Learning Material Russian - English

AssimiI's Russian course in English
If you have an electronic copy of the 1951 version of "Assi's" Russian (I mean the one that is in English), then please would you consider sharing it... ?

It was easily available online six months ago, however but it turns out that a certain language material sharing site in uxz-istan which you may have heard of.. is under legal pressure and took it down. Unfortunately at the time I visisted there, I preferred a later, more modern version and thought that I could manage in French.. Turns out, I can't.. I actually need the English version which is the one from the 1950s. (supposed to be great).
I've got the written material, but not the audios.

Please do not write the name of the company here! Search engines will pick it up. I made a slight modification when I wrote it. I will delete/modify this post later.

Edit: Weird ! I just found something that claims to be the 1950s version. But the audio quality is suspiciously good and it doesn't match the book.
The Assi course is supposed to be much better than Pimsleur and it's much more advanced. If you have used it, please share your experiences!

Edit2 -- the course that's marked as 1951's version on bittorrent is NOT from then.. it's fairly modern. What a muppet to mislabel it by 50 years

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Johanna

AssimiI's Russian course in English
If you have an electronic copy of the 1951 version of "Assi's" Russian (I mean the one that is in English), then please would you consider sharing it... ?

It was easily available online six months ago, however but it turns out that a certain language material sharing site in uxz-istan which you may have heard of.. is under legal pressure and took it down. Unfortunately at the time I visisted there, I preferred a later, more modern version and thought that I could manage in French.. Turns out, I can't.. I actually need the English version which is the one from the 1950s. (supposed to be great).
I've got the written material, but not the audios.

Please do not write the name of the company here! Search engines will pick it up. I made a slight modification when I wrote it. I will delete/modify this post later.

Edit: Weird ! I just found something that claims to be the 1950s version. But the audio quality is suspiciously good and it doesn't match the book.
The Assi course is supposed to be much better than Pimsleur and it's much more advanced. If you have used it, please share your experiences!

Edit2 -- the course that's marked as 1951's version on bittorrent is NOT from then.. it's fairly modern. What a muppet to mislabel it by 50 years

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I am having trouble finding anything but the PDF for it. I found a website that has people who have the audio so maybe you can sign up there and ask them. If you are interested in that let me know and I will give you the link.

I have it see PM for my skype name

Thanks Quartz!!!!!! :rose:
See PM....


To everyone else; once I have it, I will share it on bittorrent.

To those who messaged asking about this course:

Here is what I learnt about Assimi1 from another forum when I started studying Russian about a year ago:
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1) It is better than Pimsleur and the same length.The enormous amount of audio is where the strength lies, but it is not repetetive, live Pimsleur, and the sentences are less silly.

It comes with a booklet. However their courses are based on French, not English. Hence, it is necessary to know decent French to use the course. These courses are available on TPB, Demonoid and similar. If you are not great at French, it is distracting to learn from French material.

2) This company did however make a Russian course for English speakers in 1951. It HAS been available on various sites online, but right now no copies are available (thanks to an IDIOT on a forum who posted a link to the main language learning material site online. The site has since been harrassed to remove their links to the material.)
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I'll share upload a snippet somewhere once I have the link, and you can decide for yourself if you like it. Obviously the material is a bit outdated - 1951 was a long time ago. But for a beginner it shouldn't matter a lot and this course is very highly regarded.

I also have German course for English speakers (not French!) Anyone interested?

SADLY the so called 1950s versions of the course online are fakes. Somebody has taken the modern French audios and put the old pdf leaflet in the package. You don't notice it until you start listening, but once you do it's clear that these recordings are not from the 1950s.
One of the immediate giveaways is that they talk about St Petersburg which they would not have done in 1951. There is also lots of talk about flying places which I doubt regular people were doing in 1951.
I DID find this on a torrent site, but everyone is stuck at 79%.
I would buy this if it was available for sale, but it is not....

The 1973 version of this course is supposedly the best course in Russian ever made. However it is based on French and I am quite bad at French. This course is available on lots of sites but not for sale anywhere.

I found them!!!
Pure class! They sure knew how to make language courses 60 years ago.

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Originally Posted by Hanna

I found them!!!
Pure class! They sure knew how to make language courses 60 years ago.

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Hanna,

How are the materials? Can I please get a copy?

Thank you,

Scott

I will share them on bittorrent... Watch this space for more info. Before I do that I will clean them up a bit and get rid of some static noise etc.
I will share a "Deluxe" version. :mosking:
"Sharing is caring"

That poor lady in XYZ-istan.. who ran the other site. Apparently that corporation gave her a very hard time. But their harassment of her was in vain.. I'll make sure the material is always available. :"":

In the meantime Scott, install utorrent or Azureus if you don't already have them...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hanna

I will share them on bittorrent... Watch this space for more info. Before I do that I will clean them up a bit and get rid of some static noise etc.
I will share a "Deluxe" version. :mosking:
"Sharing is caring"

That poor lady in XYZ-istan.. who ran the other site. Apparently that corporation gave her a very hard time. But their harassment of her was in vain.. I'll make sure the material is always available. :"":

In the meantime Scott, install utorrent or Azureus if you don't already have them...

