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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Suzie Diglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4227 days ago 155 posts - 226 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Dutch | Message 233 of 243 23 January 2014 at 7:45am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Songlines,
Just wanted to get to know my new team leader... You have already achieved so much! And your resources are great! Inspired your log (and the Canadians in our new group) I have just watched a Canadian programme at TVMonde...and did not understand any word... :-( I really hope this is due to the huge differences between Canadian French and European French...but I rather fear it is not...... Anyway, thanks for having volunteered to lead the new team! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5207 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 234 of 243 28 January 2014 at 3:20am | IP Logged | ||
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Brief Summary from Dec 30 2013, to yesterday, Sunday Jan 26.
TV / Video podcasts: 475 minutes; or, 7 hours 58 minutes Audio podcasts: 675 minutes; or, 11 hours 15 minutes. All native material, primarily RFI , le Journal en français façile; and Au coeur de l'histoire link for the audio. Have started trying something different with the RFI, which is listening to it without the transcripts. - It does mean that I do miss a lot more of what's being said, and I that I may have to rewind and listen to certain sections two or three times. - Finding it quite surprising how much re-listening to the same thing makes it clearer. As mentioned earlier, I've renewed my Y membership, and now have access to treadmills with individual TV screens. TFO is available there, so - in one fell swoop - it's not only doubled the number of French-language channels I can watch, but also gets me fitter at the same time. A win-win situation! In other news, am now a member of (and leader likewise) of Team Deuxième, the second French TAC 2014 team, and have been checking through old threads and new for lists, notable websites, resources, to add to the listings of French-language-learning resources for page 1 Team Deuxième of the team thread. - Mon dieu, there's such a wealth of material out there. And BonneVivant, PeterMollenburg and Suzie: you're welcome; - and thanks for visiting my log. Edited by songlines on 28 January 2014 at 4:55am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5474 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 235 of 243 29 January 2014 at 6:40am | IP Logged | ||
Bonjour Songlines, Tu fais un travail excellent avec tes études ! Comment est-ce que tu trouves toutes les informations natives ? Je suis curieux parce que je n'utilise que les cours tous les jours ces jours-là (oui oui, je sais, je sais, je suis complètement fou!). J'ai besoin de finir ces cours pour pouvoir lire et écouter les Français sans les explications, sans ralentir les phrases et sans trop de difficulté (j'espère)... Mais en ce moment puisque je suis perfectionniste je vais continuer à utiliser ces cours, je les finirai! désolé, ma question était... comment tu trouves les matériaux natifs ? ---------------------------------- Songlines you're doing a great job! How are you finding all the native news ? I'm curious because I'm only use courses every day these days/lately (yes yes I know I know, i'm completely crazy). I need to finish these courses to be able to read and listen to the French without explanations, without slowing down the sentences, and without too much difficulty (I hope)... But at the moment since i'm such a perfectionist I'm going to continue to use these courses, i'm will finish them! Sorry, my question was... how do you find the native materials? PM Edited by PeterMollenburg on 29 January 2014 at 6:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5207 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 236 of 243 07 February 2014 at 1:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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My "Word of the WeeK" for the February Team Deuxième challlenge, also posted on the team thread:
--------- Following up Jeffer's Word of the Week, here's one I discovered in Blake and Mortimer last year: " écraser le champignon": 
According to Wordreference.com, it means to accelerate suddenly (when driving): "écraser" meaning "to crush" and "le champignon" being "mushroom". So then one has the image of a foot, heavy on the accelerator pedal, pushing it down. - Love it! Especially the association with old-fashioned automobiles (think 1950s-style ones), with their cute little mushroom-shaped accelerator pedals. Wordreference For those who aren't familiar with it, Blake and Mortimer is a popular bande dessinée series of Belgian origin. Since it originally dates from the 1940s and 50s (it is is now being continued by other authors), there are quite a few archaisms in the language (the English characters exclaim, "By jove!", for example) and 1950s-era stereotypes and attitudes, but it's still an enjoyable adventure series. Wikipedia, Eng Wikipedia, Fre I first discovered (thanks to Geoffw) the series through Izneo , a wonderful French bande dessinée site. French-based, Izneo sells digital copies of BDs, but will also rent them for a low fee. (There's also a monthly subscription plan.) They have an extensive collection of titles, browsable by genre, (and you can preview the first 5 pages of most titles first, though this feature seems to work on my computer, but not on my iPad app) and several of us on Htlal (e.g. Emk, Kanewai, and myself, among others) have become frequent users of the site. - Check it out! Izneo. And does the villain Sharkey's driving lead to an accident and a "coup du lapin" for anyone...? Well, you'll have to read the book (Le Mystère de la grande pyramide, Tome 1) to find out... Edited by songlines on 07 February 2014 at 2:53pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5207 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 237 of 243 01 July 2014 at 6:41am | IP Logged | ||
