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| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 25 of 48 02 July 2012 at 10:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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Month 13.1: Entering the Scriptorium
I was going to take things easy in July, but life got in the way, in a good way. My trip to Central America is back on - I'll be heading to Guatemala in November. I want to get my French as far along as possible before I switch my main focus to Spanish. I've learned and lost Spanish too many times; once I start this time I want to follow through for at least a year. On to French: FSI 16.6 - FSI is now mixing up the tenses within the drills, which means I need to listen even more carefully to catch the meaning. This is good. The drills themselves are focusing on the smaller points of grammar now. Last week it was the difference between qu'est-ce que, qui est-ce qui, qui est-ce que and qu'est- ce qui, and when you could use inversion and when you needed to use the long form. Most of this I knew, and could recognize it easily enough when reading or listening. It was far more challenging having to produce them myself. I keep saying that I'll be finished with FSI after lesson xxx, but it's so damn useful that it's hard to give up. Assimil Using French - Finished! I got impatient with the book at the end. I remember having the same feeling at the end of French with Ease - like the quality of the final chapters dropped. There were interesting pieces on Balzac, Proust, and Hugo - and then Assimil finished with the horribly mundane and boring story of Annette and Lawrence's romance. I rushed through the last portion of the book just to be able to finish it. I like the course overall, but there were times I felt like they were trying to throw too many idioms at us, at the expense of writing well. Super Challenge - Astérix was a fun read, though there was a fair amount of slang that I couldn't make out. For the most part I could read it without a dictionary, which was a pleasure. Le Grand Meaulnes, meanwhile, is proving to be an excellent choice - I'm staying up late to finish each chapter. L'arnacoeur was a slick romantic comedy set in Monaco. It was all so shiny and pretty that I made it through most of the movie before I realized that it wasn't any good. And I scored big at a used book fair this weekend: 14 French paperbacks for @ $5 US. They were sitting on a shelf off to the side, wedged between a Spanish section that had been completely picked over and a 'random languages' section that seemed to be mostly Thai and Tagalog romances. The French section looked like it hadn't been touched all week. Lucky me. I brought home volumes by Racine, Marcel Proust, Molière, Voltaire, André Gide, André Breton, André Malraux (is every other French author named André?), Paul Verlaine, Chateaubriand, and Charles Baudelaire - as well as a big hard cover dictionary and a dog-eared copy of Harry Potter et la Chambre des Secrets. French Grammar in Context - This book uses real life literary and magazine extracts to illustrate grammar points. I'm three chapters in and already the narrator of L'étranger has felt dizzy from the heat, Simone de Beauvoir has developed a crush on her cousin Jacques, and Jacques Prèvert has told us a story about a melancholic dromedary. I love this stuff. The exercises involve a lot of rewriting and reworking the texts - the verbs might be removed, for example, and you have to fill them in using the proper tense. This is basic classroom stuff, but with more interesting text. I've been using Prof. Arguelle's scriptorium method, and writing out the whole text rather than just filling in the blanks. I haven't focused much on writing this past year, and I'd forgotten how much you can learn from such a basic exercise. Edited by kanewai on 02 July 2012 at 11:05pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| LangWanderer Diglot Pro Member Australia digintoenglish.com Joined 4536 days ago 74 posts - 97 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, French, Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 26 of 48 03 July 2012 at 12:06am | IP Logged | ||
That sounds excellent! I'll have to check it out. The grammar book I've been using, Grammaire française, is effective, but far more mundane. I'm disappointed to hear that you found it necessary to rush through the end of Using French. I'm up to the first literary extract now and my enjoyment levels are picking up greatly, but it's unfortunate that it ends with a whimper. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5393 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 27 of 48 03 July 2012 at 12:43am | IP Logged | ||
This is similar to what I do with the Assimil exercises. I learn a lot more when I write things down, repeating it as I go. I don't follow his scriptorium technique in particular, but when I copy the dialogs and the exercises, I'm dissecting the grammar as I go. With French, it's particularly helpful. Part of it is because of all the accents, and the other part is because so many words sound the same, you will not notice the difference between étais/était/étaient/été and donner/donnez/donné(s)/donnée(s) by ear. This is the type of stuff I found really confusing at first, and now it's starting to come more naturally. For me, it also just helps me internalize structures and vocabulary in general. I've done similar with the Practice Makes Perfect grammar books, and those are excellent for vocabulary acquisition as well. I'm not familiar with the particular book you're using, but it combines the drills format with the writing, which is really effective. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 28 of 48 03 July 2012 at 2:42am | IP Logged | ||
It was only the last set of seven, really - and they weren't all bad! It was more that I was expecting a higher level of writing by that point. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 29 of 48 10 July 2012 at 1:04am | IP Logged | ||
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Month 13.2: Blow Out!