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Hanna,

Already have a torrent client. Thank you for sharing!

Scott

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hanna

I will share them on bittorrent... Watch this space for more info. Before I do that I will clean them up a bit and get rid of some static noise etc.
I will share a "Deluxe" version. :mosking:
"Sharing is caring"

That poor lady in XYZ-istan.. who ran the other site. Apparently that corporation gave her a very hard time. But their harassment of her was in vain.. I'll make sure the material is always available. :"":

In the meantime Scott, install utorrent or Azureus if you don't already have them...

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Thank you for uploading it. Can't wait to have the link so I can check this out.

OK, I've got this now... The quality of the audio is NOT fantastic, there is a fair bit of static on some of the lessons.

The course consists of 86 audio lessons and 100 lessons in total.
There is a pdf and mp3 files.

I had to edit the pdf because some pages were missing from the file with the best quality...

The material is optimised for mp3 player and eBook reader

I can share it on bittorrent daytime, until 3 people have downloaded.

http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/2453/dfdfdgdgdd.jpg

Sample Audio: http://www.mediahump.com/audio/2404/

The pace in this course is very fast!
You've really got to focus and pay attention...!
Towards the end it seems quite high-level, I think!

It's charming in a way, but a bit primitive and old fashioned too.
This is definitely a French course, it's just the book that has been translated (noticeably!) to English. Nothing else is English about it.

Another thing to be aware of is that this material is OLD!

I think some of the modes of address are outdated and possibly other expressions too. It's from 1951!

"Небо было чисто и темно" - я бы никогда так не сказал, хотя это, возможно, грамматически верно.
"...можно_ли самому научиться иностранному языку в совершенстве" - и так бы не сказал.
:)

http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/2...zdfghdfhfd.jpg

Тяжеловатый язык. Своеобразный.

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Originally Posted by Vadim Mo

Тяжеловатый язык. Своеобразный.

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Actually, some people say that the Assimil courses from 1951 and 1973 are the best courses EVER in Russian... (I read that in another forum). Not sure how reliable these people really are though, but that's what the consensus was...

But you say the language used is "тяжеловатый".....??

Would you recommend against this course then?

Here is another sample from the audio... :mosking:

http://www.mediahump.com/audio/2405/

Тяжеловатый это значит несколько трудный для восприятия, несколько старомодный, порой странно звучащий.
Например, мы не говорим "сливы с червями", а говорим "червивые сливы".
И грамматика странная: людьми, что_ж.

I am sorry that I write in Russian. :)

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Тяжеловатый язык. Своеобразный.

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I'd say it's incomprehensible scrappy lines with mistakes.
Are not there better things?
I study english without any courses. Just read and listen to that is interesting to me.

I'm not sure why they chose these exact extracts & texts as examples. Not only the language is very oldfashioned, but the subject matter is questionable. Do beginners really need to know an obscure gambling slang? :unknown:
Maybe Assimili is good at explaining grammar? Otherwise it does not seem like a good course.

That course reminds me of this one somehow. :mosking:

these extracts are from some works by L.Tolstoy, aren't they? Perhaps they can be useful if you're going to read his novels in original, but it will be very difficult to learn by them how to speak and write modern Russian, I think.
PS Personally, I've never liked Tolstoy's style....

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Malinka

these extracts are from some works by L.Tolstoy, aren't they?

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Yes, both are from "Севастопольские рассказы" by Tolstoy ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastopol_Sketches - written more than 150 years ago!). Tolstoy's language is rather ponderous, and some of the expressions he used (like "играть на мелок") hardly anybody understands now. :)
Dialogs are funny, but they also use "old" texts.

It really put me off AssimiI's courses - I was going to use one of them, but now I can't trust their choice of learning material.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by deker

Quote:

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Тяжеловатый язык. Своеобразный.

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I'd say it's incomprehensible scrappy lines with mistakes.
Are not there better things?
I study english without any courses. Just read and listen to that is interesting to me.

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Yeah, but you are forgetting one thing; Russian is MUCH more complicated than English. Any muppet can learn English (I did, for example...) and it's true that no special material is really needed... But learning Russian on the other hand is more like an art.... :mosking:

Learning English compared with learning Russian is like boiling an egg, compared with cooking a cordon bleu style three course dinner....

For that reason finding "the best" learning material for Russian, is a bit like the quest for the holy grail.... everyone is speculating about what is the best. Assimil is generally considered better than Pimsleur which is the most commonly used course.

The place where this was listed is a website called "How to learn any language", dedicated to language studies. They were mentioning that there is another Assmil Russian course from 1973 which is better. But that's from French to Russian, so because the people on that site are native English speakers mostly, they recommended this course from 1951. I thought it must be really awesome, so I was very keen to find it.

I agree that it looks a bit outdated. It seems everyone thinks it's appalling, so I'll pass on it..

I just got carried away when I looked for it and found out that Assimil had threatened the site which referenced it, to take down its' links. Then I decided that I really wanted the course. But I've got other books, don't really need this one.