Songlines’ Deuxième langue. (Language Learning Log) Language Learning Forum

Songlines’ Deuxième langue.
Tags: 6 Weeks Challenge (6WC) \| Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) \| French
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anamsc
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Andorra
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Studies: Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Written), French

Message 81 of 243

03 March 2012 at 7:45pm | IP Logged

songlines wrote:

...

Started (and recommending this for other "Romantics" at French A2/B1 CEFR levels):
Read and Think French, a
book and CD set. Not all of the articles in the book are on the CD, but - on the plus side - there
are handy glossaries in the margins of each page, explaining the trickier vocab. - A tremendously handy time-
saving feature!

Articles include a range of news-magazine type topics, in the areas of:
Culture, Voyages, Tradition, Célébration, Biographie, et Coutumes. Nothing too taxing, but still
offering interesting glimpses into French culture and la francophonie.

Sample topics:
-The bustling markets of Senegal
-Pastis, a traditional drink from Provence
-The maple harvest of Quebec
-Bises ou pas bises: To kiss or not to kiss?
-Easter in France. (Though, for me, the best possible essay on Easter in France remains the greatly amusing one
by David Sedaris, in his collection "Me Talk Pretty One Day": in which a class of French language learners,
collectively without sufficient vocabulary, try to explain "les Pâques" to a Muslim classmate. )

The book's from the editors of Think French magazine.
Compared to the $100 subscription fee for Think French online, this $20 book-plus-CD set, with approx. 100
two-page articles, seems much better value indeed. Or you might even be able to borrow it from your local
public library, as I've done, which - for me - is best. Much as I find this useful, it's not the type of book which I'm
likely to want re-read.

Updated to add: I've realized that the Amazon link also allows you to preview (text) samples from the book. -
Check it out!

Thanks for the recommendation! That book looks really good; I just ordered it myself. :)
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songlines
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Message 82 of 243

16 March 2012 at 4:18pm | IP Logged

Quick stat. summary for the last fortnight, up to the 13th when the 6WC finished:

Only 7 hours, 44 mins. in the two weeks since my last summary, finishing the 6WC with a total of 32 hours, 9 mins.
of French, with 42 % of that from news, 29% from reading, and 13% from Assimil.

Lots more vocab, and a new book (free, to boot!), but will post details later.

Edited by songlines on 06 April 2012 at 9:52am
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songlines
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Message 83 of 243

22 March 2012 at 6:00am | IP Logged

Stat summary for the past week, from Wed 14th March:

62.5 pages read, from a mix of: Read and Think French (mentioned earlier in this thread); Mais que lit
Stephen Harper?, and news.

Also did: 530 minutes (ie 8 hours, 50 min) of French apart from the above. A mix of Assimil, Arté Journal, France
24, RFI, and Le Téléjournal (Radio-Canada).

I didn't double-count the reading; pages read were just counted as "pages", even if I did Listening-Reading for any
of them.

Edited by songlines on 06 April 2012 at 9:52am
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songlines
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Message 84 of 243

22 March 2012 at 6:45am | IP Logged

My current TV setup no longer allows me to pre-programme the taping of broadcasts (the digital to analogue
signal converter puts itself into "sleep" mode if the TV's not actually being watched), so unless I'm around at
10:00 p.m. to actually switch the converter on, I don't get the closed captions which come with TV broadcasts.

That's been a bit of a problem, especially with my hearing impairment. But I had one small progress marker last
week (on Wednesday 14th to be exact). I'd missed the live broadcast, and was catching up on it online. -
Typically, this involves a certain amount of replaying, or missing details of various news items. But for once, I
was able to watch and understand all of the French in the first section (approx 20 minutes) online, sans
captions! Of course, this happy state of affairs didn't last forever, but still, it's a teensy victory...

(Sadly, some of the broadcast covered a horrible trial: that of a man who, with his girlfriend, is on trial for the
abduction, rape, and murder of a young girl.)

Both Céline Galipeau, the national anchor, and Odette Gough, the provincial anchor, are very clear speakers.
Gough has a tendency to speak rapidly, but she nevertheless articulates her words.

If anyone is interested, the online links are:

http://www.radio-
canada.ca/emissions/telejournal/2011-2012/

http://www.radio-
canada.ca/emissions/Telejournal_Ontario/2011-2012/

(Updated to tweak one of the links. )

Edited by songlines on 22 March 2012 at 7:49pm
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songlines
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Message 85 of 243

28 March 2012 at 7:44am | IP Logged

Summary for the past six days:

33.5 pages, tweeted in the Tadoku Bot Challenge. A mix of books: Read and Think French, Yann Martel; and
also online reading of RFI and Le Service Protestant, all mentioned previously.

Also 469 minutes (ie. 7 hours, 49 minutes) of other stuff: Le Téléjournal (Canada, Ontario, and British Columbia),
France 24, Le Service Protestant, and Assimil. Didn't "double count" anything: e.g., the Service Protestant
counted for "minutes" didn't get also marked down as "reading".

