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Kanewai 2015: Team Caesar | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
 songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5212 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 265 of 331 08 June 2014 at 6:52pm | IP Logged | ||
I too have been listening to "Au coeur de l'histoire"; it's good, isn't it? - Though it does get tricky to follow when Ferrand gets excited about his topic, and his voice starts rising in pitch and then speeding up (and speeding up and speeding up). But one of the things I like best about it are the glimpses it gives into culture and history of France, and the diversity of its topics. One expects pieces on French royalty, and notable events in French history, of course, but I also really enjoyed programmes like the ones on "les grandes horizontales" (I thought of you, Kanewai, in regard to your reading of Proust and Zola); French aviation; the Marquis Vauban Wikipedia Fr the engineer who was responsible for building/ improving many of the military forts / fortified cities in 17th C France; the slave trade; the history of tea, etc. As an aside, if you have time when next in Paris, the Musée des Plans-Reliefs, which has three-dimensional models of the fortified cities of France from that period on, is well worth visiting. (Low-key, but fascinating.) And sometimes "Au coeur.." just goes completely over my head. One of the programmes was about a Swiss (or French-Swiss?) ski champion who was seen as the father of the sport of alpine skiing. I could never quite catch his name, despite it having been repeated numerous times (and still don't know it), so listened to the full broadcast in blissful ignorance of the actual identity of the subject of the programme. (If you remember this one, please let me know..!) Updated to add: Musée des plans-reliefs Edited by songlines on 08 June 2014 at 6:56pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5212 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 266 of 331 08 June 2014 at 8:46pm | IP Logged | ||
Many thanks for the extensive reply. I started a post earlier (complete with links to quenelle history "authentic" quenelles, etc.), but it got lost. The crema di funghi sounds absolutely yummy too. I must say, food is a great motivator for language learning. Et oui, "on mange bien en France"! Hadn't seen the Bourdain clip before - thanks too for that - some of the info. was also in a piece from Radio- Canada (I think) ici a year or so ago about school lunches in Italy, France, Quebec, and North America, as I recall. I don't think there's a link to the actual broadcast - I watched it on TV, but will check. Does Nicolas Philibert's documentary Etre et avoir on a one-room school in the Auvergne have footage of their lunch as well? I seem to remember their little stove. - Have you seen the film? It's an interesting complement to Entre les murs. Not a great deal of dialogue in "Etre et avoir", but the differences in teaching, social, and cultural styles from North American ones is remarkable. Part of that may be due to the fact that that it's set in a one-room school in rural France (rather than say, in a highly multicultural environment in a French metropolis), but still... (After reading Goscinny's stories, whenever I see the name "Nicolas" - as in the director's above - I tend to add automatically add "le petit..." before it...!) <smile> 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5394 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 267 of 331 08 June 2014 at 9:29pm | IP Logged | ||
The Musée des Plans Reliefs is awesome! And it's in the Invalides complex so you also get to see all the knights armor and Napoleon's tomb on the same trip. I went on a night where it was free and they had some kind of show out front (though don't remember which day it was). Other great stops for French history (among many): Musée du Moyen Age and the Basilique de Saint Denis where most of the monarchs and many nobles are entombed. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4892 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 268 of 331 19 June 2014 at 2:11am | IP Logged | ||
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Summertime Madness
I am going to try and enter true polyglot territory this summer, and balance five languages. It might work. Or I might decide that it's an insane idea and drop it after a month. The basic plan for now is: french: reading, tv, and podcasts italian: reading, tv, and assimil turkish: one hour on the weekend with FSI ancient greek: one hour on the weekend with the Iliad + supporting texts arabic: michel thomas and pimsleur while biking to work I dob't know if one hour on the weekend is going to be enough to keep my turkish and greek from fading, but I figure it's worth a try - because they absolutely will fade if I do nothing. Français The stranded astronauts spent a lot more time sitting around naked in a cage in Pierre Boulle's La planète des singes than they ever did in the movie. It's good, classic sci-fi. In podcast land, I still have wild swings in my level of comprehension. Sometimes I understand so little that I think I'm wasting my time, other times I follow most of the plot and actually enjoy the story. I seem to do better with stories in translation. In Le tour d'écrou de Henry James a young governess has to protect her charges from some vengeful ghosts; in Dix doigts dans l'engrenage de Christian Roux there was a piano player, some nazis, I think, a rich woman, jazz-fueled orgies?, and maybe a murder? (I really had no idea what was going on); in Le Fantôme de Canterville de Oscar Wilde a 300-year old ghost gets no respect from the American family that moves into his mansion (the father offers to oil his chains so they don't creak so much); in Voiles de mort de Didier Daeincks a sailor is slipped LSD at a bar in the south Pacific (I think) and signs up on a tour to look for a million-dollar treasure with a woman who shouldn't have been trusted; and in in tales for Jeunesse I learned that Peter Pan, ou le garçon qui ne voulait pas grandir was really kind of twisted, and that Tinkerbell had a crush on him and tried to kill Wendy. Seriously. That was so not in the Disney movie. Meanwhile, in tv land, I watched two episodes of Un village français, and I'm completely riveted; the show is as good as I had heard it was. The links were posted in the main Super Challenge thread. Follow them! Italiano Harry Potter has finally formed his secret army. In the South Pacific,Corto Maltese has taken charge of two orphans while the head pirate and main baddie arranges to sell stolen coal to the German army. And then there's Dante. I wanted to read him one day, and I took a peek to see how hard Inferno would be ... and I got sucked in. per me si va ne l'etterno dolore, per me si va tra la perduta gente. Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore; fecemi la divina podestate, la somma sapïenza e 'l primo amore. Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create se non etterne, e io etterno duro. Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate." Queste parole di colore oscuro vid' ïo scritte al sommo d'una porta "Through me the way to the city of woe Through me the way to everlasting pain, Through me the way among the lost men. Justice moved my maker on high. He made me, the divine power, the wisdom supreme, and the primal love. Before me nothing was created that was not eternal, and eternal I endure. Abandon all hope ye who enter here." These words, dark in hue, I saw inscribed over the arch of a door. I love this stuff. It'a much more accessible than I thought it would be. It's available online with English side by side translations at the Princeton Dante Project The same website discussed in the SC page has a link to Il commissario Montalbano with English subtitles, so that will keep me busy for awhile. Though it seems that every Italian tv show or movie I see is Il commissario This or La Mafia that. It can't be all cops and robbers over there, can it? Türkçe I hated the thought of forgetting all my Turkish, and having to start over again down the road. Yet I don't have time to really commit to it, so I'm going to try an experiment, and just work passively through FSI for an hour each week. I started last weekend, and it went well. I certainly couldn't produce the answers to the drills, but I could follow along, understand them, and reproduce them. It's good enough for now. ελληνικά Same plan for Greek; an hour Saturday morning. I'm just reviewing what I've read, and it takes me close to an hour to read 50 lines of the Iliad. But these are great lines, so I'm ok with reading and re-reading them. In this short stretch Agamemnon has told the priest Chryses just what he intends to do with his kidnapped daughter. The old priest wanders off alone to a distant shore, and prays to Apollo: Let the Greeks pay for my tears with your arrows Next up (I've read ahead): plagues, death, and one pissed-off Achilles. Greek and Roman materials are available at the Perseus Digital Library العربية This is the first time I've touched Arabic in two years, and I'm happy with how much is coming back to me. So far I've been using the Michel Thomas Egyptian course on my commute. It's a solid course, and a pleasant reintroduction to the language. I don't have any clear goals yet; I'll keep doing audio for the summer (since it's what I have) and then evaluate my next steps. Edited by kanewai on 19 June 2014 at 2:35am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4912 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 269 of 331 19 June 2014 at 3:59pm | IP Logged | ||
Actually, this was in the Disney movie, but possibly more subtly than in the book (I've only seen the film). I guess you saw it when you were young and didn't pick up on it? How would you rate La planète des singes, in terms of readability, vocabulary, etc? I've read it in English and quite enjoyed it. It is available on Kindle here in the UK, but it's a bit expensive. Edited by Jeffers on 19 June 2014 at 4:13pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5239 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 270 of 331 19 June 2014 at 4:40pm | IP Logged | ||
You can try: Il Tredicesimo Apostolo - Which is about a priest. Tutti pazzi per amore - Sitcom Casa Vianello - Sitcom I Cesaroni - Sitcom Il peccato e la vergogna - Drama about people in pre-WWII Italy. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4912 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 271 of 331 20 June 2014 at 8:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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Perseus is the most extensive source of Greek texts online, and the textual aids are great. However, I recently rediscovered another excellent source. Check out http://geoffreysteadman.com/. Geoffrey Steadman has published a series of Greek and Latin texts with vocabulary and commentary. You could buy the books from Amazon, but he also offers them in pdf form for free on his website. Each text begins with a set of core vocabulary which wont be given in the notes. On the pdf's the text takes up the top third of the page, below which is vocabulary for the page, and below that are notes on the text. I think in the published form these are on a page facing the text.
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| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4892 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 272 of 331 21 June 2014 at 7:38am | IP Logged | ||
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Awesome find! I already have one of Steadman's books, on the Odyssey. I'm looking
forward to starting it once I finish Book 1 of the Iliad. I have Pamela Draper's commentary on that text; she was the 'original' but I've read that Steadman took her approach and improved upon it. And I really enjoyed La planète des singes. I think I used the dictionary two or three times over the course of the whole novel (as opposed to once or twice per page for the classics). But it was a fast read. It took me about ten days, I think, and that was on top of doing everything else. I'd balance that out against the cost. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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