LibriVox Language Learning Collection Vol. 001 by Various LibriVox
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This collection is part of an initiative to create a language learning resource at LibriVox. The LibriVox Language Learning Collections contain readings from various language learning books, grammars, primers, phrasebooks, dictionaries, readers and even other works which contain information on various languages, recount experiences of language learning and encountering new languages or provide guides for correct pronunciation, writing or discourse in a language. These works could describe English or any other language whatsoever, from Latin to Sumerian, Chinese to Wampanoag, Esperanto to Swahili (etc.).
This Volume includes a treatise by Sir Arthur Cotton, author of an "Arabic Primer". His daughter, Lady Hope, on page 523 of her biography of her father, writes that he "had very strong theories on the subject of learning “Living Languages,” his opinion being that, as every child who comes into the world learns its mother tongue orally, and at first without grammar… so the learning of all modern languages would be very much facilitated by a similar process." Also included are the orientalist E.G. Browne's opinions on language learning (taken from the introduction to A Year Amongst the Persians), the first lesson from Dr. Emil Otto's "French Conversation-Grammar", a talk by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá on the need for a universal auxiliary language, Samuel Johnson's "A Grammar of the English Tongue", several sections from Henry Sweet's "First Steps in Anglo-Saxon", Lessons 1 - 5 from "Esperanto in Twenty Lessons", two sections on language by Varro, a story in Latin from "Fabulae Faciles", "Greek Lessons: 1-10", the Phonology Section from a "Primer of Persian" and Lessons 1 - 19 from "A Practical Arabic Course". (Summary by Nicholas James Bridgewater)
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First Steps in Anglo-Saxon, Be þissum middangearde
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Customer Reviews
Difficult to follow
I'm just listening to the first Latin lesson, and I can't imagine how it would be very helpful. The guy's rhythm with the English language is really strange. Is it because he's reading straight from a text, and not applying pauses or inflections in the right place? I can barely work out what he's talking about in some places, and that has nothing to do with the Latin instruction. I have to concentrate just to follow when he's moved on to a new point, when he's reading a title or when he's reading anything else, and he's moving way too fast. Maybe I've missed the point of this, but there's no way that anyone could typically benefit from it. Is it based on a textbook? Even then, how can any student keep up with this and concentrate?