leosmith wrote:They literally said mbili means "eight". It was isolated, and they never used it in other contexts, but still very misleading.Le Baron wrote:Did they literally say that or indicate that 'hour two' was just equal to eight in time as we know it?
Could have sworn that they did use it in other contexts, like "Pombe mbili, tafadhali", and that they did explain the whole Swahili time thing when first introducing it. I also don't really recall them literally saying the phrase "mbili means 'eight'", although I do recall them not always making it clear which exact numeral they were using in time expressions, expecting the student to figure it out based on previously introduced knowledge. I might have listened to a more recent version of the course, I guess.
As for lies in beginner courses, while I can't recall any notable examples in courses I personally learned from (other than maybe "things are always pronounced the way they are spelled" for far too many languages ), I remember once looking at two beginner Latin textbooks from the same Russian publisher, one aimed at philology and linguistics students, and another for law and medical students. Both books started with an introduction to the alphabet and pronunciation, but the former book would always include both the classical and the modern-day conventional Russian pronunciation, while the latter would introduce the conventional one as the only option (ce = [t͡sɛ], tio = [t͡sɨo], etc.).