Once again, due to Rökkvi’s persistence and hard work, we now have more interesting, upper beginner/ lower intermediate content – this time from mms.is (a great source for learners).
Although the content on mms.is is geared toward kids, it looks like he’s been adding content that adults are interested in as well and happens to be the stuff I trudged through before Icelandic as available on LingQ.
Þakka þér kærlega!
Yes I had wanted to put most of what mms.is has in sound and text form into LingQ for a long time. At first they did not allow it, due to it being a commercial platform where you have to pay for access, but when LingQ made Icelandic free, I got in touch with them again. They told me there were copyright issues, such that the authors had been paid to make material for mms and not necessarily for any other use. I then simply made an excel file where I noted down the names of the authors and readers of the different books and started contacting them and asking their permission directly.
I am still at it, cause it’s a long list, but I now have quite a few permissions. I have not put all the stuff I have permissions for into LingQ yet. There is a lot more on it’s way and I am still working on obtaining more permissions.
Some of the books there have foreign authors, meaning I may not be able to get permissions to put them into LingQ ever. It just remains to be seen. There are simplified versions of classic books there, for example, for which I have the permissions from the translator/reader, but there is also a foreign company that holds the copyright to the original versions. There are also some science textbooks with foreign authors.
A lot of the mms.is stuff is stories for kids and educational stuff for kids, but it should be interesting and engaging enough for adults. It’s certainly not like the Teletubbies or Peppa pig or anything like that.
incredible how committed you are to get this going. I didn’t know lingq made icelandic free, I remember you mentioned in another post that you were trying to make it happen, glad to hear it worked out!