So this happened:  A blow out at the end of the road, 40 miles from town. I ended up having a lot of spare time, and FSI kept me occupied - between waiting for the AAA truck and the slow trek home I managed to complete three sections! The drive back would've been stressful - I put on the spare tire, but didn't want to go over 35 mph (56 km per hour) on it, and the only way back was on the freeway. I just focused on my French drills as a way to stay cool and take my mind off the giant trucks and SUV's speeding past me. FSI to Chapter 7.04. The last few chapters have had a lot of focus on demonstrative (celui, celle, ceux, celles) indefinite demonstrative (ce, ceci, cela, ça), relative (qui, que, dont) and indefinite relative (ce qui, ce que, ce dont) pronouns. I can recognize all of these when I read them, but this is my first time drilling on them. Everytime I'm ready to put FSI aside for awhile the course will introduce something vital and integral and hitherto missing from my studies. And looking ahead, I read that the rest of 17, and the next 5 chapters, will be about the subjunctive. And I really do need to work on the subjunctive ... so I guess I'll keep FSI by my side for a little while longer. Le Grand Meaulnes. Reading in French is still exhausting, but I'm able to go for longer stretches. I'm also enjoying this novel enough that I'm reading more and more for pure pleasure. Previous novels have always been a mix of fun + work. I have a busy couple weeks ahead, and no long commutes, so my pace might be shifting to 'slow and steady.' But I think I've written that before, and never did slow down. Edited by kanewai on 13 July 2012 at 11:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 30 of 48 13 July 2012 at 11:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Month 13.3: Il devient un ami avec un chat
From the back cover of Le hussard sur le toit (Jean Giono, 1953): Le Hussard est d'abord un roman d'aventures: Angelo Pardi, jeune colonel de hussards exilé en France, est chargé d'une mission mystérieuse. Il veut retrouver Giuseppe, carbonaro comme lui, qui vit à Manosque. Mais le choléra sévit: les routes sont barrées, les villes barricadées, on met les voyageurs en quarantaine, on soupçonne Angelo d'avoir empoisonné les fontaines! Seul refuge découvert par hasard, les toits de Manosque. Entre ciel at terre, il observe les agitations funèbres des humains, contemplé la splendeur des paysages et devient ami avec un chat. Une nuit, au cours d'une expédition, il rencontre une étonnant at merveilleuse jeune femme. (cette jeune femme is played by Juliette Binoche in the movie, which I'll hold off on watching it until I finish the book) Or, as Wikipedia puts it, "Angelo ... is a chivalrous romantic whose quest constitutes an inquiry into the nature of happiness, while the cholera epidemic he finds himself confronted with in Provence in 1832 is an allegory for the wars that had so deeply affected Giono." Do you ever have a book call to you, even though it's slightly beyond your skill level? I've been struggling the past day with one. The language isn't hard; I can read a paragraph and easily understand the basics. But I miss the details, and as the paragraphs are quite long it's easy to get lost in them. The long paragraphs also mean that it's hard to check my understanding against an English copy. But now: Giono's writing is so evocative that I don't want to miss the details, and so it is taking me a couple rounds to finish each page. I read. I re-read, looking up words. Maybe I check the English version. I reread again, assuming I haven't lost my place. I tell myself that I should read one or two more novels in parallel text, or one of the dozens on my kindle so that I can use the built-in dictionary. Or at least choose a shorter one, one that won't take the rest of the summer to finish - this is close to 500 pages! And then I think: read the book you want to read, not the book you ought to read. Read the book that calls you. It's summer, and summer reading = epics and adventures. My translation of the blurb: The Horseman on the Roof is above all an adventure story: Angelo Pardi, a young hussar colonel who has been exiled to France, is charged with a mysterious mission. He is to bring back Giuseppe, a carbonaro (revolutionary) like himself, who lives in Manosque. But cholera rages: the roads are blocked, the villages are barricaded, the travellers are put in quarrantine, and Angelo is suspected of poisoning the fountains. His sole refuge, discovered by accident, is on the roofs of Manosque. Between the sky and the earth, he watches the deadly unrest of the men below, contemplates the beauty of the land, and makes friends with a cat. One night, in the course of an expedition, he encounters an astonishing and wonderful young woman. Edited by kanewai on 13 July 2012 at 11:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 31 of 48 06 August 2012 at 11:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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Month 14: Julie Child, en garde!
