A quick post to let everyone (but especially Italian learners) know that I have finished uploading and sharing the Italian novel “Cuore”! Ten collections corresponding to the ten chapters of the book, for a total of 103 new lessons! It was a bit tiring to cut every chapter into smaller parts with Audacity, but I hope it was worth doing!
I will provide the links to the single collections later and will write about this on the Italian LingQCentral blog.
Congratulations to myself! 
Michele
Indeed: Congratulations to you!
Thank you! Danke!
Michele, this is simply excellent content. I am looking forward to starting it a little later. I do not think it is advanced but it does not matter. I think it is quite accessible to Intermediate learners. It is read slowly and the vocabulary is not all that difficult. Excellent! Mille grazie!
Thanks for your words, Steve.
The choice of the level is always a problem for me. How should I choose it? I put Advanced 1 because of some ancient words and forms, not thinking of the reading speed. Is there a way to change the level of a collection without having to open all the single lessons? I don’t think so, but you never know… so I’d better ask!
Maybe I’ll change it when I have more free time.
Steve, the website I uploaded “Cuore” from also has the recordings of some Italian operas, e.g. Verdi’s “Aida”. Would it be useful and interesting if I uploaded them (with the text) as lessons? Sure, you cannot understand much by listening without reading (neither can I, and I’m Italian!), but it would broaden the learners’ culture.
What do you think of this idea?
No, there is no way to change the collection. It does not matter, I just would not want to discourage learners, and we have very few Advanced learners of Italian at LingQ.
Verdi’s operas…please do so. We will soon be able to link lessons to videos right on the lesson page so we could even link to youtube videos of singers singing these arias.
I think the opera music idea is awesome. Is there no copyright issue? I would love to know how to get access to public domain or shareable classical music. I have a complete collection of Mozart Opera and I would love to share it but it is all under copyright and so it can’t be shared on a public website like lingQ. Is this sort of thing available for sharing legally on the web now? That would be amazing!
John, all the material on www.liberliber.it is under Creative Common 2.5 license. At least all the material I have seen and shared so far.
Steve, great to hear we’ll have videos on LingQ soon! And thanks for the go-ahead for sharing opera lessons.
I guess the issue will be rights of the recording artists or record companies. I think that our link to youtube will be all right, it is just the audio unless we have audio that is free of copyright.
Hi Michele, be aware that there are different Creative Common licenses. Important is that it is not a “non commercial” license. As far as I can see all the Verdi stuff on liberliber is under “Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Condividi allo stesso modo 2.5”.
This can only apply to the singer, and not to the words themselves. Michele, I would simply record the words as spoken language. We will have the link to youtube for the Opera lovers.
Yes, Vera, everything I have shared from that site is “non commercial” and so are the audio files of “Aida” I am planning to share.
Steve, the first audio file is the Prelude, which is only instrumental. How should I treat it? Is it possible to ubite two mp3 files into a single one with Audacity?
Don’t use their audio, just import the text with your own reading of the words. It will be easier to learn. The video will provide the music etc. Just wait a few days and you will see.
Well, it’d be clearer but less attractive… Anyway I’ll wait until the video feature is available before starting this project.
About the level of “Cuore”, would you suggest Intermediate 1 or 2? I may change it when I have some time.
Everything we do here we do as we have time. If we just one step at a time we will achieve great things. In fact you could leave the Advanced level if you want. I just think that in future content of this nature could be Intermediate 1.
Opera, noted, we will wait.
Thanks for all your work.
By the way, Boris, who is a programmer who will be working with us on LingQ and lives here in Vancouver, is from Bulgaria.
Thanks for the support and the info, Steve. Is Boris a member of LingQ? Some days ago, I looked for speakers of Bulgarian on LingQ but could only find few free and mostly inactive users.
I will speak to him on Tuesday. Monday is a holiday here.
@mikebond
Besten Dank für diesen Beitrag!
Hast Du gemerkt,dass die Tonwidergabe nicht gestoppt werden kann?
Wenn ich Stopp (Pause) drücke, hält die Aufnahme nicht an, sondern beginnt sofort wieder von vorne!
Vielleicht kannst Du das ändern?
Vielen Dank! Bis bald! jolanda
Jolanda, thank you for your remark. I had no idea of this error and I wonder why none of the Italian students who are using these lessons has never told me about it. Also, I have no idea of how to remove it. I just downloaded the audiofiles from that website and cut them into smaller files with Audacity.
Maybe someone who has more experience with Audacity could tell me why the audio files I uploaded don’t stop when one click on “Pause” and, after you click again, they restart from the beginning.