One of the more interesting audio pieces was from Le Talk de Paris, the interview series hosted by Ulysse Gosset.
(It's unfortunately no longer on the air - I've written about it on pages 4-5 of this thread. ) It was an interview
with the amazing Carlos Ghosn, CEO of both Renault and
Nissan. Described as a "celebrity" businessman, he has, in addition to his remarkable business achievements,
been the subject of a manga, and speaks "at least" four languages, including/plus Japanese. (French, of course -
the interview's in that language; but I'm guessing also Arabic, Portuguese, English, and perhaps Spanish?)

Not all of the sites (even one on France24 itself) posting the Gosset-Ghosn interview have the transcript (Daily
Motion and Youtube certainly don't). So if you need or prefer transcripts with your audio, use this address
(doing the usual copy->paste, removing any extra spaces inserted by the forum software):
http://www.france24.com/fr/20080125-carlos-ghosn-president-r enault-nissan-le-talk-paris

In very different news, one unexpected vocabulary item added to my list:
- maison de débauche: bawdy house.

Fellow Canadians will know why this particular phrase has popped up.
www.linguee.com, the contextual dictionary and translation tool which
forum member zerothinking recently wrote about a few threads over, came through nicely with the
translation - not that one was really needed.

Edited by songlines on 28 March 2012 at 6:52pm
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songlines
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Message 86 of 243

03 April 2012 at 5:44am | IP Logged

Summary from the 28th, when I last posted.

Reading done: 57.5 pages in total, including Le Petit Nicolas (so droll!), and "Mais que lit Stephen Harper?" (more
of which later).

Other study: 155 minutes (2 hours, 35 minutes) of Assimil.

Two-Week Tadoku Challenge: finished 43rd, with 151.5 pages in total, or an average of 9.47 pages/day. Hmm.
I think I might qualify for the same report card as le petit Nicolas: "...souvent distraite. Pourrait faire mieux".
(Often distracted; could do better.)

Edited by songlines on 03 April 2012 at 5:45am
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songlines
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Message 87 of 243

03 April 2012 at 6:34am | IP Logged

Was delighted to have finally - finally! - finished Yann Martel's book. Not that I wasn't enjoying it; on the
contrary. - It's just that it seems to have taken so long (since mid-December, when I earlier posted about it) to
have completed. As someone used to sometimes breezing through a book a night in English, even this ten-
pages-a-day pace for French (Tadoku score reference above) seems excruciatingly slow.

As mentioned earlier, Martel's book is - happily for other French-language readers - also available in the form of
parallel websites:

Mais que lit Stephen Harper? translated by Martel's parents, and
What is Stephen Harper Reading? for the English
original.

Occasionally, I wondered about Martel's choice of books. For example, why did he recommend a book he doesn't
like, particularly one such as Ayn Rand's "Anthem"? (Book 38) I understand that it's good for people to read
widely, and not only limit oneself to authors with whom one is in political agreement, but Ayn Rand...? A writer
of such turgid prose! And this, as recommendation for a man not known to read fiction..?

And I felt there were some mis-steps in Martel's writing, for example in the chapter on Julius Caesar (Book
51); if one were really trying to persuade a busy Prime Minister to read a book, hectoring and sarcasm would not
seem the best strategy. (Just sayin'...)

But those are but two quibbles, and very minor compared to the pleasure I had in reading much of the rest of the
book. Some favourite segments:

(Book 1): The Death of Ivan Ilych.

Quote:

Effortlessly, Tolstoy examines life’s shallow exteriors as well as its inner workings. And yet this pageant
of folly and belated wisdom comes not like a dull moral lesson, but heavy, as if from a downpour, with all the
weight, shine and freshness of real life. We see, vividly, Ivan Ilych’s errors—oh, they are so clear to us, we
certainly aren’t making his mistakes—until one day we realize that someone is looking at us as if we were a
character in The Death of Ivan Ilych.

That is the greatness of literature, and its paradox, that in reading about fictional others we end up reading
about ourselves. Sometimes this unwitting self-examination provokes smiles of recognition, while other times, as
in the case of this book, it provokes shudders of worry and denial. Either way, we are the wiser, we are
existentially thicker....

Above all else, I recommend the character Gerasim to you. I suspect he is the character in whom we recognize
ourselves the least yet whom we yearn the most to be like. We hope one day, when the time comes, to have
someone like Gerasim at our side.

Quote:

Comme elles sont décrites avec clarté et précision, nos petites vanités, nos insensibles mesquineries.
Sans effort visible, Tolstoï observe les minces apparences de la vie autant que ses rouages intérieurs. Et pourtant,
ce foisonnement de folie et de sagesse tardive nous apparaît non comme une grise leçon de morale, mais avec la
lourdeur propre à un orage, avec tout le poids, l’éclat et la fraîcheur de la vraie vie. Nous observons sur le vif les
aberrations d’Ivan Illitch—oh, elles sont si évidentes à nos yeux, c’est bien évident que nous ne les commettons
pas, nous—jusqu’au moment où un jour nous constatons que quelqu’un nous observe exactement comme si
nous étions un personnage de La mort d’Ivan Illitch.

