Collecting Language Books [WARNING: lots of images]

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Sim
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Postby Sim » 2004-03-30, 10:33

Car wrote: This reminds me of a phrasebook "Eastern European languages", but since the pronunciation is given in English, not IPA, I decided not to buy it.


I agree with your Car.

I don't like to sound snobbish, but I really DISLIKE pronunciations given in "English". For one thing, English spelling is so unpredictable that you need a table anyway saying what you're using the letters to mean (if you want to be accurate); and for another, what about the sounds in the non-English language which do not exist in English...

I prefer IPA, or any other consistent system of transcription, including perhaps just the orthography of the language itself (if that language has a consistent orthography), WITH an explanation of how the sounds are pronounced (AND a warning that it's always best to get a native speaker to show you the sounds anyway).

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Kubi
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Postby Kubi » 2004-03-30, 10:51

Sim wrote:
Car wrote: This reminds me of a phrasebook "Eastern European languages", but since the pronunciation is given in English, not IPA, I decided not to buy it.


I agree with your Car.

So do I. I have a couple of books with pronunciation given in "English" or "German", and they're all often quite far off the shot. I buy such books only if I find them good in another respect and know already the pronunciation of the language in question.
Je défendrai mes opinions jusqu'à ma mort, mais je donnerai ma vie pour que vous puissiez défendre les vôtres. - Voltaire

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Car
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Postby Car » 2004-03-30, 10:57

Kubi wrote:So do I. I have a couple of books with pronunciation given in "English" or "German", and they're all often quite far off the shot. I buy such books only if I find them good in another respect and know already the pronunciation of the language in question.


Assimil likes to do that, another reason why you need the tapes or CDs. Yes, they explain the pronunciation, but it's just not accurate enough. Still common in phrasebooks, though. It's bad and even worse in English (due to the spelling).

A fine example was a text we read in English about Sweden. There were some sentences given in Swedish (useful phrases), the English translation and the pronunciation in English. We preferred to have a look at the Swedish texts only... For a similar reason, I unsubscribed from a "French word a day" newsletter.
Please correct my mistakes!

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Postby Lyle » 2004-03-31, 11:07

Here are mine (just a few though) :P :

CHINESE
The one in black is for me to prepare for my HSK Advance Level. The one in blue is for me to teach. The small one is a dictionary (I used this dictionary since I was 10, of course this is a new one that I just bought last year) :wink:
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ENGLISH
The 2 books on left and right are all about phonetic. The one in the middle is "English Grammar for Chinese People" :lol:
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JAPANESE
Books plus dictionaries. Preparing for JLPT Level 1 this year. (Other books are in boxes, too lazy to 'dig' it out :twisted: )
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FRENCH
Only attended classes for 9 months, that's all I have. I bought the one in Japanese from Japan (and I love it so much 8) )
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GERMAN
Only attended classes for 6 weeks (a short Spoken German Course). The one in Japanese was bought from Japan too.
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OTHERS
Phrase books plus mini dictionaries
Top (from left) : 5 in 1 Travelling Phrase Book (Chinese, English, Japanese, French and Spanish) -- only US$2 :lol: , Dutch Phrase Book (a gift from Ron :wink: ), Western Europe Phrasebook, South-East Asia Phrase Book (that's how I learn spoken Thai)
Bottom (from left) : Europe Phrase Book, 4 mini dictionaries (from Ron too)
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:wink:
天上的星星为何像人群一般地拥挤?
地上的人儿为何像星星一样地疏远?

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Kubi
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Postby Kubi » 2004-03-31, 13:34

Kubi wrote:I'll check if they do have ISBNs, if so, I'll give them to you.

Ok, here we go:

"Everyday Cornish", by Rod Lyon, 1984, ISBN 0907566782

"Cornish Simplyfied - Short Lessons for Self-Tuition - Pronunciation. Grammar. Exercises.", by Caradar (A. S. D. Smith, author of "Welsh made Easy"), 2nd edition 1972, published by Dyllansaw Truran, no ISBN

Perhaps that helps to get them.
Je défendrai mes opinions jusqu'à ma mort, mais je donnerai ma vie pour que vous puissiez défendre les vôtres. - Voltaire

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Leviwosc
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Postby Leviwosc » 2004-03-31, 22:12

Hehehehe nice to see those books back in that picture Lyle :)

Unfortunately I can't make images of my books :(

Otherwise I should have done that.... Perhaps I can contact someone who is willing to make pictures for me :lol:

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灰鹰(Gray Eagle)
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Postby 灰鹰(Gray Eagle) » 2004-04-01, 16:35

Wow, man, do u have a scanner :) ?You could scan then and make your own i-net library, where people could use them in non-commercial purposes.

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Leviwosc
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Postby Leviwosc » 2004-04-01, 17:11

Do you have ever heard of the term 'copyright' ? :?

It's probably prohibited to do that.

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Kubi
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Postby Kubi » 2004-04-01, 18:11

Ron de Leeuw, Cave Canem wrote:Do you have ever heard of the term 'copyright' ? :?

It's probably prohibited to do that.

Ron.

If you speak about scanning the whole books, you might get problems, yes...but just the titles are no problem.
Je défendrai mes opinions jusqu'à ma mort, mais je donnerai ma vie pour que vous puissiez défendre les vôtres. - Voltaire

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Leviwosc
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Postby Leviwosc » 2004-04-03, 21:02

Oh I tought you wanted to scan the whole book!:lol:

I'm sorry, my mistake...

