Slovak on Lingq (question on copyright)

So, now that Slovak has been added to Lingq, I have been searching for some more material in addition to the 50 mini-stories that I have done so far. (Edit: www.slovake.eu is an excellent start for anyone wanting to learn the language. It is for free and has courses ranging from A1-B2, videos of dialogues, audio, vocabulary, exercises, tests, grammar… seems the right place to get a good grasp of the language first, and then continuing on lingq).

First, I noticed some time ago that our president (his team) has been uploading his speeches to youtube (possible to convert to mp3 easily) with full transcripts on his webpage Prezidentka Slovenskej republiky - Prejavy
He is speaking relatively clearly and slowly, even though the language will definitely be a bit more on the advanced side.
This, as far as copyright is concerned, should be fine I guess, and if not, it is at least available for anyone to easily upload it to Lingq for personal use.

Next, I have searched for some audiobooks in Slovak, and found that www.audioteka.com at Audioknihy v slovenskom jazyku : Najlepšie audioknihy - Audiotéka.sk
has quite a nice little collection, and they offer the first chapter for free to download.
As a test, I have taken the first book I saw (Eckhart Tolle‘s The power of now, which is convenient since it has been translated from English) and uploaded the first chapter here along with the text.
Login - LingQ

Now my question is obvious, is it ok to do this?
They offer that for free as a sample and in the book it is also written that small parts of the book could be reproduced (though for critique or reviews).
I think this way they could only benefit from it, since at worst it would motivate people to buy the full versions of the books.

Apart from that I was thinking of ripping more free videos from Youtube to mp3s and rewriting the transcripts myself, or also translating some already uploaded courses in the Lingq library of other languages (English/Czech or some other languages I might be able to translate from) and recording the audio myself, but that would obviously be the last option :smiley:

a few other webpages with Slovak audiobooks to buy:
https://www.rajknih.sk/index.php?id_cat=589&ct=17&ofs=1

for kids: http://www.emelvi.sk/audioknihy/pre-deti/slovenske
a children’s audiobook Zambezia for free as an app (android/iOS) http://www.dopocutia.sk/audiokniha-zambezia-zdarma-pre-android-a-ios/
free children’s books, with no text though (might later search for them)
Najkrajšie Slovenské ľudové rozprávky - Vydavateľstvo goodboog

Here are countless transcripts from the National parliament, clicking on the first small icon on the right will take you to the video with the speech.

This is an excellent parallel slovak-english corpus with parallel translations
http://bonito.korpus.sk/run_guest.cgi/first?shuffle=1&reload=1&corpname=par_sken_all_40_sk
so you just look up a word and get example sentences with translations to english

this seems really useful, but I am not how to use it yet.
http://korpus.sk/shk_en.html
it claims to have 5.72 mil of text units, 600 h of audio in Slovak.
It looks like you can just search for individual words here http://korpus.juls.savba.sk:8086/oral/
and it will give you all the texts in the database along with the audio recordings.
It is the work of Slovak academy of sciences and many other institutions, collecting texts and recordings of Slovak.
Full database available upon registration (however, only by filling in the registration form and sending it by post or personally…(?!))…

Some monolingual dictionaries:

short dictionary of slovak language (60 thousand words, grammatical examples…) Slovenské slovníky
synonimical Slovenské slovníky
ortographic Slovenské slovníky

The biggest one of contemporary Slovak (the academicians still finished only words beginning with letters A-N as of 2015) Slovenské slovníky

(anyway when searching on them you can just tick all the boxes to search in all of them at once. The sk-en will turn up the results of the slovak-english corpus)

The best bilingual dictionary:
https://slovniky.lingea.sk/Anglicko-slovensky/
they have a paid version as a mobile or desktop app too, if anyone is serious about Slovak, that’s what you want.

some other bilingual dictionaries:

Newspapers/news sites/magazines I read:
www.aktuality.sk
www.startitup.sk
www.sketcher.sk
www.hnonline.sk
www.trend.sk
www.refresher.sk
paid:
www.dennikn.sk
www.sme.sk
www.tyzden.sk (has free weekly 2-hour discussions on interesting topics with interesting people called ‘Pod lampou’ .pod lampou | .týždeň - iný pohľad na spoločnosť)

a Slovak politician (also a member of the European parliament) that adds videos to facebook with Slovak subtitles:

His political party with videos/Slovak subtitles as well

Slovak national radio (unfortunately no transcripts)

Slovak national tv

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Thank you, Branicek, very much for this treasure trove of knowledge. I’m very grateful.

It is my understanding that the creator of a work automatically has a copyright on his work, even if he makes it freely available. Even if you perceive a benefit to the copyright holder, or perceive no damage, you do not have the right to distribute his work without his approval. Only a dedication to the public domain removes his copyright, and I’m not sure what form that must take. Needless to say, I’m no lawyer.

What is Lingq’s stance on use of copyrighted material that is expressly allowed to be re-used? Such as under a Creative Commons license (which comes in many varieties)?

Guys, I have just found an excellent webpage - www.slovake.eu and I can’t think of a better way to start learning the language. It is for free and has courses ranging from A1-B2, videos of dialogues, audio, vocabulary, exercises, tests, grammar… seems the right place to get a good grasp of the language first, and then continuing on with Lingq.

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I have found a very useful website for a lot of languages. SBS Language It’s an Australian news radio that you can listen live or download podcasts for whatever language you’re interested in. They have Slovak, so There will be large amount of content for free. The downside is they don’t have transcripts for the podcasts. Hope you all will enjoy this goodie. :smiley:

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Yes, I’ve been listening to SBS Greek for quite some time now (although I don’t really understand that much of it yet). It’s very useful because you get an idea of what the audio segment is about in English before listening to it in your target language.

Cool, thanks for this!

Any thoughts on why learn Slovak? I’m pretty sure I’m going to be learning Turkish after Greek, but I like the idea of doing something like Slovak instead of Russian or something…

In my case it would be for traveling reasons. From what I have seen Slovakia seems exotic, has a central European feel to it but still foreign. I don’t think I would like Russia as a traveling destination. It seems to cold, and harsh. I know that most people are probably very friendly and hospitable under that cold exterior. Well to each his/her own.

Interesting observations, thank you.

My decision as to which language to learn also depends on how much material is already available on Lingq to study. Learning Greek here has been somewhat of a struggle, because I’ve had to find much of the content on my own. Russian and Chinese also the advantage of having large amounts of material to study on LingQ, if I’ve understood correctly. Turkish and Slovak not so much yet, unfortunately.

Yeah, I don’t know about Chinese but Evgeny (I hope a spelled it right) has made large contributions to the Russian lingq library. In terms of languages that are not as big or don’t have dedicated contributes it
takes longer for the lingq library to grow. Such a shame, It doesn’t really help that the contributors don’t usually receive a proper reward for there work. I do wonder why that is the case. I suppose that if people receive a lot of points why won’t buy them (witch hurts profit).

Thank you for your list Bran. I also discovered this elsewhere. It looks something like Gutenburg only “po Slovensky”: Zlatý fond denníka SME - Najväčšia slovenská elektronická knižnica