"The Natural Method" series (Le français par la méthode nature, et. al.)

[n_j_f]

There was an interesting discussion a few months ago regarding lesser known languages and someone mentioned the "Natural Method" series. Although I have the recordings for Lingua Latina — I was only aware that Lingua Latina formed part of a series from this discussion — I was wondering if recordings exist for the other titles: Le français par la méthode nature, L'italian secondo il metoda natura, et. al. Has anyone come across these?

Furthermore, has anyone come across the German or Russian editions which are part of this series? I understand that there is an Austrian correspondence course which uses the Russian book as its textbook.

[kommie]

First of all, I do realize it's an old post but I see no reason for making a new one. Now to the point: is someone interested in doing the audio for this?

I think it's incredible how good these books are and it's a shame not many people know about it. They're free and one of the best resources I've ever come across. I used the italian one and they're perfect for a language like that since there's a high phoneme-grapheme correspondence, but when it comes to something like french, it suffers from a lack of audio.

I've already contacted some french speakers on Italki, but it'd be nice to find someone pasionate and brave enough to do it for free. In fact, finding people to do the same for the other books by Jensen (the ones I'm familiar with) would be a priceless contribution to the world of language learners.

I'll leave the link and hopefully someone will be interested.

https://vivariumnovum.it/risorse-didatt ... ue-moderne

[Querneus]

I like the Latin book, Lingua Latīna per Sē Illūstrāta (not found in the link there). I tried using it as my first textbook but failed to get past the first few lessons. However, after working through two more traditional textbooks, I came back to it and found it to be an excellent reader.

I've been offering to do audio recordings in Spanish for free elsewhere. Could you suggest a deadline to me some time early next year to get these recordings done by?

[Speakeasy]

… I've already contacted some french speakers on Italki, but it'd be nice to find someone pasionate and brave enough to do it for free. In fact, finding people to do the same for the other books by Jensen (the ones I'm familiar with) would be a priceless contribution to the world of language learners …

Perhaps you could interest one of the volunteers on Librivox in such a project. If so, you would have your audio files and the entire course would be freely available via Librivox.

Librivox
https://librivox.org/

[iguanamon]

A native English-speaker has recorded some youtube videos reading some chapters of the Italian, English and Lingua Latina courses. The Italian is only up to chapter 2 so far. At least it's something.

I have the Italian, French and Latin courses... you never know. Back when these old courses were designed production and distribution of accompanying audio would have been difficult and expensive. The phonetic transcription was, again, at least something. I used Charles Berlitz' "Spanish Step By Step" when I first started learning the language. The course lacked audio and employed a format of dialog with TL, an English phonetic transcription underneath, and an English translation as the third line underneath those two other lines. At least I had radio to listen to for authentic speech.

Beginner language courses, as to audio, would be a unique case for librivox. Do you record them like Assimil with a super slow and unnatural delivery? Do you record them naturally at native-speaker speed? Do you strike a middle "Goldilocks" ground between the two? Myself, I've never been a fan of slow audio for learning.

Also, accent is an issue for dialogs. For example, for the English course, should the speaker be Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, South African, Indian, Caribbean, Nigerian, English, Welsh, Irish or Scottish or even a non-native speaker? If US or English, should they be General American or Received Pronunciation? There's a lot to go into choosing a narrator for these courses. Of course, that being said, for me, I'd be grateful for any audio regardless of the narrator.

I think Speakeasy's idea of using the librivox platform is a good one. Of course, copyright issues must be secured completely, airtight, first for them to put it up for recording. It should probably be narrated by one speaker for consistency.

Here's a video of the Italian course to sample (non-native speaker)

[kommie]

I like the Latin book, Lingua Latīna per Sē Illūstrāta (not found in the link there). I tried using it as my first textbook but failed to get past the first few lessons. However, after working through two more traditional textbooks, I came back to it and found it to be an excellent reader.

I think they're a great beginner's book when studying similar languages. For example, I'm a native Spanish speaker and used the Italian one. If you get some grammar and exposure to people talking the language through videos, you're good to go.
That is a special case, of course, but doing what you did could work wonders for most people (my mother did just that). They're the best starter for reading I've personally seen, and you get an introduction to literature in L2 after finishing the book.

I've been offering to do audio recordings in Spanish for free elsewhere. Could you suggest a deadline to me some time early next year to get these recordings done by?

I'd love to do the books in Spanish, if only there was a book by Jensen for that. Sadly the ones for Spanish are older and a bit different. They include grammar explanations, for example.
Maybe they're great and there's people actually using them. If anyone reading this has experience with those courses, let me know.

Perhaps you could interest one of the volunteers on Librivox in such a project. If so, you would have your audio files and the entire course would be freely available via Librivox.

Librivox
https://librivox.org/

I had no idea such a place existed. It's perfect.

A native English-speaker has recorded some youtube videos reading some chapters of the Italian, English and Lingua Latina courses. The Italian is only up to chapter 2 so far. At least it's something.

I know him. The audios for Lingua Latina were uploaded to what I imagine is his main channel, called ScorpioMartianus. I don't think he will get the entire thing down anytime soon though.