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Leviwosc
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Postby Leviwosc » 2004-04-03, 21:32

I've cleaned my room :P

and I've discovered many more Language books :)


6 Latin, 1 Romanian, 13 Italian, 5 Spanish, 3 Portuguese, 1 Papiamento, 12 French, 5 English, 18 Dutch, 4 Afrikaans, 2 Frisian, 5 German, 4 Yiddish, 5 Danish, 2 Swedish, 1 Norwegian, 1 Finnish, 2 Greek, 2 Turkish, 2 Hungarian, 2 Polish, 1 Czech, 1 Kroatian, 1 Lativan, 1 Slovak, 1 Russian, 1 Malaysian, 1 Japanese, 5 Mandarin, 1 Vietnamese, 3 Indonesian, 1 Hebrew, 3 Arabic, 1 Farsi, 1 Swahilli and 2 Esperanto.

119 books if I haven't miscounted.

Ron.
Last edited by Leviwosc on 2004-04-04, 0:51, edited 2 times in total.
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Leviwosc
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Postby Leviwosc » 2004-04-03, 21:33

ooopss mistake....
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GERALD

Postby GERALD » 2004-04-05, 20:16

I am a language freak too. Here are the books and tapes that I have :
german, greek, vietnamese, turkish, basque, welsh, croatian, tlingit, mohawk, navaho, xhosa, georgian, cheyenne, lushootseed, tsimshian, sami (lapp) and jerriais.
I have been sticking to greek for 3 years and I will continue until I am reasonably fluent.

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Postby Zaduma » 2004-04-06, 6:38

Yesterday, instead of going at the university, I went to play truant :oops: Of course I have some favourite places for truancy, one of them is a bookstore... Wow and I found there... Macedonian phrasebooks...! I was looking for them so many times, and finally...!

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Kubi
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Postby Kubi » 2004-04-06, 6:42

Zaduma wrote:Of course I have some favourite places for truancy, one of them is a bookstore...

Bookshops are very dangerous places for me, especially big ones with a large choice of non-fiction books: somehow I can't get out of one without finding some of the books trailing me... :wink:
Je défendrai mes opinions jusqu'à ma mort, mais je donnerai ma vie pour que vous puissiez défendre les vôtres. - Voltaire

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Zaduma
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Postby Zaduma » 2004-04-06, 7:54

Kubi wrote:
Zaduma wrote:Of course I have some favourite places for truancy, one of them is a bookstore...

Bookshops are very dangerous places for me, especially big ones with a large choice of non-fiction books: somehow I can't get out of one without finding some of the books trailing me... :wink:

Lou Reed said one time that his favourite place for the first date is a bookstore! But I can't agree with him, cause I would be much more interested at books than at my partner :wink: For me it's dangerous too, I would like to leave it with so many books!!

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Car
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Postby Car » 2004-04-06, 8:27

Zaduma wrote:For me it's dangerous too, I would like to leave it with so many books!!


The same for me, but since I can't decide, I end up buying nothing. I could look there for hours, can go there regularly looking at the same books, but just don't know which one to buy. And the choice of language books and computer books is really big, both on the same floor...
Please correct my mistakes!

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Sisyphe
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Postby Sisyphe » 2007-08-18, 1:39

Cool thread, though deficient in photographs!! I just got a digital camera...well...two...for my trip, and I had some time on my hands as well, so...

This is my language reference collection, and like Proycon, I didn't include novels, but I did include anthologies/readers that teach the respective language:
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I'm just noticing that some of it is cut off, but I took more pictures, so no matter. ;) Also, don't mind my colourful bedding...:oops:

My Persian and Kurdish books (9):
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My Chinese (Mandarin/Cantonese) books (16):
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My Arabic books, dialects included (12):
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My Russian books (11):
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My Korean books (4):
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My Hebrew books (8):
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My books for Indian languages (Hindi, Urdu, Panjabi) [4]:
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My books for Japanese (7):
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My books for miscellaneous Asian languages (Vietnamese, Tagalog, Southeast Asian phrasebooks...) [7] I love that phrasebook on the bottom right :D
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My books in Amharic and Somali (3):
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My books for the Classic languages (Sanskrit [:bounce:], Ancient Greek, Latin) (4):
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My books for Armenian and Greek (6):
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Misc. European books (Finnish, Czech, Romanian, European phrasebook) (4):
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Scandinavian languages (Danish, Swedish, pan-Scandinavian + Faroese+Icelandic+Finnish phrasebook) (3):
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Turkisn and Azeri (4):
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Dutch and Afrikaans (4):
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Spanish and Catalan (10):
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German (8):
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Portuguese and Italian (8):
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American Sign Language (4):
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'Heritage languages' (Haïtian Créole, Swahili, Wolof, Zulu) (5):
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Not too shabby for a 17 year old, I think. :)
Last edited by Sisyphe on 2007-08-18, 2:09, edited 1 time in total.

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Bjarn
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Postby Bjarn » 2007-08-18, 2:02

*Is whiling away the time in wistful envy*
Sisyphe, where do you get the money?

My actual book collection is few, but my traces are many. Random childrens books, candy wrappers(LOTS) :oops: , newspapers, instruction manuals, multilingual packaging.... :lol:

A linguistic packrat.
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Språk är en tråd genom tidens flod...
Bruidhinn rium sa' Ghàidhlig!
Un homme qui parle trois langues est trilingue.
Un homme qui parle deux langues est bilingue.
Un homme qui ne parle qu'une langue est anglais.

dyjohen

Postby dyjohen » 2007-08-18, 2:17

Its just not normal Marcus.

but...

Me likeeee


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