I made my first dish from my French cookbook last night: 
Gnocchi à la Parisienne This was actually three smaller recipes in one. First you make a pâte à choux, which is usually a dessert pastry. For the gnocchi you add gruyère and a bit of pepper and nutmeg to the pâte, form them into dumplings, and simmer them for about ten minutes. The final step is to make a béchamel sauce, add lots more gruyère, and then simmer the gnocchi in that another ten minutes. I skipped the final step, which was to add more cheese (yum) and bake it au gratin in the oven. It was too hot yesterday for me to turn the oven on. This was lots of cheesy goodness, though the béchamel sauce was a bit much. What I really wanted was a rich meaty gravy to go with them. I might make a habit of this - every weekend I'll try another recipe in French. FSI - I'm putting FSI back on the shelf. I finished Lesson 17, and started 18. It's still good stuff, but I started the 6WC in Spanish and my brain can't handle intense active learning in two languages. I will come back to FSI, though ... I am determined to finish the course. Every time I write that I'm finished with FSI I end up doing another chapter. And every time I write that I'll do another chapter I end up putting FSI away. So take this with a grain of salt: Super Challenge Blacksad: Quelque part entre les ombres was a cool noir-influenced bande dessinée set in 1950's LA. It was note-perfect, and the art was great, but it felt more like a well-done homage to film noir than anything new or interesting in its own right. The second volume, Arctic Nation, got amazing reviews, so I'll continue with the series for now. Le hussard sur le toit is an amazing and disturbing work, but it's slow reading for me. It almost feels like an apocalyptic zombie movie - there are dying cities, abandoned farms, a military take over of the countryside, and a population giving in to paranoia and madness. There are characters using the crisis for there own ends, and characters struggling to hold on to their humanity. I'm about 2/3 through. There's a movie, but I can't imagine it's half as horrifying as the book. Harry Potter à l'école des sorciers - I went camping last weekend, and needed a book where I wouldn't need a dictionary and English translation to get through, so I downloaded HP onto my Kindle. I am enjoying it immensely. The writing isn't nearly as poetic as it is with native writers, but the story is still great. It's been a joy to revisit the first book after ten years, and an even greater joy to be able to simply read French without struggle! I'm close to 1/3 of the way through, and am thinking I might balance HP with more serious literature moving forward. It'll at least help me keep my Challenge score up! I do hate that Hogwarts is Poulard, and it took me awhile to realize that Harry's baguette magique was his wand and not his lunch. La grande séduction is the only flic I finished. It had French subtitles, which I appreciated. I wish all movies did! The movie itself was charming, somewhat funny, and a bit slow. Once the set up had been made (a small Quebec fishing village needs to 'seduce' a big city doctor into staying so that they can land a contract for a new factory) I lost some interest - it's pretty much a one joke movie, and it followed a pretty standard feel-good indie-movie arc. It'd be a good flic for a rainy Sunday afternoon. French Grammar in Context - to Chapter 9. This book started off so well, with really interesting reading selections. The last few chapters have been more challenging - there hasn't been enough 'context' to figure out what they've been about. I'm hoping we get back to good source material soon. Edited by kanewai on 06 August 2012 at 11:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 32 of 48 23 August 2012 at 5:56am | IP Logged | ||
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Month 14: reading reading reading reading
The best part of the six week challenge has been being able to track my time on twitter. I never really paid attention to this before, and I don't know if I'm impressed with how much time I'm dedicating to books or horrified with how many hours it takes per chapter. Since August 1st I have logged: 10 hrs 40 min with Le hussard sur le toit 8 hrs 26 min with Harry Potter et l'école des sorciers 7 hrs 26 min with L'immoraliste (that's three minutes per page!) 1 hr 28 min with Les Misérables (my newest book. I'll start with Tome 1, Fantine) I've noticed a few interesting things. If I am tired, or have had even one beer, or have done a Spanish lesson recently, then my reading speed is very slow. I need to look up more words, and I need to refer to the English text more to untangle longer clauses. At other times I seem to breeze through the pages, and I can spend an hour with the book and hardly notice how much time has past. I'm not noticing any active interference from studying Spanish also; I just notice that it slows down my reading time in French if I do them back to back. I'll have to keep this in mind when we start the Assimil Experiment. My current plan is to do Ancient Greek from a French base. This, of course, is subject to change! I'm only a few sections into Les Mis, but Victor Hugo's empathy and humanity is already shining through. Here he is describing the thoughts of Bishop Bienvenu (the one who pardons Jean Valjean): À ceux qui ignorent, enseignez-vous le plus de choses que vous pourrez; la societé est coupable de ne pas donner l'instruction gratis; elle répond de la nuit qu'elle produit. Cette âme est pleine d'ombre, le péché s'y commet. Le coupable n'est pas celui qui fait le péché, mais celui qui y a fait l'ombre. my take: For those who are ignorant, teach them what you can; society is culpable if we do not share these teachings freely; we are responsible for the night that is produced. This soul is full of shadow, here is where sin is committed. The culpable is not the one who committed the sin, but the one who created the shadow. Edited by kanewai on 23 August 2012 at 6:12am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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