Cortina Russian and Japanese (FSI Languages database)

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jpazzz
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Re: Cortina Conversational Russian in 20 Lessons

Postby jpazzz » Fri Jan 22, 2016 8:56 am

Hello, Due to ill health and growing decrepitude, I only became aware of this new website/forum the other day. I'm delighted to read that Speakeasy was successful in linking U of Ind and Cortina regarding Cortina Russian. And it's nice to have been given a bit of credit for the audio material reclamation/recreation. What I did was buy a copy of the Russian records on Ebay then transfer them to CDs. If someone could do the same with Cortina Japanese, and Speakeasy could arrange another conjunction of the planets -- U of Ind and Cortina -- that would be splendid. (It suddenly occurs to me that within the Big 10 there are three schools that are U of Is. I taught at one of them that is not Indiana.)

Related to another topic currently being discussed, I would say that the Cortina Russian is very definitely an audio-lingual course...I find it far more useful than Modern Russian. The drills seem less soul deadening than those in Modern Russian. But that, of course, is personal opinion.

Cheers,
John
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peterbeischmidt
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Re: Cortina Conversational Russian in 20 Lessons

Postby peterbeischmidt » Fri Jan 22, 2016 9:38 pm

jpazzz wrote:If someone could do the same with Cortina Japanese, and Speakeasy could arrange another conjunction of the planets -- U of Ind and Cortina -- that would be splendid. (It suddenly occurs to me that within the Big 10 there are three schools that are U of Is. I taught at one of them that is not Indiana.)


Some time ago I was trying to do exactly that. Unfortunately, copies of the recordings for Cortina Japanese are now quite rare. I noticed that there's a seller on Amazon Marketplace who offers them for 500 USD. I asked them whether they're serious and received a friendly response with a new offer to buy them for 350 USD plus shipping costs. Then, there's also a copy at the library of Indiana University. I'd been hoping to find someone who studies at IU and would be willing to get the tapes and digitize them for me, see here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianaUnivers ... cassettes/

I haven't received any serious offers, though.
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Speakeasy
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Re: Cortina Conversational Russian in 20 Lessons

Postby Speakeasy » Tue Aug 09, 2016 10:58 pm

I would like to acknowledge the efforts of fellow members, jpazzz and daristani, who, some months ago, launched a project the goal of which was the eventual hosting of the “Cortina Japanese” materials the Indiana University’s CeLT Recorded Sound Archives website.

As far as I understand, neither jpazzz nor daristani count Japanese amongst the languages that are of deep interest to them. Nonetheless, for the benefit of the greater community of language-learning enthusiasts, jpazzz borrowed the audio cassettes accompanying the “Cortina Japanese” and converted them to MP3 format, whereas daristani located a digitized version of the course book. For the record, these materials are no longer offered for sale by the publisher and this project enjoyed the specific support of the holder the copyright to the materials, the current President of Cortina International, Inc., who granted permission to have them hosted on the university’s website. Regrettably, the Indiana University’s CeLT declined to host the submitted materials, advising “I apologize but CeLT in unable to accept materials for hosting that have not been produced in our facilities or directly requested by language faculty.” An alternative for the legal distribution of these materials is presently being explored. Whether or not this final effort results in success, the private efforts of jpazzz and daristani merit our collective appreciation.
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Speakeasy
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Re: Cortina Russian and Japanese (FSI Languages database)

Postby Speakeasy » Wed Aug 10, 2016 6:43 pm

I am pleased to announce that ericounet reconfirmed his willingness to host the Cortina language courses on the FSI-Language-Courses website, subject to the approval of the holder of the copyright. Furthermore, the President of Cortina International, Inc., who holds the copyright to the Cortina language materials, has granted permission for the hosting of the specific courses "Cortina Russian" and "Cortina Japanese" on the FSI-Language-Courses website.

Please note carefully that this permission applies only to the fore-named materials and that Cortina International, Inc. is an on-going business which continues to offer other language materials for sale: http://cortina-languages.com/about.php

Finally, I wish to underscore that it was through the combined efforts of jpazzz, daristani, ericounet, and the President of Cortina International, Inc., that these projects were realized.
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Ericounet
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Re: Cortina Russian and Japanese (FSI Languages database)

Postby Ericounet » Sat Aug 13, 2016 11:56 am

the Cortina resources are online. https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/

update:

The Cortina material is also available on https://newfsi.yojik.net .. still my home server. I'll put the website on the main (fast) server a bit later.

