I have copied/pasted SkyNet’s musing, above, from his log.Skynet wrote: … German is more complicated than French, yet both GWOT and (N)GWE have shorter lessons than their French counterparts, FWOT and NFWE (126 vs 140 and 100 vs 113 respectively). Would anyone want to speculate why Assimil did that? …
En guise de réponse, I will speculate that this publisher has, for much of its existence, relied upon the judgment of the numerous authors of the Assimil courses to include a predetermined quantity of information (vocabulary, grammatical structures) in the form of dialogues, exercises, and notes, which are to be presented in approximately 100 cumulative lessons. However, were an individual author to believe that 113 lessons provides greater balance, whereas another individual author were to believe that 108 lessons better achieves the desired goal, then the publisher was quite willing to live with the final results; Gallic temperament, quoi?
There does seem to be, however, a tendency in recent years to strive for exactly 100 lessons, a matter which I ascribe to interference from Brussels.
Would anyone have a better explanation?
EDITED:
Typos, bien entendu