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Happy Canada Day to my fellow Canadians on Team Deuxième! -
And here's a bit of Canadian content to share... Many of you who read mysteries may aleardy know of this award-winning author, but I discovered her books only very recently: Louise Penny. Don't be deceived the the "cosy" settings of many of her novels: the small communities of the the Eastern Townships of Quebec. These aren't Agatha Christies. At least two of her main characters go into some deeper and pschologically darker terrain (no blood and gore) terrain, such as post-traumatic stress syndrome, alcoholism, and addiction to prescription meds. But her policiers aren't of the bleak "Scandinavian" type: Penny writes with an empathy which offers the possibility of hope, love, redemption, and - as she says on her website - the knowledge "that goodness exists". I've finished only a few of her English-language titles, and have just begun my first in French, but have found some beautiful, graceful, and even moving writing. ----- Sizen, you may particularly enjoy "Bury the Dead", as it's mostly set in old Quebec City. It was the first one I read, and the one I'm reading in French. It also - opens with a cliffhanger (in a smaller paralllel plot line which comes to affect both plot and character development in the following books). Despite the French Wikipedia, her more recent works have been translated into French. And strangely, Amazon Canada doesn't seem to make it easy for customers to limit their searches to books in French. Irritatingly, the site seems to make me have to log in before it'll offer to limit the search to books in French. There's a "parcourir par boutique" link on the upper-left-most corner, but an actual search for author after choosing "tous les livres francophones" yielded English titles too. As some of the English books have variant titles, and some of the French likewise (publishers'decisions), here's the list, as far as I can sort them variously out. They're in reading order, though they can be read independently: 1/ Still Life. Nature morte (France); En plein couer (Canada) 2/ A Fatal Grace (Can); Dead Cold (USA, UK); Sous la glace. 3/ The Cruelest Month; Le mois plus cruel 4/ The Murder Storm (Can); A Rule Against Murder (USA); Défense de tuer 5/ The Brutal Tellling; Revelation brutale 6/ Bury Your Dead; Enterrez vos mort 7/A Trick of the Light; Illusion de lumière 8/ The Beautiful Mystery; Le beau mystère. Author site English French section author site Fre [Cross posted on the team thread.] 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5207 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 238 of 243 01 July 2014 at 6:47am | IP Logged | ||
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A short personal note: Apologies for the long hiatus in this log (as some of you may know, I've had health
problems); for those reading this thread, thank you for your patience. I'm still totting up my summary, but thought it best to not wait for that be finished, but instead try to plunge (or dip my toe?) back in. Thanks also and again to those who sent me personal messages - they were much appreciated; and to my fellow Deuxièmistes, whose logs / updates I've continued to follow and learn from, and be inspired by, even if I haven't commented or posted. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5474 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 239 of 243 01 July 2014 at 10:30am | IP Logged | ||
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Hey Songlines,
Good to see you sticking with it despite the challenges life is throwing your way. Those books you recommended seem interesting. I'd get a hold of some if it wasn't for my insanely long list of courses I have. I haven't listed my books *yikes* so I really can't see room for it, but an interesting and grateful suggestion nonetheless :) Cheers! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5207 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 240 of 243 01 August 2014 at 3:59am | IP Logged | ||
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Came across this recently (about endangered languages in Toronto), and thought folks might be interested in
it. Globe and Mail One of the things I like about Toronto is its ethnic and cultural diversity. While on public transit, I often play the "where might they be from?" game, looking at fellow traveller's faces, clothing, listening to their accents, or hearing them speak to each other in their (presumed) native tongues. - I'm sure many of you do the same..? We also have many new immigrants and refugee claimants as patrons at the library where I work, and (partly so that we have a sense of how much money to allocate to the collections budgets for the respective language collections), staff ask, when registering a new patron, which other language they might read / borrow material in. I sometimes add a second question: how many other languages they speak; it's not infrequent to have a reply of something like "four" or "five". (A small privacy legislation- related note: patrons don't have to answer the question if they don't wish to, of course, and the info is used in aggregate, not attached to individual patron records, of course. ) 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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