The Persian audio and text is available on the two websites (FSI material)

Eric

update: url corrected
update: new website and Persian audio
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administrator of fsi-languages.yojik.eu;
French(N), German, English, Russian.
Chinese and Korean beginner

Speakeasy
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Re: Cortina Russian and Japanese (FSI Languages database)

Postby Speakeasy » Tue Jun 06, 2017 4:56 pm

Origins of the Cortina Russian Audio Recordings
In May, 2017, member polyglotpondrings requested information concerning the origins of the Cortina Russian audio recordings under the discussion thread “Cortina Method Audio.” With a view to completing the record under this discussion thread, I have copy/pasted selected posts from the former. Many thanks to Jpazzz and Daristani for their respective contributions!

polyglotponderings wrote:Can anyone confirm that the audio hosted at https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/languages/cortina.html#Russian is the official Russian audio created by Cortina?

About 15-20 years ago, I sent in the card for the free demo cassette. I received a demo cassette and a letter stating that they did not offer the Master Linguist Course for Russian, but provided a discount for the Russian Linguaphone course. After starting to collect some of the older Russian beginner courses and hearing that there was a Cortina Master Russian Course, I began looking for the materials. I found out about the work done by Speakeasy, Jpazzz, daristani, n_f_l, to have the audio hosted. This excited me greatly.

However, I was very surprised when I heard the audio, because it did not sound anything like the audio from the demo cassette I received many years ago. I have posted the audio along with a picture of the cassette on youtube here: https://youtu.be/5hs_Dohb6-0.

Comparing the demo audio with the other audio, I’ve questioned what the original official audio was for a few reasons, if there ever was any original audio.

First, the Cortina staff indicated that no Russian recordings were made. (http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=40797&PN=2)

Second, the structure of the recordings hosted on the FSI site is very different from the demo. The demo has pauses for repetition, but the recordings are just a straight read through of the Russian text in the book.

Also, The narrator for the 1952 version of the audio doesn’t seem to be a native Russian speaker. His pronunciation seems to have a fairly strong American accent. Does anyone else think this? It would seem strange that Cortina wouldn’t get a native Russian speaker for the audio.

The narrator for the 1971 audio does seem to be a native Russian speaker, but it was apparently recorded much later than the original book publication, so I wonder if it is the original audio.

I looked for many years for used LPs of the Cortina Russian Master Course, but have never seen any. Does anyone have any background on the recordings for the Russian course? Why are there three different versions: 1952, 1971, and demo? Were the recordings officially done by Cortina? Was there ever a Master Russian course with other materials?

Thanks in advance for any insight!


Speakeasy wrote:Please allow me to express my admiration for your perseverance in tracking down these materials!

I provided a level of administrative support to the initiatives that ultimately led to the hosting of the Cortina Russian materials on the Indiana University's CeLT Recorded Materials Archive and on the FSI-Language-Courses websites. Cortina Russian (http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/fo ... 40797&PN=2). Here is the story as best I can reconstruct it:

I became aware of the Cortina Russian audio recordings through Jpazzz' post Cortina French, German, and Russian (http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/fo ... 40245&PN=5). He reported that he had purchased his set of 78 rpm vinyl LP records on eBay, which he later identified as being labelled "Cortina Conversaphone Language System." As an aside, during the period that I was working on this small project, I came across a similar offer on eBay for which the accompanying photo clearly indicated that they had been "published" by Cortina. This is, perhaps, where the question of "origin" becomes unclear ...

During my subsequent communications with the President of Cortina International concerning the hosting of the Cortina Russian materials on the above-named websites, she provided information suggesting that the company had not prepared recordings for this course and that, as you indicated above, they had sold recordings that had been prepared by Linguaphone. When I offered the explanation that Jpazzz had provided, supported by a copy of the photo of the vinyl records that I had downloaded from eBay -- which, regrettably, I no longer have -- she expressed genuine surprise. For me, this suggests at least two possibilities: either (a) Linguaphone prepared the recordings on behalf of Cortina, hence the link to the former company, or (b) Cortina produced their own recordings and their archives do not reflect this fact. Nevertheless, irrespective of their "origin", the 78 rpm vinyl LP records on eBay, were labelled "Cortina Conversaphone Language System."

