United Kingdom
Icelandic Language
Hey Guys,
Looking forward to Hungarian on Lingq but do you we have any update on the progress of Icelandic? Pleaseee tell me we have some content already? haha.... If not I will try to search around to find willing volunteers. Any ideas, Zoran? :)
Iceland
I have now gone over and fixed or rejected all the edits of the mini-stories after my friend proofread them. All I have to do is read through them once again to see whether I catch any silly typos that both her and I could have missed and then I´ll be sending them to LingQ. I still need to read the stories and edit them to have the mp3 files ready as well, but I think LingQ may be able to start with just the texts.
United States
Sweet!
Iceland
I sent the texts to LingQ just now. I will give an update on when the recordings should be ready.
United Kingdom
What sort of recording software are you using? If it is something basic, I may be able to improve the quality by doing some noise removal, dynamic compression, normalisation etc to make the whole experience easier to listen to.
Iceland
Rodecaster Pro + Podmic, which should be good enough. I rent a recording studio with a friend of mine. I have not used it much, unfortunately and my friend did most of the setup of all the recording equipment etc. but I should be good.
United Kingdom
Fair enough, sounds like you you've taken this a lot more seriously than some of the people doing some of the bigger languages :-)
But if you want to send me a sample when you're done, I'll can see if I can improve anything in post-production - I find it can often be useful to do some dynamic processing to make the whole thing loud enough to listen to when, say, driving or on a train.
Iceland
Thanks. It´s good if we all work together to make language learning easier in general. I´ve noticed there is a huge difference in the quality in the lessons on LingQ. I appreciate everyone who takes time to contribute, but some readings have a great amount of background noise and not everyone is as clear in how they read. It´s always good when you have a good reader and little background noise, otherwise, as you say, it can be really bad when you have to turn up the volume.
United Kingdom
Great. If you haven't started recording yet, if you make sure to record a good five seconds of silence at the start of the track, that gives the noise reduction algorithm something to work on. If your recording studio is already dead silent, that won't be an issue, but if there's some residual electrical noise, it's good to be able to digitally cancel it out.
United States
Fantastic. Thanks again for all your hard work.
Iceland
Now I have gone over the reviews/corrections of all but 10 of the mini-stories. I should be done by the end of next week and then I´ll send all the mini-stories to LingQ. I may need well into August to finish the recordings though, cause there are quite a few things coming up that I´m doing in the coming weeks.
New Zealand
I'm really looking forward to this, Rokkvi! Getting me excited about Icelandic :)
United States
Any updates on it?
Iceland
Yes if you read the whole thread. I am starting again tomorrow.
Iceland
I have started again. I now have about 15 stories that I still need to go over and an check the corrections from the review and weigh in on (most correct and aesthetic Icelandic vs most like everyday spoken language vs what teaches what is being taught in this lesson the best). I will probably be done sometime next week and then I will send the texts to LingQ. Then there will still be quite a bit of recording and editing to do.
Iceland
I will start working on putting the mini-stories into LingQ soon. I can not promise to finish the job, but I hope to.
United Kingdom
Takk fyrir hjálpina!
Iceland
I have started. I´m about 1/3 of the way through the written translations, but when I´m done I´ll still have the spellchecking and reading of the audio ahead of me. It should be done by the end of February the latest.
Sweden
Really hope to see Icelandic on LingQ someday. Hope things are still going well with your mini stories translations.
Iceland
I have translated them all already, but I need to proofread them a little more, then record them. Recording them went really well and fast when I did some test recordings a while ago, but I may not be able to access the studio for a while because of the Corona virus. I will also need to get a girl/woman to read some of the text, because adjectives in Icelandic change according to the sex of the person/object being described and some mini stories have parts where they are told from the perspective of a girl/woman. It would thus be very misleading if I read them myself.
Hoppas det hjälper kompis :)
United States
Falsetto. :-)
Iceland
Nobody wants to listen to a fake female impersonation like that when they learn languages :D
Sweden
Tack! Stanna frisk!
United States
Any updates on your end? Icelandic would be incredible to have on LingQ. Thanks for your efforts, regardless.
EDIT: Disregard, graskeggur has kindly shown me you responded at the bottom - thanks!
United States
TheOregonian, check the bottom of this thread. Rokkvi just gave an update yesterday. He will be working on it shortly.
United States
I am learning Icelandic via books since it is not available here on LingQ, however I would LOVE to see it here.
Serbia
I am sorry but I don't have good news about Icelandic. We don't have any Mini Story translated into this language.
If you know someone willing to help and work on them, in exchange for LingQ Premium, they can contact me on zoran(at)lingq.com
United Kingdom
Thanks, Zoran. I'll get on to it!
United States
I've messaged a few Icelandic teachers on italki trying to pursauade them to do the mini stories. But I believe the problem was that they didn't want to do it for free. (Which I don't blame them)
United States
I thought I remember Zoran, Mark, or maybe the Master himself staying something about them trading LingQ membership for their assistance. Maybe I'm wrong and I just accidentally thought of that myself. Either way, I have no personal interest in Icelandic myself, but I do hope you are successful in your quest.
Germany
In one of his last videos on YouTube Steve said that LingQ is looking for people to provide more stories beyond the mini stories and they would be paid but he didn't want to go into detail.
