The Language Most in Need of a Good Course?

[Axon]

I think your perceptions are being influenced by your US background

You are 100 percent right, and I'm pretty ashamed of my comment in retrospect because I try to be as conscious as I can of US-centricism. Just because I don't see lots of Indonesian people in California doesn't mean they're not in other parts of the world. In fact since I've studied Indonesian I've only been basically in my hometown, China, and Indonesia - so if I heard people speaking it on the street in the past I probably wouldn't have even recognized it!

[rdearman]

I think Cornish needs a good course and a bit of love. There were only 557 native speakers left in the UK at the last census. The Cornish language board has some pretty good courses although they are fairly expensive. http://www.kesva.org/kdl

They have a free book you can download. http://www.kesva.org/sites/default/file ... th%201.pdf

They have a few courses in Cornwall so if you like surfing then you could do a surfing holiday and Cornish language class combined vacation.

[Adrianslont]

I think your perceptions are being influenced by your US background

You are 100 percent right, and I'm pretty ashamed of my comment in retrospect because I try to be as conscious as I can of US-centricism. Just because I don't see lots of Indonesian people in California doesn't mean they're not in other parts of the world. In fact since I've studied Indonesian I've only been basically in my hometown, China, and Indonesia - so if I heard people speaking it on the street in the past I probably wouldn't have even recognized it!

No worries. I’ve spent time in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and the Netherlands, either holidaying or working so I’ve had that first hand experience of the Indonesian diaspora around me in all of those places. And I just happen to live very near where many Indonesians in Australia live! That sent me to Wikipedia out of my own curiosity to see how the numbers stacked up. And then, because I’m a bit obsessive about US-centrism on the web, how people’s opinions are coloured by their own situation generally, and facts, I couldn’t help myself and had to point it out!

YOU have no need to feel ashamed - you are obviously not US-centric. And like I said, my own perception that the Filipino diaspora was much much bigger than the Indonesian diaspora proved untrue - my perceptions were also influenced by where I have lived and travelled!

Yes, Indonesian could do with some good courses - but I think most languages could. And I think, with digital/mobile platforms we are living in a time where there is a real shake up of what a language course actually I s anyway - see duolingo, Memrise, Assimil, Glossika etc - and the dust has yet to settle. The main problem I’ve noticed with Indonesian courses is that they tend to be quite old - they don’t get updated as regularly - like every couple of /few decades! Or never. I’m done with courses now, though. My Indonesian is not great but it will continue to grow with native materials - they are more fun.

[Axon]

And I think, with digital/mobile platforms we are living in a time where there is a real shake up of what a language course actually is anyway - see duolingo, Memrise, Assimil, Glossika etc - and the dust has yet to settle. The main problem I’ve noticed with Indonesian courses is that they tend to be quite old - they don’t get updated as regularly - like every couple of /few decades! Or never. I’m done with courses now, though. My Indonesian is not great but it will continue to grow with native materials - they are more fun.

I agree that courses are changing, but I see very few new-style courses that handle advanced or natural material. Fans of courses seem to like using them past the beginner stage and into the intermediate stage. Personally, I was done with structured courses after Pimsleur and the first ten dialogues of Basic Indonesian. It was pretty much all Glossika and native materials after that, though in my classes there were some texts specifically written for learners. These days if I have a grammar question I go straight to Google Scholar and look for linguistics papers.

But I'd like to hear from people who stick to courses longer. Why do you like it, and how long do you normally put off using native materials?

[Adrianslont]

Personally, I was done with structured courses after Pimsleur and the first ten dialogues of Basic Indonesian. It was pretty much all Glossika and native materials after that, though in my classes there were some texts specifically written for learners. These days if I have a grammar question I go straight to Google Scholar and look for linguistics papers.

But I'd like to hear from people who stick to courses longer. Why do you like it, and how long do you normally put off using native materials?

I know I’ve mentioned elsewhere that my experience of Indonesian courses was 75% of Linguaphone and using Assimil Indonésien Sans Peine as a “graded listener” in the car for a bit - then on to native materials - preferably with transcripts.

To clarify, although I give the (basically accurate) impression that I’m not a fan of courses, I found those thirty Linguaphone units with their really slow audio with crappy prosody valuable. I didn’t do the audio-lingual exercises but I listened to the dialogues, transcribed them and read the language and culture notes. And put some of the vocabulary into Quizlet and later anki. It got me started and I think courses are great for getting started.

[nooj]

I think like others mentioned, Bengali. I feel like a lot of the giant Indian languages are too little taught for the number of speakers they have and media impact and literary output: Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Punjabi and so on. I even think Urdu could do with a lot more emphasis.

I'd also put in a word for languages in the Phillipines: Cebuano, Hiligaynon etc.

[Tristano]

Afrikaans, Icelandic, ...

[reineke]

50LANGUAGES: Adyghe • Afrikaans • Arabic • Belarusian • Bulgarian • Bengali • Bosnian • Catalan • Czech • Danish • German • Greek • English US • English UK • Esperanto • Spanish • Estonian • Persian • Finnish • French • Hebrew • Hindi • Croatian • Hungarian • Armenian • Indonesian • Italian • Japanese • Georgian • Kannada • Korean • Lithuanian • Latvian • Macedonian • Marathi • Dutch • Nynorsk • Norwegian • Punjabi • Polish • Portuguese PT • Portuguese BR • Romanian • Russian • Slovak • Slovene • Albanian • Serbian • Swedish • Tamil • Telugu • Thai • Tigrinya • Turkish • Ukrainian • Urdu • Vietnamese • Chinese •

Mix and match:

https://www.50languages.com

[Josquin]

Afrikaans, Icelandic, ...

Icelandic has Colloquial Icelandic. That, for one, is a good course!

[Neurotip]

I think Cornish needs a good course and a bit of love. There were only 557 native speakers left in the UK at the last census.

Crikey - I like to think of myself as reasonably well informed about UK languages, but I really did not know that Cornish had native speakers. Thanks! I would love to meet one. I had a colleague once who was a native Welsh speaker and had some very interesting things to say about that language.
The Wikipedia page suggests that the number is probably increasing if anything. I also enjoyed the bit about 'Cornwall County Council announced that staff would be encouraged to use "basic words and phrases" in Cornish when dealing with the public.' (With the *public*? Really?)