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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 129 of 243 25 December 2012 at 3:02am | IP Logged | |||||
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Summary for 2012, updated to year's end:
Films seen: 31 Notable films: Un conte de Noël; L'heure d'été; Monsieur Lazhar; Starbuck; Incendies; After the Wedding; Le Gamin au vélo. Reading: 1,609 pages. Notable titles: Mais Que Lit Stephen Harper? by Yann Martel; Harry Potter et la coupe de feu by J.K Rowling; three Tintin titles by Hergé; Le Petit Prince by Saint-Exupery; Le Lion, la sorcière blanche, et l'armoire magique, by C.S. Lewis; Le petit Nicolas, by René Goscinny. Begun, but still to finish: Le tour du monde en 80 jours by Jules Verne; Nomade by Ayaan Hirsi Ali; Le Kabbaliste de Prague by Marek Halter; La voleuse de livres by Markus Zusak. Listening-Reading: 584 minutes. (usually L2 Audio, L2 text; sometimes repeated/supplemented with L2 Audio, L1 text). Included: le Service Protestant; Read and Think French; La Guingette; Les Misérables. News viewing/listening: 2,524 minutes; ie. 42 hours, 4 minutes. Mainly from: Le Téléjournal (Canada); RFI; France 24; Arté Journal; Découverte; Le Talk de Paris; Other TV/podcasts: 491 minutes. Assimil: 1,466 minutes French. Reached Lesson 88, but couldn't ever get myself to consistently do the "second wave", so gave up on that and continued "first waving" the rest of the course. That second wave'll have to be one of my tasks for 2013. Didn't count the Italian; I'll reboot that in the new year. Flashcards: 415 minutes Other: Finished two Tadoku Challenges, and two Six-Week Challenges. (Started a third 6WC but bailed out midway.) Total minutes, not including films and reading time: 5480 minutes; 91 hours, 20 minutes. Edited by songlines on 09 January 2013 at 6:05am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4665 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 130 of 243 26 December 2012 at 2:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Was After The Wedding good? I've seen it pop up on Netflix occasonially but never watched it.
And that's a lot of reading! Good job. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5395 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 131 of 243 27 December 2012 at 3:55am | IP Logged | |||||
Would you have thought a year ago that you'd have read that much? I keep thinking that, for all the super challengers who are posting end-of-the-year reflections. It's really amazing how far you've come. :) Good luck with your studies next year. :) 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 132 of 243 27 December 2012 at 5:04am | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, it was excellent. Many English-speaking filmgoers will recognize Mads Mikkelsen from his role as Le Chiffre in Casino Royale, but he has an extensive and varied body of work. But I thought that Rolf Lassgard's performance was magnificent ("Lassgård", but the correct spelling messes up the link). Someone else on these forums mentioned that his character and his wife's speak different languages to each other in the film: he speaks to her in Swedish, and she speaks to him in Danish. (Can someone confirm that? - And does it occur throughout the film, or only at key points in the film?) To get the French-language edition, however, I expect you'd have to order it from Canada. (If I recall correctly, my edition had French captions and - except for a few brief sections set in India - French dialogue.) Edited by songlines on 28 December 2012 at 4:30am 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 133 of 243 27 December 2012 at 5:11am | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks! Putting it in context, though, remember that the Harry Potter alone was something like 774 pages..! I'm in awe of the SuperChallenge people. And those of you (Super Challenge or otherwise) who are tackling dense, dense, tomes from 19th century literature. 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 134 of 243 31 December 2012 at 6:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Have just signed up for the Tadoku contest! If you've missed the info. elsewhere on Htlal, the new address is :
http://readmod.com/. - The contest begins midnight tonight. Click on the link for the "Manual" if you're new to the Tadoku. In brief, it's a contest which encourages extensive reading. - Highly motivating! Edited by songlines on 31 December 2012 at 6:41pm 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 135 of 243 03 January 2013 at 6:03am | IP Logged | |||||
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All the "goal-setting" books advise setting meaningful, verifiable goals, and committing yourself to them by
announcing them publicly. Knowing myself, I'd prefer to give myself a tad more wiggle room. Here then, are some broad outlines of what I'd like to focus on, plus a few specifics. Reading: I really enjoyed getting started on French reading, and hope to build on that. There should be four+ Tadoku Contests this year, and I'll sign up for all of them. Begun in 2012, and to be finished in 2013: Le tour du monde en 80 jours by Jules Verne; La voleuse de livres by Markus Zusak; Nomade by Ayaan Hirsi Ali seems to be work better for me in French than English -I'm finding it a bit flat in the latter; Le Kabbaliste de Prague may be pushed back to the end of the year - it's a bit difficult for me to use as extensive reading at this stage. For the first quarter of the year, my books will include: Verne, Zusak, Tolkien's Bilbo, le Hobbit, Harry Potter et l'Ordre du Phénix, and a jumbo Petit Nicolas compendium, which seems to have three books crammed into one volume. I also hope to add many bande dessinée titles to my reading list. Geoffw, was it you who first mentioned the Izneo website? - Thanks! The public library doesn't have a huuge collection of French language titles, and I can't afford to buy too many BDs, so the rental option (at a few euros each), will be wonderful! Longer-term reads are: a few John le Carré and Alan Furst titles, several policiers, and - this, a biggie - Barbara Tuchman's Un Lointain Miroir: le XIVeme siècle de calamités. My Library Thing, Book Depository, and Amazon accounts have lists of potential parallel texts which I can buy or place holds on at the library. I'll sort out and post the amalgamated list later in the year. Assimil: As mentioned in my 2012 summary, I just couldn't manage to discipline myself to consistently work on the second wave - forging ahead with new first wave lessons always seemed too tempting. At some stage, I'd like to go back and properly finish that second wave. For lessons in Using French, I'll use foreign-languages-part-two/#comment-5054">Luca's method , which involves doing the L1-> L2 translation/second wave early, about a week on, rather than waiting till 50 lessons later. I'll also try Luca's method for my Italian Assimil Experiment, which I'll have to restart. After Italian, I'll dip my toe into German, again with Assimil, plus a grammar-based title such as Living German. Grammar: I'll have to do some targeted grammar review. There's no shortage of grammar books on my shelves, just the will to sit down and tackle them. Two key areas I (still) desperately need to work on: genders, and verb conjugations. Audio/Films/Podcasts: Continue with my film and online viewing. Seems to be on the right track so far. Conversation: A new area of focus for this year. I'm not sure I'm up to trying the Babel Meetups yet, as my hearing problems make it difficult for me to function in crowd situations even in English. But I've re-activated my Couchsurfing profile, and started the new year by already hosting a young (bilingual) Francophone from Montreal. Couchsurfing now has a feature whereby they'll send summaries of travelers looking for a "couch", and I'll be keeping an eye open for native French-speakers who can give me some conversation practice over a shared meal or cup of tea. Certainly, previous French/Swiss/French-Canadian guests have - as well as being lovely people to meet and talk to, anyway - been helpful in this respect. Splog's (thanks, Splog!) written very highly of How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately, by Boris Shekhtman. A fascinating read - and I'm looking forward to trying out the conversational strategies Shekhtman suggests! I've also recently started a part-time stint at a location where I've been getting more opportunities to practice my French, and hope to post something about this later on. Edited by songlines on 09 January 2013 at 8:43am 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 136 of 243 03 January 2013 at 6:31am | IP Logged | |||||
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I've started reading The Hobbit, with hopes of finishing it before I see the film later this month. Found a
copy of the paperback for $10, then also noticed the French audiobook. - Good thing I didn't buy the audiobook for LR (Listening/Reading) with the purchased paperback though, as I later discovered that they were based on different translations of the original text. The audiobook was based on a 2012 translation by Daniel Lauzon; my paperback translation was a 1969 one from Francis Ledoux. It was quite interesting, comparing the two translations (using Amazon Books Preview for the Lauzon). For anyone else who might be curious, here are the first two paragraphs in the original, and then the two translations. The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1937. An Unexpected Party: In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort. It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with panelled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats - the hobbit was fond of visitors. ------ Bilbo le Hobbit, trad. Francis Ledoux, 1969. Une réception inattendue: Dans un trou vivait un hobbit. Ce n’était pas un trou déplaisant, sale et humide, rempli de bouts de vers et d’une atmosphere suintante, non plus qu’un trou sec, nu, sablonneux, sans rien pour s’asseoir ni sur quoi manger: c’était un trou de hobbit, ce qui implique le confort. Il avait une porte tout à fait ronde comme un hublot, peinte en vert, avec un bouton de cuivre jaune bien brillant, exactement au centre. Cette porte ouvrait sur un vestibule en forme de tube, comme un tunnel: un tunnel très confortable, sans fumée, aux murs lambrissés, au sol dallé et garni de tapis; il était meublé de chaises cirées et de quantité de patères pour les chapeaux et les manteaux – le hobbit aimait les visites. ------------ Le Hobbit, trad. Daniel Lauzon, 2012. Une fête inattendue: Au fond d’un trou vivait un hobbit. Non pas un trou immonde, sale et humide, rempli de bouts de vers et de moisissures, ni encore un trou sec, dénudé, sablonneux, sans rien pour s’asseoir ni pour se nourrir: c’etait un trou de hobbit, d’où un certain confort. Sa porte, peinte en vert, était parfaitement ronde comme un hublot, avec un étincelant bouton de cuivre jaune placé exactement au centre. Elle s’ouvrait sur un hall en forme de tube, comme un tunnel; un tunnel très confortable et sans fumée, avec des murs recouverts de lambris, un sol carrelé et garnie de tapis, pourvu de chaises bien astiquées et de nombreuses patères pour accrocher chapeaux et manteaux: ce hobbit aimait la visite. ------ From what I've read (as far as Amazon Preview permitted), I think I prefer the newer translation: it seems to have more freshness and immediacy; uses simpler language and syntax. And, although my French isn't advanced enough to really tell, I expect that it also uses a more contemporary vocab. I must confess to a certain disappointment when I read Ledoux' first line: Dans un trou vivait un hobbit. I wondered, "...That's it??" In English, that now famous opening line has a lovely rhythm to it, and I thought the translation needed something more; Lauzon's "Au fond d'un trou vivait un hobbit." seems to get closer to the lilt of the original. What do you folks think? Which do you prefer? Have any of you read both translations in their entirety? If so, how you feel they compare? (Give a shout if you notice any typos in the French versions; I couldn't copy-and-paste either, so typed both by hand.) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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