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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
 songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5209 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 97 of 243 11 May 2012 at 4:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'll post my summary later on - probably Monday, but just wanted to pop in to add a note about a book which I've
recently picked up: It's ie=UTF8&qid=1336744601&sr=8-1">Le Kabbaliste de Prague by Marek Halter. From the blurb, it's a novel about the rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel (1525–1609) known as the "Maharal of Prague", who -according to the story and legend - created a Golem to protect the Jewish people: the novel "takes us to the mysterious world of the Kabbalah, and that of the Renaissance...". I've barely started reading the novel, but the writing so far is beautiful: lovely cadences, and a poetic (but not stuffy) feel to it. It's confident writing, drawing the reader in much as an old folktale would. If, a few years ago, someone had asked me why I wanted to learn French, I would have replied, "So I can understand and speak it...". Reading something like this, I'd now be inclined to add, "So I can read it..." I don't know how much of it I'll be able to tackle: I can't find an English translation so far; and there's also my utter ignorance of the Kabbalah. The three page glossary at the back of the book will help with some of the cultural, religious, and Kabbalistic references, but the fact that such a glossary is necessary is itself a tad daunting. Still, we'll see how it goes... If anyone's interested in Halter, the French Wikipedia article http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek_Halter has more detail than the English one. Edited by songlines on 11 May 2012 at 4:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5209 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 98 of 243 12 May 2012 at 5:08am | IP Logged | ||
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After my post on Marek Halter, I turned to thinking about books, reading, and my language-learning.
A few months ago, I mentioned that I'd acquired a free copy of a book in a parallel text edition, but didn't get around to explaining what it was: Charles Baudelaire's "The Flowers of Evil": ie=UTF8&qid=1336748877&sr=8-1">Amazon link As a critic notes (somewhere in the introduction, I think), Baudelaire's work has "more than a whiff of the charnel house" about it; which aspect I can really see in the poetry I've glanced at so far. But, for all its challenges, his writing is also incredibly bold and vigorous. The opening poem "Au lecteur / To the reader" (included in the Amazon preview) shows you what it's like: replete with vivid imagery; its words running pell-mell down the page; the poet writing at full speed. Reading it, I wondered if Gerard Manley Hopkins' poetry was also available in a parallel text version. (Answer, yes: Poèmes et proses: translated by Pierre Leyris.) Reading Halter, looking at Baudelaire, and thinking about Hopkins, I'm more aware than ever of the frustrating gap between my English reading, and that of my French. Not that I don't read "popular" (vs. "literary") fiction in English; Indeed, I do: mysteries by Donna Leon, thrillers by Ludlum or Grisham, SF by George R.R. Martin, etc. And I've also read all of the Harry Potters in English. But what I don't have in French is the ability to immerse myself in another world: to dive into a book and emerge, blinking in the light of cold reality, three hours later; to be moved, and find tears trickling down my cheek as I turn the pages; to be surprised into hooting with laughter whilst reading during my commute; to know characters as well as if they'd been in my home (which, in a sense, they have); to be moved by language. My comprehension is (just) at the Harry Potter level, but readers live not by J.K Rowling alone. I want to be able to engage in books in French; and to experience all of the above in French. And it'll take what it took me in English: hours - years - of constant reading. So be it. Bring it on. Edited by songlines on 12 May 2012 at 2:28pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5209 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 99 of 243 11 June 2012 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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Alas, a bout of indolence combined with some time-consuming work projects have meant that I've done little
French for the past month-plus, and nothing at all French-related for the past fortnight. Summary from May 1st: Films: 105 minutes. (1 hour, 45 minutes). 2 Films: Tintin et le lotus blue; Max et le maximonstres. TV: 335 minutes (5 hours, 35 minutes), mainly Téléjournal, and Les Soprano. Podcasts: 110 minutes (1 hours, 50 minutes). Reading: 284 pages. mainly Harry Potter et le coupe de feu; le Kabbaliste de Prague. - Finally finished (!) the Harry Potter. Once nice thing (from the language learner's perspective) about JKR's universe is that, although the novels are getting increasingly longer, her writing style and vocabulary don't change much. With the first HP, I had to consult my English edition quite frequently; with this, number four in the series, I had to do so much less. Mind you, from a literary perspective, that's not necessarily such a great thing: the narratives pull you along, but I'm certainly conscious of the limitations of her writing style. (For example, her characters seem to "froncer les sourcils" quite frequently.) Had to return the Marek Halter to the library, but have re-reserved it. One happy discovery/ re-discovery: another source for French-language books here in Toronto: La Maison de la Presse Internationale, at 99 Yorkville Avenue. I'd previously known of its magazine collection, but hadn't really been aware of its French books, which are on the second floor of the small storefront. It may have a slightly wider fiction backlist than at the World's Biggest Bookstore at 20 Edward St., and I've already spotted a few titles (such as the French translation of Markus Zusak's "The Book Thief") which were on my Book Depository wishlist. Edited by songlines on 12 June 2012 at 4:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5209 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 100 of 243 01 July 2012 at 9:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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Happy Canada Day to my fellow-Canadians on the forum; and a Happy Pride Day to all who celebrate it.
