Nepali Study Group

An area with study groups for various languages. Group members help each other, share resources and experience. Study groups are permanent but the members rotate and change.
Speakeasy
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Re: Nepali Study Group

Postby Speakeasy » Mon Oct 28, 2019 12:06 pm

You’re a Real Trooper!
Pinecone, thank you very much for considering participating in a project to transcribe and translate the FSI Nepali Basic audio files, believe me, I know what this entails!

DLI/FSI Audio Recordings
Pinecone wrote: I listened to the audio files. The sound quality is not amazing (especially Tape 30) …
I am not surprised that the audio recordings are not what one would normally expect of commercially-prepared sound files. Whereas the 1950’s-era recordings from Assimil, Cortina, Linguaphone, Living Language, and so many others, seem to have been preserved and digitized in a manner that yields high quality audio, unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the 1960’s DLI/FSI recordings. I suspect that the problems of the latter are a result of the original recordings having been made on standard reel-to-reel magnetic tape at the FSI recording studio and then bulk-transferred to audio cassettes (an inferior recording medium) which did not age well. Even the commercially-digitized versions of the FSI recordings of Barron’s Educational Services, Multilingual Books, Audio-Forum, et al from the 1970’s have a muddy quality to them. Another factor which might influence someone’s appreciation of the DLI/FSI audio recordings is that they were NOT prepared with the assistance of voice-trained professionals. Rather, course instructors and, at times, just your Average Joe native-speakers lent their voices to these recordings. The DLI/FSI recordings on Eric Streit’s Yojik.eu website were digitized by volunteers circa 2008, presumably from sets of the audio cassettes which may have been copied from other sets of audio cassettes (thereby downgrading the sound quality even further) by the Staff of the U.S. Government’s National Technical Information Service (NTIS) which was one of the official government sales outlets for these courses.

In some cases, the original FSI recordings were made “in the field” by FSI Staff who were likely using portable equipment which would not have been capable of generating good quality sound files. In addition, it is likely that the environment would have been filled with background noises which would have been edited out once the tapes were submitted to the FSI studio and, in the process, the voice tracks would have lost some clarity. This "rough and ready" recording process was a adopted for a few of the more “remote” languages; it is possible that the Nepali recordings fall within this category.

Ultimately, aficionados of the DLI/FSI courses learn to accept the lower quality recordings as a concession for having access to relatively-larger sets of audio files (replete with transcriptions and translations) than might be otherwise available commercially and they even rationalize the quality by suggesting that it simulates the poorly-articulated speech of native speakers in noisy environments. And they’re free!!!

Transcriptions and Translations
Pinecone wrote: … I did a quick romanized spelling transcription of about 1/3 of the first tape. I'll tinker on that one a bit more. Not sure how far I'll go beyond that unless the transcribing and translating ends up being helpful for my own Nepali learning or someone specifically asks.
As to the transcriptions/translations, might I suggest that you prepare them in three columns, one each for the Nepali script, your Romanized text, and the English translation? My thoughts here are that, even if a clear representation of the Nepali script is not presently feasible, leaving a space for it in the document would permit its insertion at some later date. Just a thought!

Technical Issues
Pinecone wrote: … Do you have thoughts on where would be a good place to post that transcription as it is in progress. I was thinking a Google Doc or maybe use github's version control with it. Maybe you all are aware of something different that others have used in the past for that kind of collaborative work. I am all ears.
Hmm, the technical issues involved in a collaborative effort are “well beyond” my techno-peasant computer/internet abilities (quite seriously, blogging on this forum stretches my skills to their upper limit). Perhaps you could open a thread under the “Technical Support and Feature Requests” sub-forum, explaining very briefly the FSI Nepali audio files transcription project, and ask for advice on how to proceed.

It “might” be possible to upload your files to the Yojik.eu website for hosting in the “Work in Progress” section (see below).
Yojik Work in Progress.JPG

You would have to communicate with Eric Streit on this (see “Contact” at the top of his webpage). I say “might” because it is possible that Eric reserves the “Work in Progress” section for his own projects. Furthermore, as Eric has a full-time job, while I am sure that he would welcome receiving your finished project for hosting alongside the FSI Nepali audio files, he might not have a lot of time available for managing your unfinished project on his website; you’d have to work this out with him.

Yojik.eu website (see “Work in Progress”)
https://yojik.eu/

EDITED:
Typos, tinkering.
Paragraphing, section titles, addition of Yojik “Work in Progress”
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linguaphile
Yellow Belt
Posts: 76
Joined: Fri Nov 22, 2019 6:17 pm
Languages: English (N), Portuguese, Spanish, French, Hindi, Hebrew, Italian, German. Also Nepali (dormant), and Japanese (beginner-ish)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=14205
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Re: Nepali Study Group

Postby linguaphile » Sat Sep 18, 2021 8:21 am

Somewhat surprised to see a Nepali Study Group post here, not at all surprised to see that it's not particularly active... ;)

But I might be restarting my long-abandoned Nepali learning soon, so... on the off chance that any other Nepali learners are currently around, I figured I'd ask what dictionaries you've been using in your Nepali studies!

I'm obviously specifically interested in personal experience from people who have actually been studying the language. There aren't a ton of great dictionaries for Nepali, but... which ones have you personally found to be (relatively ;) ) good/practical/reliable/useful in your studies?
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