I didn’t get a response to my previous request, so I’ll be clearer. I’ll transfer 100 Euros to a native Romanian speaker who records the following as Ogg Vorbis or MP3, in a clear slow voice, and provides the text for it, under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence. Please mention it in my blog comments so that you can know if you are competing with other people. This offer will be valid until April 30th 2006. It should have the following:
- Some simple greetings for different times of the day.
- Declination of the common verbs in the present tense: To be, to have, to do, to make, to need, to want, to give, to take, to see, to stay, to go, to pay, to work. For instance, “eu sunt”, “tu eÅŸti”, “el este”, “ea este”, “noi suntem”, “voi sunteÅ£i”, “ei sunt”, “ele sunt”. I know that eu, tu, etc are often ommitted, but this would help the learner at first.
- For “a trebui” and “a vrea”, you might also decline stuff such as “el vrea să aibă”, to show the use of “să”, and to show the special “fiu”/”fii”,”fie”,”fim”,”fiti”,fie” form of To Be.
- Simple directions: On the left, on the right, straight ahead, here, there, over there, behind, in front.
- The numbers from 1 to 30, plus 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100.
- I guess it would be nice to have some English announcing the next verb or phrase, but I can add that in later.
This is really basic stuff, and not a recommended way to learn a language, but it would help people to get used to the unusual sounds and spellings, and nothing better exists yet. If it works then I’ll ask for more, such as the past and future tenses and useful phrases. Wikitravel has a list of Romanian phrases that would be good. Unfortunately its pronunciation audio files are missing.
According to this week’s Economist the average monthly wage in Romania is about 230 dollars, so this should be a worthwhile afternoon’s work for someone. Plus your name would be associated with something unique and valuable on the web.
I’m sure there’s some good software for Ogg Vorbis audio editing on Linux. Maybe someone can suggest something in the comments.
Update: Zsolt Czimbalmos from Miercurea Ciuc did exactly what I asked and the result is already online. The audio could be clearer, but it’s slow enough for me to hear the sounds well.