United States
I've been slowly turning the lessons from icelandiconline.com for use in LingQ, but it will be sometime before I have them all, and even then I'm not sure I'll be able to share them over LingQ (maybe privately?). I've used the Teach Yourself Icelandic in the past, and currently Pimsleur and icelandiconline.com, both are decent. Also, the series Trapped on Netflix is pretty good. Disney has stuff in Icelandic as well. All of that is well and good, but having Icelandic on LingQ would be best. Irish and Icelandic are the two languages I've wanted to learn since I was a little kid.
If there is any effort to pool resources to get the ministories done on here, I'd be in.
United States
Icelandic has been a dream Language for me. I have been really wanting to learn it. But I only use LingQ to learn Languages. I hope we can get some volunteers to do Icelandic mini stories for us. :)
Iceland
See above. I´m working on it.
United States
Rokkvi, I hope all is well.
I am curious as to the status of your work on the Icelandic mini-story project. I am very excited to see Icelandic as one of the language options here at LingQ and can't wait to start the stories. As you may already be aware, once you are done with the project, it will be the first major modern-day language app to offer Icelandic (there have been requests for years on other apps, but nothing has been done). Lucky for us, LingQ is the best place for it.
For those who are interested in Icelandic but are not aware, there are now two Icelandic short stories books aimed at the A2/B1 level:
Short Stories in Icelandic for Beginners by Olly Richards (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B081N3JHXF/). This book is great and exactly the type of resource we need as we work our way through A2/ B1. You can also purchase the audio from Olly's site (https://readers.teachyourself.com/id004325773/) for 50% if you buy the ebook or paperback, which of course doubles its usefulness.
Árstíðir: Sögur á einföldu máli by Karítas Hrundar Pálsdóttir (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084T1KBLJ/). I have purchased it and glanced through the first few stories. So far it looks like another good resource (unfortunately, no audio). It is next on my list.
Menntamálastofnun (https://mms.is/namsefni?title=&level=All&category=All&type=16&year=All&sort_by=title&view_as=on) is a great resource for ebooks and audio books that are intended for kids in school. However, because they are aimed at kids, the challenge for adults is finding enough "compiling" input for the A1/ A2 stage.
In light of Icelandic's dubious future, you should be very proud of your work.
Iceland
I was going to finish the short stories a long time ago but kept getting obsessed with learning more on LingQ myself. I´ll be learning Norwegian today and tomorrow and then I´m done with all my goals for now and will get to work on the stories again.
I´ve translated all of them, had them reviewed and have gone over the reviews of 40 out of the 60 stories. I´ve also read about 8 stories, but have not listened to see if the recordings are good enough.
So I think early next week I should have the text part of the stories done and will be sending them to LingQ. Then I will need to do more recording and editing. I also need a female voice to read some of the stories, since they are told from the perspective of a woman and that actually changes how some words are said and written, so having a man read them would not just be silly, it would be misleading in how you speak.
I think it will all be ready sometime in July.
Iceland
Update, I finished my Norwegian marathon just now. Will get back to translating in the next days.
United States
That is excellent news.
BTW, I understand the need for a female reader. Hopefully, you can can find someone who will be kind enough to help out.
Thanks again for all your hard work, and I look forward to reading them when you are done.
Iceland
Furthermore, thank you for the kind words. I´m thinking the same thing. Icelandic may well have disappeared in a hundred years. It´s good to do something to keep it alive.
United States
Your concern is justified. Since I became interested in Icelandic, I've read several articles showing that the future of the language appears to be in real danger.
There seems to be a major imbalance between Iceland's desire to preserve the language and any real movement forward (perhaps its just a matter of not knowing what to do). Despite establishing Icelandic Language Day and the Institute of Foreign Languages decades ago, current articles show a growing concern that Icelandic may be dying out in the digital age, and that survival of the language depends on those choices made by the Icelandic youth. To make matters worse, the majority of immigrants say they are dissatisfied with the quality of Icelandic instruction.
The real challenge to those of us outside Iceland is that access to sufficient amounts of appropriate level input is severely limited (which is interesting in light of the fact that just a few years ago Iceland ranked second in number of books published per capita). Furthermore, the majority of authentic TV programming is only accessible from within the country (RUV blocks most of it).
It would seem that those charged with preserving the Icelandic language need to strongly reconsider their strategy. Unfortunately, it appears that there are too few people moving in the right direction (i.e., provide large amounts of appropriate level input that is easily accessible).
Your effort will only be the third major work in the right direction (the other two I mentioned above), so you have a right to be proud.
Thanks again for helping to make the language more accessible to a wider audience.
Iceland
Yes there are a lot of issues there. It´s too big a topic to do it justice here right this moment but some of the problems are how much easier it is to look up information in English on the internet, how computer games are in English, how many of the old entertainment sites in Icelandic have disappeared and people go to entertainment pages in English instead.
That´s just a few of the problems regarding the approaching "digital death" of the language. Other problems include how hard it is to learn the language and how little patience Icelanders often have for listening to bad Icelandic and switch to English. Then some people who move here, especially Anglophones, are often very entitled in their behaviour, think it´s rude if all the Icelanders don´t just switch to English when they enter the room and so on.
I´ve also seen some expats here, who while working in a store, claim they have experienced "racism" from Icelandic customers because "they refused to speak English". Sometimes that may actually be because the Icelanders are indeed bigoted and refuse to speak English in order to be mean. But often it could just be some older people who don´t know much English and then moving here and calling them "racists" cause they are bad at English and can´t speak it in a store in their own native country, while that same person yelling "racist" has not been able to learn the language of the country they themselves chose to move to, is not exactly an very open minded an respectful attitude either.
So you can see bad attitudes in both locals and expats here that don´t help the situation.
New Zealand
More audiobooks here, too:
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