New Assimil Italian for English Speakers Release Soon?

[diplomaticus]

Hello all,
I notice that the Italian with Ease course is no longer available on assimil.fr From reading old threads, it seems this is usually a sign a new release is imminent. It looks like "Italian" in the mold of the recent "German" and "Spanish" courses should be out any time. However, the Assimil people have not responded to any queries about the status of the course. Does anyone have any information about when the new Italian course is set to come out? I imagine it must be imminent since they took the Italian with Ease course down, but it has been at least a few days. I am surprised since Assimil has always responded quickly to queries in the past. Thanks!

[tastyonions]

The current one is indeed a bit dated, judging by the lack of euros for currency and the prevalence of people smoking. I think it was Arnaud who mentioned that the French version of the new one was supposed to be excessively "dumbed down," so hopefully the new English-base one will not simply be a translation of that.

[diplomaticus]

I believe their recent MO will make you quite sad. I'd be incredibly shocked if the new course was anything but a translation of the French one. What is dumbed down about it? The amount of vocabulary, or the grammar taught? Having the newest English edition for German, it has pretty good grammar coverage!

[diplomaticus]

Here is what one poster had to say:

diplomaticus, If you can wait, I'd recommend doing so. I'm working through Italian with Ease right now, which is OK, but has drawbacks compared to newer courses. There are no glossaries for either Italian or English, the grammar at the back only covers verbs, and some of the lessons are outdated. (And so many typos....) Even then, it's still working well for me, but you might save yourself all the petty frustrations that come with using the current edition.

Sounds better to me!

[tastyonions]

It's true that the current English one ("With Ease") has a lot of typos. I'm pretty sure that I am catching all or at least most of them, but I think that is thanks partly to knowing French and Spanish. If I had never learned a Romance language before I would probably have been more vulnerable to picking up wrong spellings.

[pratishabda]

Previous knowledge of Spanish and French have been a big help with my Italian, as well. If you can find a used copy of the 1991 edition, you would have no real difficulties using it. It's just got lots of little annoyances. But otherwise you should do just fine with the course.

For what it's worth, Assimil's website is promoting a 20% discount for the e-méthode courses, at least for the next few days. It looks like they're only French-based, but if your French is strong enough and you like online courses, that might be another option.

[diplomaticus]

Previous knowledge of Spanish and French have been a big help with my Italian, as well. If you can find a used copy of the 1991 edition, you would have no real difficulties using it. It's just got lots of little annoyances. But otherwise you should do just fine with the course.

For what it's worth, Assimil's website is promoting a 20% discount for the e-méthode courses, at least for the next few days. It looks like they're only French-based, but if your French is strong enough and you like online courses, that might be another option.

Oh, I was actually tracking to get it as a present for a friend's upcoming birthday! But it isn't until the end of November, so maybe it'll still work out.

[diplomaticus]

Assimil finally replied and said, "This is to inform you that our Italian with ease course will be available before the end of this month." So I guess no new version imminently! I am curious now how it works for the publishing company to be out of stock of a course, haha. Maybe this is a fresh print run free of typos!

[Arnaud]

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[PeterMollenburg]

Why are Assimil's courses apparently being "dumbed down"? Any clues? Is it marketing? Is it because they want to split up the editions? Is it because they want to split them up according to their CEFL level?

I hope there's some logic to it- it just seems the old adage (or 'new adage') of quality declining in products including the dumbing down of language learning products it's spreading. Let's hope it doesn't happen to FIA or FSI. Companies seem to be selling what sells I guess. Hence why some courses have disappeared with Assimil. The French based Dutch advanced course (damn shame), Business French (everyone's speaking bloody English! Even in France! in terms of business, so why sell Business French anymore). Sad. Vive les différences entre les cultures !