C’est bien là la grandeur de la littérature, et son paradoxe: le fait qu’en lisant des histoires sur des personnages
fictifs on se trouve à lire sur soi-même. Il arrive que cet involontaire examen de conscience nous pousse à
sourire de manière complice, alors qu’à d’autres moments, comme dans ce livre, cela provoque en nous des
réflexes d’inquiétude et de dénégation. Quoi qu’il en soit, nous en sortons plus sages, notre existence y a gagné
de la substance...

Plus que tout autre, je vous recommande le personnage de Gerasim. J’ai l’impression que c’est le personnage en
qui nous nous reconnaissons le moins et auquel nous souhaiterions le plus ressembler. Nous espérons un jour, le
temps venu, avoir à nos côtés quelqu’un comme Gerasim.

Books 41 and 42, Gilgamesh, in two translations, one by Stephen Mitchell, another by Derrek Hines. It's an
exhilarating, exciting exploration of two very different approaches to a poem - a classic which I've never read,
but now want to.

Book 50. Jane Austen: a life by Carol Shields.

Quote:

The gentle yet probing questioning, the lightness of touch, the accuracy of statement, the keen moral
awareness, the constant intelligence—finally, it’s only Jane Austen’s irony that is missing from this excellent look
at her life by Carol Shields, which is fitting since a fair-minded biography isn’t the most suitable place for broad
irony. Otherwise, without any attempt at imitation or pastiche, this book is so much in the spirit of its subject, so
intimately concerned with the meaning of being a writer, that one can nearly imagine that one is reading Carol
Shields: A Life, by Jane Austen. Not that Carol Shields intrudes on the text in an unseemly way. Not at all. Aside
from the brief prologue, the personal pronoun I to designate the biographer never appears. This book is entirely
a biography of Jane Austen. But the spirit of the two, of the English novelist who lived between 1775 and 1817
and of the Canadian novelist who lived between 1935 and 2003, are so kindred that the book exudes a feeling of
friendship rather than of analysis.

Quote:

Le questionnement délicat et pourtant insistant, la légèreté du toucher, la précision de l’exposé, la fine
sensibilité morale, l’intelligence soutenue—il ne manque finalement plus que l’ironie de Jane Austen dans cet
excellent ouvrage sur sa vie, écrit par Carol Shields; cela est très bien ainsi car l’emportement ironique n’a guère
sa place dans une biographie qui se veut honnête. Par ailleurs, dénué de toute tentative d’imitation ou de
pastiche, ce livre est tellement fidèle à son sujet, est tellement pris par ce que cela signifie d’être écrivaine, qu’on
pourrait presque s’imaginer lire Carol Shields, une vie, de Jane Austen. Et ce n’est pas que Carol Shields
s’immisce dans le texte de façon inconvenante. Pas du tout. Sauf dans le bref prologue, le pronom “je” pour
désigner la biographe n’apparaît jamais. Ce livre n’est rien d’autre que la biographie de Jane Austen. Mais l’esprit
de chacune des deux écrivaines, celui de la romancière anglaise qui a vécu de 1775 à 1817 et celui de la
romancière canadienne qui a vécu de 1935 à 2003, ont tellement en commun qu’il se dégage du livre un
sentiment d’amitié plutôt que d’analyse.

Edited by songlines on 03 April 2012 at 7:44am
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songlines
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Message 88 of 243

03 April 2012 at 6:45am | IP Logged

And sometimes Martel made me laugh:

From Book 48, Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson.

Quote:

Dear Mr. Harper,

Well, with a budget like that, you might as well be a socialist. Remarkable how much your government has vowed
to spend. Your days as a radical Reformer, determined to shrink the government like a wool sweater in a hot
water wash, must be from a former life. I wonder what your friends at the National Citizens Coalition think? (Why
is there no apostrophe in the name of that organization? I checked their website and that’s how they spell it. Are
they so committed to free enterprise and fearful of social commitment that they won’t put the Citizens in the
possessive case?)

I gather Michael Ignatieff [the then Leader of the Opposition] was amused to hear echoes of his own statements
in the recent Speech from the Throne ...

Quote:

Cher Monsieur Harper,

Eh bien! Avec un budget comme celui-là, vous pourriez aussi bien être socialiste. C’est remarquable, tout ce que
votre gouvernement a décidé de dépenser. Votre époque en tant que Réformiste radical fermement résolu à
réduire le gouvernement comme on fait rétrécir un chandail de laine dans de l’eau chaude doit dater d’une vie
antérieure. Je me demande bien ce que pensent vos amis de la “National Citizens Coalition”. (Je m’interroge par
ailleurs sur l’absence d’un possessif—Citizens’—dans le nom de cette organisation. J’ai vérifié sur son site
Internet et c’est ainsi qu’on l’épelle. Est-ce que cette Coalition est à ce point affiliée à la libre entreprise et
effrayée d’un engagement social qu’elle ne puisse inscrire dans son nom l’inclusion des Citoyens?)

Je crois comprendre que Michael Ignatieff [l'ancien chef d'opposition] s’est réjoui d’entendre des échos de ses
propres déclarations dans le récent Discours du Trône ...

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