The origins of the second, more complete, set of audio recordings are unclear. During my communications with the President of Cortina International, she advised that she had been unaware of their existence but confirmed that Cortina had neither produced nor sold them. Jpazzz reported that he had received them from a fellow language-learning enthusiast who had downloaded them from one of the numerous websites where "free" materials are available. *

I will send have sent Emails to both Jpazzz and Daristini drawing their attention to this post and inviting them to comment, if they so wish.

Addendum I
The thought came to me that the following discussion of Cortina Russian might be of passing interest to you:
Cortina Russian and Japanese (FSI Languages database)
https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?t=1215

Addendum II
As holder of the copyrights to the Cortina Russian materials, the President of Cortina International, authorized the hosting of the second* set of recordings on the Indiana University and FSI-Languages-Courses websites.


EDITED:
1. Typos ... unsurprisingly.
2. Emails sent.
3. Addendum I: Link to a previous discussion of Cortina Russian.
4. Strike through the text "which, regrettably, I no longer have" referring to the photographs of the 78 rpm vinyl records.
5. Addendum II: Authorization to host the "second" set of Cortina Russian recordings.


Speakeasy wrote:With respect to the Cortina Russian 78 rpm vinyl records, I found the photos that I had download from an offer on eBay; they are on the hard drive of my computer in PNG format. I would be greatly appreciate someone providing me with step-by-step instructions for posting them here, after which I would add them to this discussion thread. Merci à l'avance!


polyglotponderings wrote:Wow! Very interesting. That leaves me with other questions. I'll have to do some more research... :D I shrunk one of the images down some so I could attach it for future reference, in case that listing is removed.



Daristani wrote:Sorry for not having chimed in earlier, but I honestly couldn't remember where I'd found the digital versions of the Cortina Russian materials I'd found quite some time ago and so figured I had nothing useful to add.

But I checked back through my old e-mail records and see that I'd discussed this a bit in a note to jpjazz a while ago. It turns out that I'd found the Cortina Russian audio on the site that used to be referred to as "Uzbekistan", now known as language.ws; it had been posted there circa April 2015, and apparently had originally come from a torrent feed. But the ultimate origin of the audio still seems to be unknown. I'm sorry I can't be any more helpful.


Speakeasy wrote:Origins of the Cortina Russian Audio Recordings
Returning to the matter of the Cortina Russian 78 rpm vinyl record sound files, I received an Email from Jpazzz this morning, who kindly offered the following additional information:

As to polyglotpondrings’ observations “Second, the structure of the recordings hosted on the FSI site is very different from the demo. The demo has pauses for repetition, but the recordings are just a straight read through of the Russian text in the book”, Jpazzz reports “I, too, have the sample disc … it’s not at all like the real recordings … the 78 rpm recordings don’t have the time to put in pauses … The pauses were added later when 33 1/3 recordings came into existence.

As to the origins of the Cortina Russian recordings and their posited link to Linguaphone, Jpazzz reports “… the original Cortina Russian textbook … the author expresses thanks to some University of Pennylvania administrator for his wonderful suggestions as to how to make the Conversaphone recordings. Doesn’t that sound like they were made at the University of Pennsylvania? Why and how the idea of Linguaphone making the original recordings came about I cannot fathom. The Cortina recordings bear little similarity to the LInguaphone output of whatever generation.”

As it happens, at Jpazzz’s suggestion, I purchased an earlier edition of “Cortina Russian in 20 Lessons” about two years and, for posterity, have appended the acknowledgement below.
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
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MoscowJoe
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Re: Cortina Russian and Japanese (FSI Languages database)

Postby MoscowJoe » Wed Oct 17, 2018 1:37 am

I read this thread with great interest a few months ago and obtained used copies of the Cortina Conversational Russian Course. I also have the aforementioned excellent pdf copy on my tablet. (I would love to talk to the person who scanned this book, because it is an excellent scan and I have some other scanning projects for which I could use some advice).

I found the audio on both the Indiana University and Yojik websites (where I also found the audio files for Modern Russian a year or two ago).

I am absolutely in love the Cortina course, but to my dismay, the last 10 lessons or so of the re-recorded audio have deteriorated to the point of being unusable.

