Hippocrene beginner's series with online audio

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neumanc
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Hippocrene beginner's series with online audio

Postby neumanc » Fri Nov 24, 2017 1:32 am

I have just discovered that Hippocrene have begun to publish new editions of their beginner's series with free online audio. As of now, there are only Albanian, Serbian and Welsh, but more is to come. And the best is: prices for the books have come down! So it's the opposite to Colloquial who have made their audio free to download but increased the books' prices significantly. Under these circumstances, Hippocrene's books might be an interesting addition to your collection of resources. I thought I just let you know.
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Speakeasy
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Re: Hippocrene beginner's series with online audio

Postby Speakeasy » Fri Nov 24, 2017 2:46 am

Neumanc, thank you very much for drawing this development to our attention! It is always interesting to learn of the availability of new materials and their deployment using the Internet. As it happens, over the past few months, I have been considering adding a few of the Hippocrene courses to my collection of vintage materials that have been accumulating in my basement.

I have been reading as many of the reviews of the Hippocrene language books as I could locate. Hopefully, a few members of the forum will try out the publisher's website and report back on their experiences. In the meantime, here are a couple of ageing discussion threads from the HTLAL (take note of Chung's comments):

Hippocrene’s Beginner’s/Mastering series - HTLAL, June 2008
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=10754&PN=98

Hippocrene Master Series - HTLAL, October 2014
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=39447&PN=9
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Re: Hippocrene beginner's series with online audio

Postby Chung » Fri Nov 24, 2017 6:04 am

A few things have changed since I posted in that thread from 2008 which Speakeasy linked.

Hippocrene has smartened up a bit and commissioned more language teachers/professors to be authors of their courses and dictionaries. One of the more striking examples involves "Beginner's Ukrainian". The first version by Johannes Poulard was of dubious usefulness. Apparently his book came out while he was studying for a bachelor's degree in fine art at Indiana University Northwest in the mid-1990s per LinkedIn. Nowhere on his profile suggests that he knows Ukrainian, and I once read an unflattering review by a professor that Poulard's book came off as the product of an ambitious student of Ukrainian judging by its mistakes and low pedagogical value. The revised edition of "Beginner's Ukrainian" by Yuri Shevchuk is a vast improvement and since its introduction in 2012 has come with freely downloadable audio and answer keys through Hippocrene. It certainly helps that Shevchuk was educated in Ukraine and is currently a lecturer in Ukrainian at Columbia University.

It's great that Hippocrene has begun offering more free downloads of audio without unduly raising the prices of the books. Up to this year only Shevchuk's "Beginner's Ukrainian" and Kudyma, Miller & Kagan's "Beginner's Russian" have had downloadable audio (the Russian audio is now hosted by UCLA).

From my experience the following titles from Hippocrene are worth a look, or at least are *much* more serviceable than the earlier incarnations available about 10-25 years ago.

- "Beginner's Croatian" by Aida Vidan and Robert Niebuhr
- "Beginner's Finnish" by Agi Risko (to be reissued with downloadable audio in 2018)
- "Beginner's Norwegian" by Laura Ziukaite-Hansen
- "Beginner's Russian" by Anna Kudyma, Frank Miller and Olga Kagan (downloadable audio at UCLA - see above - I haven't used it but browsing it shows that it's laid out much like Shevchuk's "Beginner's Ukrainian" (q.v.))
- "Beginner's Serbian" by Aida Vidan and Robert Niebuhr (now has downloadable audio)
- "Beginner's Ukrainian" by Yuri Shevchuk (downloadable audio and answers - see above)
- "Czech-English/English-Czech Practical Dictionary" by Karen von Kunes
- "Hungarian-English/English-Hungarian Practical Dictionary" by Eva Szabo
- "Norwegian-English/English-Norwegian Practical Dictionary" by Laura Ziukaite-Hansen

The Croatian and Serbian courses overlap about 95% and follow the same story arc and sequence for introducing grammatical features and vocabulary. The biggest differences are the settings of the story (in the Croatian book, the protagonists start at Zagreb airport while in the Serbian book, the protagonists start at Belgrade airport) and modifications to the names, lexicon and grammatical structure to fit features considered typical/stereotyped for the respective standard variants (e.g. (i)jekavian vs. ekavian, questions with ...li...? vs. Da li...?).