No summary yet today, but am posting instead a couple of articles from the Globe and Mail, on Canada and bilingualism. (Sadly, some of the reader responses make for somewhat discouraging reading, both in terms of tenor and content. ) Please copy and paste as usual, removing any extra spaces inserted by the forum software. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/is-bilingualism -still-relevant-in- canada/article4365620/ And an editorial: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/bilingualism-de serves-more-recognition- appreciation-in-canada/article4365591/ For me, the key point of the article is a quote from Graham Fraser, "The policy was never to make all Canadians bilingual...Instead, what it guarantees is that no matter which language you speak – English or French – you can get the same level of service.” Edited by songlines on 01 July 2012 at 9:07pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5209 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 101 of 243 05 July 2012 at 5:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Watched a number of films using the French soundtrack, and also BBC's
Frozen Planet / Planète gelée - absolutely superb cinematography, though it needs a "violence" warning for the number of animals that are hunted, killed, and eaten by predators. Yield: plenty of new vocab, including a number of English words that I didn't previously know. -une année bissextile: leap year ("bissextile" is also the English adjective to describe a leap year) . This phrase was from Leap Year, which stars Matthew Goode and Amy Adams. -un escroc: swindler, crook -tordante: hilarious, a riot -la calotte glaciere: icecap -rôder: to prowl, to roam about -la chouette lapone: Lapland Owl, Lapp Owl, Great Grey Owl -un manchot: penguin. (the documentary doesn't use "pingouin" at all; does anyone know what the difference is between the two terms?) -un otarie: seal, sea-lion, in English also: otary -le rorqual: whale, baleen whale, "rorquals" also English name for this category -le phoque: seal, sealskin (I remember this one from another forum, when a Montrealer used it to get around the automatic forum censor) -fougueux, fougueuse: spirited, enthusiastic, fiery [edited to fix spelling; see note below] -le cloparte: woodlouse -le vent catabatique: katabatic wind. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katabatic_wind -la tanière: den, lair -la chenille laineuse: woolly caterpillar -adoucir: to moderate, to sooth, to soften -un oisillon: a fledgeling/ fledgling -un épaulard: killer whale Edited by songlines on 06 July 2012 at 3:33am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Homogenik Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4824 days ago 314 posts - 407 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Polish, Mandarin | Message 102 of 243 05 July 2012 at 7:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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- fougUeuse not fougeuse, because then the G would sound like J, like fougère (the plant).
Manchot and pingouin are two different animals but are often confused. They have similar physical characteristics but the manchot cannot fly and some pinguins can. But they have no lineage, they are from two different species and families. The manchot lives in the southern hemisphère and the pingouin lives in the northern. In English manchot translates as pinguin and pingouin is translated in English as auk. (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchot). Confusing enough? Yes please. I guess a good way to remember it is that the name manchot also refers to someone with no arms (or just one arm). Since the manchot can't fly, you can associate the ideas. As for literature, I would recommend the book Le grand cahier by Agota Kristof. It's short, to the point, and a masterpiece. It's the story of two twins dropped by their mother at their mean grandmother's house during an unidentified european war. The whole book is written from the point of view of the twins who write their experiences in a journal while trying to eliminate any subjectivity or emotion from their writing. They can relate some horrible events though. Very interesting reading (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Grand_Cahier) Edited by Homogenik on 05 July 2012 at 7:31pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5209 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 103 of 243 06 July 2012 at 3:45am | IP Logged | ||
Thanks for the correction, clarification, and book recommendation, Homogenik. All much appreciated, though - yes - the penguin/pingouin business is certainly confusing! I'll try to see if I can request a copy of Le Grand Cahier through interlibrary loan (we don't own a French edition in our library system; however, there's an English edition). From some of the reviews, it sounds immensely powerful, but also very dark. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 104 of 243 06 July 2012 at 11:43am | IP Logged | ||
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The problem with the word "pingouin" is that it in principle refers to two Northerly species (Alca torda and the extinct Pinguinus impennis - known in Iceland as the "geirfugl"). But then the word was also used about the 'manchots' from the Southern Hemisphere, and if you look through the hits at Google it is hard to find one single reference to the original 'pingouins' apart from Wikipedia, which nevertheless boldly claims that "Par abus de langage, le pingouin est souvent confondu avec les manchots". OK, with 'manchot' French has another word for penguin (and it is probably the only language to have one), but even the French think Spheniscidae when they see the word pingouin.
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