So, in my enthusiasm for the resurrected course, I enlisted the help of a professional voice actor in Moscow to re-record the unusable lessons as mp3 files. I have been using these files for a month or so. They are absolutely identical to the previous recordings in every way, except they are of a male voice instead of female, and the quality is excellent.

Additionally, I managed to find used records of the Cortina recordings (more than one version) and I have had them digitized to mp3 / WAV files. I haven't listened to them yet, as I've been too busy with other things.

Can anyone give me advice on how I would ensure that other Russian language learners could have access to the recordings I have ?

Thanks in advance for your help.
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Speakeasy
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Re: Cortina Russian and Japanese (FSI Languages database)

Postby Speakeasy » Wed Oct 17, 2018 1:15 pm

Welcome!
Hello, MoscowJoe, welcome to the forum! I look forward to following your participation in the wide range of discussions there.

Cortina Russian Audio Files
I am quite impressed by your efforts at restoring the Cortina Russian audio files, congratulations! As to the sharing these audio files with the wider world, as far as I understand, the copyrights covering these materials are still valid and these rights would extend to the restored files that you had prepared. Nevertheless, I can confirm that Ms. Magdalen Livesey, President, Cortina Learning International, Inc, graciously agreed to the publication of the Cortina materials on the Indiana University’s CeLT Recorded Sound Archives website and on the (renamed) Yojik website. My reading of the situation would be that Ms. Livesey’s permission would extend to the sound files that you had prepared. However, if in doubt, I suggest that you contact her via the Cortina website. So then, the quick answer to your question would be that, should you wish to share them, the quickest and surest means would be to communicate with the administrators of each of these different entities. Here is the LINK to the website: http://cortina-languages.com/

Indiana University’s CeLT Recorded Sound Archives website
In submitting your proposal to the Indiana University, I suggest that you explain the origin of your sound files and that you refer to Ms. Livesey’s previous authorization for their publication, permission which included both the original Cortina files and the re-recorded files. At the time that I submitted these files for hosting on the Indiana University CeLT website, the administrators were open to receiving materials from outside sources. However, since that time, they have adopted a policy of hosting only those materials that have been specifically requested by and authorized by directors of language departments at the university. So then, it is possible that your submission will be politely declined. Here is the LINK to the website: http://www.iu.edu/~celtie/catalog1.html

Yojik website
Eric Streit is the owner and administer of the Yojik website. He is quite familiar with the discussions that led up to the hosting of the Cortina materials on the website and I am confident that he would be pleased to host your restored Cortina Russian sound files. I suggest that you include a link to this discussion thread. Here is the LINK to the website:https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/

The PDFS of the Cortina Course Manuals
All of the Cortina materials remain under copyright. As I recall, the PDFs of the Cortina course manuals had been widely available on the Internet for a number of years and had been prepared, illegally at the time, by unknown persons. As they had passed through several hands before they reached me, I do not know who prepared them, how they were prepared, or on which website they were stored. Nevertheless, as I mentioned above, Ms. Magdalen Livesey, President, Cortina Learning International, Inc, graciously agreed to the publication of the PDFs on the Indiana University’s CeLT Recorded Sound Archives website and on the (renamed) Yojik website.

Thank for your initiative in restoring the Cortina Russian audio files. I wish you success in your endeavour!

EDITED:
Inclusion of the links to the websites: Cortina, CeLT, Yojik
Tinkering.
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MoscowJoe
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Re: Cortina Russian and Japanese (FSI Languages database)

Postby MoscowJoe » Wed Oct 17, 2018 9:14 pm

Thanks for the welcome, Speakeasy. And thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

I have another set of audio files for which I am pursuing permissions, but getting a little bit of a run around. I will try to get in touch with Eric and see what his thoughts are. But yes, intending tread very lightly where copyrights are an issue.

Can anyone tell me how I can PM someone?

Additionally, I would like to send these files to the interested parties. Can anyone recommend a file transfer site to facilitate this process?

Thanks

MJ
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Re: Cortina Russian and Japanese (FSI Languages database)

Postby Serpent » Wed Oct 17, 2018 9:30 pm

To prevent spam, new members aren't allowed to send PM's. The feature will be enabled after one more post has been approved.
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