I think that Expugnator can vouch for "Beginner's Georgian" by Dodona Kizira, although I might be wrong. In any case, Kizira's book is well-received on Amazon even though one quibble is that it really is a beginner's course and doesn't go as far as some more ambitious learners would like. "Mastering Finnish" by Börje Vähämäki isn't too bad either (especially as a repurposed reference manual on Finnish grammar) although I suspect that it's out of print since I can't find it anywhere on Hippocrene's site.

The other titles are still buyer beware or at least check out the reviews on Amazon to figure out if they're worth buying. Off the top of my head I'd definitely avoid the Estonian-English/Estonian-English concise dictionary by Ksana Kyiv, the beginner's Hungarian course by Katalin Boros, and the Polish-English/English-Polish dictionaries by Iwo Pogonowski except perhaps his huge out-of-print unabridged Polish<>English dictionary which contains a lot of rare words that could be useful for translating or reading specialized/old texts.
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Re: Hippocrene beginner's series with online audio

Postby aravinda » Sat Dec 02, 2017 1:28 am

I recently ordered Beginner's Bengali (Bangla) with Audio CD by Hanne-Ruth Thompson after reading a post by Daristani. The three reviews on Amazon are full of praise. I still have not received the book but from the preview and reviews, it seems to be a well-thought-out course. Hanne-Ruth Thompson is also the author of the uniformly well-received Bengali: A Comprehensive Grammar in the Routledge Comprehensive Grammars series.
Speakeasy wrote:... my collection of vintage materials that have been accumulating in my basement.

If I ever visit Montréal, your basement would be one of the attractions not to miss. :)
Last edited by aravinda on Sat Dec 02, 2017 2:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Hippocrene beginner's series with online audio

Postby BalancingAct » Sat Dec 02, 2017 1:37 am

aravinda wrote:If I ever visit Montréal, your basement would be one of the attractions not to miss. :)


Be prepared to get an earful from his wife.
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Re: Hippocrene beginner's series with online audio

Postby Speakeasy » Sat Dec 02, 2017 2:26 am

aravinda wrote: ... If I ever visit Montréal, your basement would be one of the attractions not to miss.
I figure that three 12-hour days, exclusive of breaks, should be sufficient for a cursory visit. Of course, you'll have to take your own notes. Oh, and, please, no photos! I can't afford another visit from the Fire Marshall.
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Re: Hippocrene beginner's series with online audio

Postby Phantom Kat » Sun Dec 24, 2017 12:36 am

Chung wrote:- "Beginner's Finnish" by Agi Risko (to be reissued with downloadable audio in 2018)


This was the first course I bought for Finnish. I haven't actually gotten through all of it, and it's been years since I've opened it up. I do remember the exercises had the occasional mistake here and there, but it wasn't too distracting. I liked the fact that the audio was completely in Finnish (barring the "Lesson 1/Useful Expressions/etc.), and the dialogues were offered in both normal speed and then spaced out for repetition. As for the grammar, the cases I saw were explained well with helpful examples, though I did supplement the book with Finnish: An Essential Grammar and online websites.

I still preferred Finnish for Foreigners, though, for the exercises. Hippocrene's book, though, gave me a nice start.
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Re: Hippocrene beginner's series with online audio

Postby Φιλόσοφος » Sun Dec 24, 2017 3:29 am

It is a tragedy whenever something moves from a physical format to 'digital'. We can buy language-learning materials from 70 years ago, but if something is offered in digital format and the company decides to stop selling it or goes out-of-business, the manual or audio disappears forever.

Regarding 'Beginner's Georgian', I can vouch that it is very good indeed.
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Re: Hippocrene beginner's series with online audio

Postby neumanc » Sun Dec 24, 2017 10:22 am

Φιλόσοφος wrote:It is a tragedy whenever something moves from a physical format to 'digital'. We can buy language-learning materials from 70 years ago, but if something is offered in digital format and the company decides to stop selling it or goes out-of-business, the manual or audio disappears forever.

I haven't seen it from this perspective, but it's so true. You are absolutely right: I just tried to take a look at their official website http://www.hippocrenebooks.com, but I got nothing. The website seems to be down. At least from my phone, it won't load. Do you get the same results?
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Re: Hippocrene beginner's series with online audio

Postby Daristani » Sun Dec 24, 2017 4:19 pm

Neumanc, I just clicked on the link in your above post (from my desktop computer), and the Hippocrene site now seems to be back up and working fine.

In any event, Merry Christmas!
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