Beginner language courses, as to audio, would be a unique case for librivox. Do you record them like Assimil with a super slow and unnatural delivery? Do you record them naturally at native-speaker speed? Do you strike a middle "Goldilocks" ground between the two? Myself, I've never been a fan of slow audio for learning.

Also, accent is an issue for dialogs. For example, for the English course, should the speaker be Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, South African, Indian, Caribbean, Nigerian, English, Welsh, Irish or Scottish or even a non-native speaker? If US or English, should they be General American or Received Pronunciation? There's a lot to go into choosing a narrator for these courses. Of course, that being said, for me, I'd be grateful for any audio regardless of the narrator.

Not a fan of slow audio learning myself, and those are all valid questions, but considering the situation, I thoroughly agree with your last sentence. In any case, the audio can always contain a short disclaimer regarding the speaker's accent, origin, or whatever is deemed necessary.

I think Speakeasy's idea of using the librivox platform is a good one. Of course, copyright issues must be secured completely, airtight, first for them to put it up for recording. It should probably be narrated by one speaker for consistency.

I don't know much about copyright and its issues. According to Luke Ranieri, the Italian book has been out of print since 1962. "Le Français par la méthode nature" is from 1958 and "English by the Nature Method" c. 1939, according to vivariumnovum.

Information about a search for the institute responsible for these book can be found in this thread. It's all surrounded by mystery.

Maybe Jensen was an alien.

[rdearman]

Typically copyright is 70 years after the death of the author. So you just need to find out when the author died. Otherwise the author or the manager of the authors estate would need to put it into the public domain. The USA made some strange modifications to copyright a couple of decades ago which I think they changed back recently to the international standard. You'd have to find a copyright lawyer, and even if it is OK in the USA it isn't necessarily OK in every country.

For Example: Peter Pan. Through a special bill in the U.K., the boy who never grows up has been granted a copyright that, at least in part, will never expire. The author, J.M. Barrie, originally gave the copyright to the Great Ormond Street Childrens Hospital in London. For 70 years the hospital used this money to help children and fund all sorts of research into childrens illnesses. Then when the copyright was up, the Parliament of the UK made a special provision to copyright law such that the copyright of Peter Pan in the UK never expires and all the money goes to the childrens hospital. This doesn't apply to other countries. But if you want to put on a play of Peter Pan in the UK, you have to pay royalties to the childrens hospital.

[kommie]

And how do we deal with something like this? The method is shared and downloaded as if free by people who don't support piracy. Even here, wouldn't posting the download link be a direct violation to the forum rules considering there's no official permission to download by the publisher and we don't know the date of Jensen's death?

I realize it's a thin line. The books have been out of print for decades, the institute existence seems to be covered in shadow and copies are almost impossible to find.

How do you, rdearman, deal with this?

[rdearman]

Every example of copyright must be dealt with in its own individual case. On this forum we will not allow copyrighted works. However in the specific example it appears that what we might be dealing with is what is known as an orphan work. An orphan work is where the copyright holder has assigned his copyright to a third party in this example to a publishing company. The publishing company has subsequently gone bust and in that case the author would then need to reapply the right of copyright. However if the author is dead then it is down to the estate or the hier to apply for the revision of copyright to the copyright holder. So this is a very strange a weird and wonderful thing about copyright law.. The copyright belongs to the author and after his death it belongs to the heirs. But during his lifetime he assigned the publication rights of the copyright to a third party. That third party has gone bust making the books that they published considered an orphan work. And orphan work can be used almost as if it was in the public domain as long as you have taken all the appropriate steps to find the copyright holder and get permission and all of these steps have been documented. I'm going to assume that this institution in Italy which is selling other words has done the due diligence for this. In the event that the copyright holder should reassert their rights then I'm quite happy to comply with any Takedown order and remove any links to this material.

In the meanwhile I'm not going to stop anyone from linking to or talking about these words since they appear to be what is known as an orphan work.

An orphan work is a work whose rightsholder can’t be determined, and establishing inheritance of those rights prove impracticable. This means that somewhere down the copyright line the rightful owner never became aware of their rights. This can happen when the copyrights outlive the heirs—because copyright lasts 70 years after the authors death—and down the line the ownership gets lost, or falls through the cracks of estate planning efforts. What also makes it difficult is that under U.S. law, copyrights don’t have to be registered and notice of copyright need not exist, which makes tracking down the rightful copyright owner nearly impossible sometimes. Typically when someone finds a work they want to use but cannot locate the rightful copyright owner, they abandon the work in fear of litigation; however, if it can be proved that the user diligently searched for the copyright owner to no avail, the orphaned work can be used. If the orphan work is used and the owner comes forward the user will have to prove to the court that there was a diligent and reasonable search conducted in good faith to find the copyright owner. Once evidence is shown of this and the court agrees with the user, then the work will be considered orphaned for at the time of use, and the user will not face damages. However any future uses of that work will be subject to a compulsory license with royalties; meaning the user can continue to use the work in the same capacity they previously did but any future use will be subject to royalties paid to the now known copyright owner. So when deciding to use orphan works, it is extremely important to be as thorough and diligent as possible to look for the copyright owner; all the while keeping track of all the methods you used to try and track the rightsholder down.

[kommie]

Thank you for all that information rdearman. I was really curious about why was this method allowed here.
I guess it's time to try my luck with librivox.