Page 1 of 2

Spoken Language Services - Ceased Operations

Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2015 11:06 am
by Speakeasy
EDIT
I have edited this post so as to include "Ceased Operations" in the title.

ORIGINAL POST
Over the past couple of years, I have seen only sporadic comments concerning the Spoken Language Services courses. My own experience has been limited to ordering "Spoken German" and "Spoken Polish", and to submitting enquiries to this company that went unanswered. Despite the age of the materials and the apparent lack of advertising or message traffic on the Internet, the website seems to be still active. Would anyone wish to comment on these materials, both for the "more popular" languages, as well as for the "more exotic" ones? Here's the LINK:
http://pro.spidergraphics.com/spo/spo_wrap.taf?page=spo_home.htm&_UserReference=D6489B93C5B3FFE14B92C29B. Merci à l'avance!

Re: Spoken Language Services

Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2015 12:44 pm
by Speakeasy
Would anyone happen to know whether or not Spoken Language Services is still operational? I sent them an Email a few days ago and have not received a reply. However, as they have never replied to any of the Emails that I have sent them over the past few years, their silence this time around is not surprising cannot be taken as a clear indication of their having closed down their operations. Yesterday, when I tried ordering from their website, I received a message that their certificate was no longer valid.

Re: Spoken Language Services

Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2015 12:54 pm
by n_j_f
Speakeasy wrote:Would anyone happen to know whether or not Spoken Language Services is still operational? I sent them an Email a few days ago and have not received a reply. However, as they have never replied to any of the Emails that I have sent them over the past few years, their silence this time around is not surprising cannot be taken as a clear indication of their having closed down their operations. Yesterday, when I tried ordering from their website, I received a message that their certificate was no longer valid.



Unless there has been any changes in the last few months, the company is still active as of February/March. I had sent an email with a query regarding SLS Russian course and received a response. A number of the courses are available on Amazon but these could be old stock of course.

Re: Spoken Language Services

Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2015 6:03 pm
by Speakeasy
Hello, n_j_f:
Thank you for your comments. Subsequent to your post, I received an Email from Spoken Language Services advising me that they were not aware of the existence of "Spoken German, Book TWO" (the subject of my enquiry) and that they did not have the audio recordings. I replied, thanking them for responding to my enquiry, and attached a LINK to a current offer for "Book Two" as well as a LINK to Prof. Arguelle's review of the SLS courses. So then, Spoken Language Services continues to be in business.

Re: Spoken Language Services

Posted: Sat May 21, 2016 4:15 am
by n_j_f
Just a follow-up to an old, previous discussion about Spoken Language Services.

1. Can anyone confirm if the text and audio of SLS Persian is identical to the FSI Persian course as the author is the same and the number of pages are more or less identical? There is a note on the SLS website that FSI courses have been added to fill out the selection.

2. The previous comments implied that were either languages previous available that are not on the website, or additional volumes for existing languages that were also not available. I note that a number of courses have a second volume with no corresponding audio and in the case of Spoken Urdu a third volume. Is anyone aware of audio for the third volume of Spoken Urdu?

3. Lastly, has anyone used/reviewed Spoken Hindustani and Spoken Urdu? Opinions? Gripes? Suggestions?

several edits due to an inability to proof-read my own posts

Re: Spoken Language Services

Posted: Fri May 27, 2016 12:06 pm
by Speakeasy
When reading your post, I vaguely recalled that the question concerning the similarities between the FSI Persian and SLS Persian courses was addressed a number of times on the HTLAL Forum. I conducted a quick search of the forum and found a comment dating from December 2007, by Daristani, as follows:
"The Persian course sold by Spoken Language Services was in fact originally produced at FSI. Whether or not this was the entire FSI Spoken Persian course I don't know, but the only original FSI copy I've seen had the exact same number of lessons as the book sold by SLS. FSI also produced at least one Persian reader, which was quite useful in that it contained parallel texts in handwriting, typewritten Persian, and transliteration, along with the vocabulary in each style, so as to facilitate reading handwriting."
I suspect that Daristani would have the answers to your other questions.

Re: Spoken Language Services

Posted: Fri May 27, 2016 2:59 pm
by Daristani
I can confirm that the book to "Spoken Persian" is identical to the FSI "Basic Persian Course", units 1-12. (Whether there were ever any other lessons to the course, I don't know.) A PDF of the book is available for download at the ERIC site: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED053628.pdf while the audio is available on the Indiana University CeLT site: http://www.iu.edu/~celtie/persian_archive.html

As for volume three of the Spoken Urdu course, originally published by McGill University in Montreal as "A Course in Urdu", it consists entirely of vocabularies/glossaries, and has no lessons per se, so I'm fairly confident that there was never any audio for it.

Re: Spoken Language Services

Posted: Sun May 29, 2016 12:41 pm
by ilmari
"Spoken Urdu" is an absolutely fantastic course written by M.A.R. Barker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._A._R._Barker, first published in 1967 by McGill University as "A Course in Urdu". It was followed by "An Urdu Newspaper Reader", "An Urdu Newspaper Wordcount", and "A Reader of Modern Urdu Poetry", all also published by SLS.

I have old copies of these books, but no audio recordings.

I can confirm that volume three of Spoken Urdu is a lexicon.

Re: Spoken Language Services

Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2016 10:58 am
by n_j_f
ilmari wrote:"Spoken Urdu" is an absolutely fantastic course written by M.A.R. Barker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._A._R._Barker, first published in 1967 by McGill University as "A Course in Urdu". It was followed by "An Urdu Newspaper Reader", "An Urdu Newspaper Wordcount", and "A Reader of Modern Urdu Poetry", all also published by SLS.

I have old copies of these books, but no audio recordings.

I can confirm that volume three of Spoken Urdu is a lexicon.


Wow! What a recommendation. I'm kind of tempted to bump up Urdu on my bucket list just so I can use the course, but it's good to know that there are additional courses and reference book by the same author for the future.

Does anyone know how the SLS Hindustani course compares?

Re: Spoken Language Services

Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2016 11:05 am
by n_j_f
Daristani wrote:I can confirm that the book to "Spoken Persian" is identical to the FSI "Basic Persian Course", units 1-12. (Whether there were ever any other lessons to the course, I don't know.) A PDF of the book is available for download at the ERIC site: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED053628.pdf while the audio is available on the Indiana University CeLT site: http://www.iu.edu/~celtie/persian_archive.html

As for volume three of the Spoken Urdu course, originally published by McGill University in Montreal as "A Course in Urdu", it consists entirely of vocabularies/glossaries, and has no lessons per se, so I'm fairly confident that there was never any audio for it.


Thanks, Daristani. I already obtained the audio previously — from memory, I got this from one of the sites that hosts FSI material. I wasn't 100% sure if the SLS and FSI course was the same although it was the same author. It's good that the link is on the forum, and it might save someone from spending a couple of hundred dollars on the SLS cassettes when googling "SLS Persian" . . . like I did when I almost purchased the audio for Dawson's Modern Russian or the Assimil 2nd Generation Russian course.

Now the hunt begins for a reasonable price on the audio for SLS Urdu . . .