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Any plans for a Polish language course?

PostPosted: January 8th, 2011, 3:02 pm
by carpdiem
Hi!

I was wondering when the next updates were coming, and whether there's a Polish language course somewhere in the backlog. It's sad to see this great site go almost a year since any updates (April 2010!).

Re: Any plans for a Polish language course?

PostPosted: January 11th, 2011, 10:22 pm
by VagabondPilgrim
Greetings!

Actually, there were a few updates last Fall, but things were so hectic that I didn't get around to updating the front page. :oops:

As it happens, Oberon has just sent me the text for FSI Polish. Unfortunately, we don't have the audio at this time. You should see the text fairly soon.

Hope that helps!
-VP

Re: Any plans for a Polish language course?

PostPosted: January 15th, 2011, 8:49 am
by Oberon
A couple of notes on the Polish FAST Course.

The book has a 1992 date and has 450 instructional pages.

Both of the authors are listed US State Department FSI employees in the winter 1991 employee directory as well as in later directories. As such, the work is in the US public domain per 17 U.S.C. § 105 as a work created by US government employees in the course of their duties. A copy of the directory pages was sent to Vagabond Pilgrim for his records.

Unfortunately the work included images that were not created by US employees, and might have been copyrighted. To be safe, I replaced all the images with Creative Commons and public domain equivalents. I tried to use the same image subject whenever possible, otherwise I picked images that matched the nearby text. In cases where I couldn't find a good image I left the spot blank.

Due to the paucity of audio available for this book, only 4 tapes, it probably isn't all that useful for a self-learner except as a reference. I don't have the tapes. Some other sources for the Polish learner from major university sites include:

Teach Yourself Polish made available by Indiana University
Audio: http://www.iu.edu/~celtie/polish_archive.html
Book: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=inu.30000082138789

Beginning Polish by Alexander Schenker
The Yale University Press books are copyrighted but available in both new and used forms for a low price. The audio is available on line at Yale University. I'm not sure of the status of the audio, but it has been at this location for at least a couple of years:
http://www.cls.yale.edu/polish/

Re: Any plans for a Polish language course?

PostPosted: March 1st, 2011, 9:28 pm
by ellenhoffman
Thank you for at least adding the 467 page Polish workbook. Your work is appreciated. very nice of you.
As for me I am using Rosetta Stone--have used it for Chinese, and Dutch-- but I just ordered Pimsleur audio for my exercise routine since I can't be at a computer to do RS while exercising.
Will let you know how it works out but based on the free lesson clip, using it combined with the Rosetta Stone Dynamic Immersion should get me fairly far...

Ich spreche auch Deutsch.

Re: Any plans for a Polish language course?

PostPosted: November 29th, 2011, 7:13 pm
by mbateman
NTIS no longer carries the Polish FAST course. About a two months ago, I tried ordering it with the intention of sending the recordings to Vagabond Pilgrim for inclusion on this website. The next day, I received (automatic) Email confirmation of my order. When, after a delay of some four weeks, the package still hadn’t arrived, I sent an Email to NTIS and they responded as follows: “Please be notified that your order for AVA19156BB00 was cancelled as this product is no longer available from NTIS.” Their website still showed the product as being available at the time of our Email exchange. Yesterday, I queried the NTIS product list and got a “no results” response.

I have a complete set of the recordings for Polish FAST as MP3 files. I purchased them legally from a third party that sells them on the internet and clearly identifies them as the FSI courses. I am aware of this site’s policy. However, since NTIS no longer carries the originals, could we not make just one tiny exception in this case?