Best books out of popular series like Colloquial,Teach Yourself,Assimil,Linguaphone?

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Dtmont
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Best books out of popular series like Colloquial,Teach Yourself,Assimil,Linguaphone?

Postby Dtmont » Mon May 31, 2021 6:49 pm

I am wondering if there is a list of the best individual books out of the popular series. Mostly interested in Colloquial books(I have a good amount I collected over the years but never touched most of them). Which books out of the different series stand out to you in quality and set up of material. Thanks!
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Re: Best books out of popular series like Colloquial,Teach Yourself,Assimil,Linguaphone?

Postby kundalini » Tue Jun 01, 2021 2:21 am

Not on your list, but I have a copy of Living Language Ultimate French Advanced (2003), and I think it's very good.

Of the Assimil courses I went through, the entire French series -- New French with Ease, Using French, and Business French -- is outstanding. The Ancient Greek course, however, is my absolute favorite.
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Re: Best books out of popular series like Colloquial,Teach Yourself,Assimil,Linguaphone?

Postby księżycowy » Tue Jun 01, 2021 2:29 pm

For Colloquial, my personal favorites are: Lithuanian (especially the second? edition with all of the tones marked, the most recent edition only marks them in the relevant grammar discussions or in the glossary in the back), Amharic and Somali (both of those are solid introductions to their respective languages).

Runners up are: Czech and Kazakh. Czech because the previous edition was a solid course, and Kazakh, because, well, it's Kazakh! :P

Edit: Irish is also a good course, with the understanding (which they acknowledge themselves in the preface) that is only takes you to A1 for the first book.
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Re: Best books out of popular series like Colloquial,Teach Yourself,Assimil,Linguaphone?

Postby galaxyrocker » Tue Jun 01, 2021 3:36 pm

The original Teach Yourself Irish, from the 1960s, is absolutely amazing. It teaches you the language as natives actually speak it in the Munster region. It's single-handedly the best resource for learning the Irish of Munster. It's also, with permission from the publishers, available freely online, making it even better.
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Re: Best books out of popular series like Colloquial,Teach Yourself,Assimil,Linguaphone?

Postby księżycowy » Tue Jun 01, 2021 4:10 pm

Thanks for reminding me to note that Colloquial Irish teaches Connacht Irish, galaxyrocker.
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Re: Best books out of popular series like Colloquial,Teach Yourself,Assimil,Linguaphone?

Postby AnthonyLauder » Tue Jun 01, 2021 6:18 pm

I used to buy just about every language book out there, in the hope that one of them would be "the best one". Each new purchase would start out with initial excitement that, at last, I had found the best one, but that soon faded, and I realised it was no better than the other books I had bought, so the search continued. I did this for years and years, owning hundreds of books across many languages, and most of them either never got opened, or I never made it past the first couple of chapters. In fact, I often say that buying used language books is a great idea, because most of them are brand new after page 10.

After many years of expanding shelves of rarely touched books, I had to face the truth that I knew deep down: the best language book is the book you finish. It has meant pushing down feelings of excitement when I see a new, and promising looking, book, and instead focusing on finishing textbooks before starting new ones.

There is also a second aspect to this: asking highly experienced language learners to list their favourite language books can be very troublesome. Many of the highly experienced languages learners here will progress well no matter which book they buy: they know how to squeeze every bit of goodness from a book, and not be distracted by the bad bits of a book. Copying them, if you haven't gone through the same years of hard-won experience, is a bit like trying to follow the training schedule of a top athlete, when you are just a beginner. You will burn out.

My advice, then, is to just buy one of the popular books for the language you are learning. It doesn't matter much which one, so long as you work through it, slowly, steadily, and to the end. Then you can look at other books to "fill gaps" in your knowledge, or even start dipping your toes in the deep waters of authentic materials in your target language.
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Re: Best books out of popular series like Colloquial,Teach Yourself,Assimil,Linguaphone?

Postby Elsa Maria » Tue Jun 01, 2021 7:35 pm

If you choose Linguaphone, you should know that the digital version has terrible navigation. And there is a password that expires. I was surprised to discover that I could no longer access my digital course without emailing Linguaphone and asking for a new password. As far as I know, it isn't sold as a subscription, so I didn't expect to have to request access after a period of time.
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Re: Best books out of popular series like Colloquial,Teach Yourself,Assimil,Linguaphone?

Postby Deinonysus » Tue Jun 01, 2021 7:58 pm

Teach Yourself is the only major language learning book series I know of that has a Xhosa book. I don't know if their Xhosa book is any better than their other books (in fact I don't love the format and I can never seem to get into them), but it gets some major props just for existing.

Assimil Norwegian is one of the only Norwegian books I've found that writes the tone of each word where it applies. Assimil is pretty consistent so I don't know if this makes it better or worse than other Assimil courses, but it's great that they do that! I don't think it marks vowel length, though, so if they did that it'd be even better. Unfortunately, I think it's only available in French and German.

Here's a thread with the link to the aforementioned Teach Yourself Irish book: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 5&p=147187
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Re: Best books out of popular series like Colloquial,Teach Yourself,Assimil,Linguaphone?

Postby tractor » Tue Jun 01, 2021 8:52 pm

AnthonyLauder wrote:My advice, then, is to just buy one of the popular books for the language you are learning. It doesn't matter much which one, so long as you work through it, slowly, steadily, and to the end.

I agree with most of what you said, but it is still better to go through a good book than a bad one.
Last edited by tractor on Tue Jun 01, 2021 9:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Best books out of popular series like Colloquial,Teach Yourself,Assimil,Linguaphone?

Postby tractor » Tue Jun 01, 2021 9:06 pm

Dtmont wrote:I am wondering if there is a list of the best individual books out of the popular series.

No, I don't think there is such a list, and even if one exists, it's probably very incomplete. After all, most of us have only studied a very limited number of languages and only used a few courses/textbooks for learning each of them. To complicate it further, there are multiple "generations" of each series. A Teach Yourself book from 1960 is very different from a Teach Yourself book from 2020.
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