Re: OT: French language instruction books

Actually, I vaguely remembered that thread when I began
looking for a French book... its a shame because the one I
ordered ended up really sucking.  And I was so excited at
the price! :(  This is why one should buy books at a bookstore,
where one can see for oneself whether the book uses IPA and
a good teaching method or not, and then one doesn't have
to buy a book one will to be able to use.  Ah, the disadvantages
of internet shopping!

(Note, the extensive use of impersonal "one" is purposeful.  It
is, in effect, my rebellion against the English lack of a suitable
such pronoun.  So [expletive deleted] the tone of my writing!)

Jake

----- Original Message -----
From: "Arthaey Angosii" <arthaey@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: 01 April, 2003 11:54
Subject: Re: OT: French language instruction books


> Emaelivpeith Jake:
> >I'm trying to finally teach myself French and I would like to
> >know what you all think is the best low-priced teach-yourself
> >type book.  IPA transcription is a must.  For some reason I can't
> >find a good book online.
>
> I'm looking for the exactly the same thing.  I asked back at the August
> about it, but mostly I got comments about how someone had used
> such-and-such a textbook in school.  I did get some tips, though:
>
> Muke suggested:
> >"Hungarian: Verbs and Essentials of Grammar".  I think, but am not sure,
> >that the other Verbs and Essentials books uses it too.
>
> Herman Miller said:
> >Some of the older Teach Yourself books used variations of IPA; for
> >instance, _Norwegian_ by Ingvald Marm & Alf Sommerfelt
>
> Josh Brandt-Young wrote:
> >Two that come immediately to mind are _Teach Yourself Catalan_ by Alan
> >Yates, and _Grammar of Contemporary Bulgarian_ by Kjetil Rå Hauge. Both
are,
> >in my opinion, excellent resources. _Colloquial Albanian_ by Isa Zymberi
> >does use IPA, but not entirely accurately. _Icelandic_ by Stefán
Einarsson
> >uses IPA (and boy do you need it with Icelandic), though I'm not sure how
> >highly I'd recommend it...ah, yes, _Beginner's Lithuanian_ by Leonardas
> >Dambriunas, though it doesn't have IPA per se, does have very complete
> >descriptions using accurate phonetic terminology. William Radice's _Teach
> >Yourself Bengali_ transcriptions come close enough to IPA that it
probably
> >belongs in this list as well
>
> And BP Jonsson warned:
> >Though he [Stefán Einarsson, author of _Icelandic_] used |q| for [G]
> >according to long-standing Danish and Icelandic practice.
>
> Finally, bnathyuw mentioned:
> >hugo scots gaelic in three months
>
>
> If people know of more books, Jake and I (and others, I'm sure!) would
love
> to hear about them.  :)
>
>
> --
> AA
>