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Hello, This is something that has been really worrying me lately. I don't know if it happens only here in Poland but I keep finding mistakes inside language coursebooks. Sometimes it's typos, and I think that's quite a scary thing because I won't always be able to recognize them, especially if it's a totally new language. But sometimes it's much worse: outdated vocabulary, incorrect grammar structures - the kind of mistakes that should never ever be found in a published coursebook! I've already seen several books for learning Russian that, despite pretty covers and supposedly well-known publishers, had errors that most native speakers could have easily corrected. And this is really terrifying for me. Does this happen in other countries as well? Are there any international publishers that can be relied upon? For now, I don't think I'll buy any learning materials published here. Ania

Hi! I was reading about some of the crazy sentences that Duolingo offers sometimes, and I remembered a lot of absolutely hilarious examples of (mostly not intended) stupid sounding sentences from various coursebooks. When I started to learn Polish with some obscure "teach-yourself-in-three-months" book (and that was back in 2007 - not 80s or something), I was treated to lovely dialogues of this kind: - Hello, are you going to the shop? - Yes, I need to stand in the queue for several hours. I will get meat! Real meat! - Oh, it's so hard to get meat! You will be lucky! Obviously the authors kinda thought Poland was still in the Socialist times, and the book was published around 2005! Then there are numerous "sample dialogues" meant to teach you something and they sound so unnatural that it just makes you laugh. In my second Polish coursebook, from Berlitz I think, they started off with dialogues that I just couldn't help giggling to. It's a pity I don't have the book anymore to quote it word for word. But the dialogues went something like: - Do you want to go to the cinema? - Yes, I do. I want to go to the cinema. - So you want to go to the cinema? - Yes, I want to go to the cinema. - I am happy you want to go the cinema. When will we go to the cinema? - Let's go to the cinema tomorrow. Do you want to go to the cinema tomorrow? Always reminds me of the terrific Monty Python sketch from "How To Irritate People": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aUbGGFySdU Do you have examples of such strange/funny parts from your foreign language textbooks? If yes, please share! Ania