think that for some people wanting to tell everyone about the language comes from a desire to "spread the word", but I think that can be counterproductive. I'm not saying that is what you were trying to do, I can just imagine that many samideanoj might question the tendency to stay quiet about it.

People have an emotional reaction when it comes to language, and they often feel threatened - and hesitant to put in the effort to learn a second language too. I think that "preaching" about the language could often have a negative reaction, and my feeling is that anyone who wants to promote the language should do what you've done, Erinja - contribute to the community by making it easier to learn or more useful by adding to sites such as wikipedia. When people come to it more naturally, see that it is useful, and see that it is feasible to learn, they are then more likely to dive in and give it a try themselves.

I suppose this was an off-topic rant, but it's something that had kind of been on my mind for a while and reading your message just made me want to throw my 2 cents in. Thanks again for everything you contribute to this site - your posts are always very interesting and helpful.

A side question: how were you initially exposed to the language, and what were some of your initial reactions? I am always very interested in hearing about people's experiences with the language.

Rogir (Voir le profil) 29 janvier 2009 21:33:11

Through my older brother, who got it from the internet I think.

erinja (Voir le profil) 30 janvier 2009 02:00:43

I read about it in Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat books. I hadn't studied a foreign language yet, though I was about to start on Latin as soon as I went back to school. The explanatory page in the back of the book explained that Esperanto is easy to learn. Lots of people I knew had studied languages for years and still couldn't really speak them. I thought it would be cool to be fluent in another language, and I knew it wouldn't be Latin, so I thought Esperanto was perhaps my only chance.

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