🚀 go-pugleaf

joe@sfbooks.com (Joe Bernstein) wrote:

>(What I really liked was the old Teach Yourself books I used to see about
>15 years ago, that always introduced pronunciation and orthography in great
>detail right away, tersely and informatively.  So even if you hadn't a clue
>what the language was really like without reading the whole book, you could
>persuade yourself that you could "read", i.e. sound out, the language right
>from the start.  Alas, that was all I really felt I needed at 14, to this
>day I know little more Irish, Welsh or Greek than that...and can no longer
>find the danged books.)

The Teach Yourself books still exist; the problem is bad distribution
in the U.S.

I'm with you on putting the orthography and phonology up front.

But ideally I'd like to see a quick overview of both (on the phrase
book level) followed by something more detailed for those who really
want to get into it. (For instance, at the outset it isn't really
necessary to know that a French T is dental and unaspirated; an
English T will do. Same for a French-speaker learning English.)

I have an Arab text that seems to contain an unusually excellent
explanation of Arabic writing, and I say "seems" only because it is
scattered throughout the text it bits and pieces and I haven't waded
through the whole thing.


D Gary Grady
Durham NC USA
73513.2350@compuserve.com / dgary@mindspring.com