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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6085 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes  1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 9 of 1317 24 February 2012 at 11:40am | IP Logged | |||||
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I've been reading your log and your degree of motivation is inspiring!
I have to be in a special place to learn conjugations. French conjugations are really hard! I don't bother to memorize either and I also try to pick out tenses when I read. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5532 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 10 of 1317 24 February 2012 at 4:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thank you! I really appreciate your kind words. It's great to be part of HTLAL, where people understand. :-) I just finished reading chapter XXI of Le Tour du Monde, which tells about a ferocious storm at sea. I loved reading this, because I come from a family of sailors, and I've stood at the helm of a sailboat with the mains'l double-reefed, the deck pitching hard beneath my feet, and a heavy sea breaking on a rocky leeward shore. Sailors have their own language, filled with the romance of the sea. You can find it John Masefield's classic poem Sea Fever. And you can find it in Le Tour du Monde:
That's how the sea feels to a sailor: It occasionally mixes terror with an unearthly beauty. Of course, I didn't know any of this nautical vocabulary. But amazingly enough, it's all in the Kindle dictionary, marked "(Marine)". And I want to be honest: it took me four or five tries to translate the phrase "les lames se heuraient..." because I kept wanting to read "que" as "qui". 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5532 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 11 of 1317 01 March 2012 at 4:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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On the 26th:
I was exhausted yesterday, and reading Le Tour du Monde was pretty painful. I pushed ahead anyway, and reached the 66% mark, somewhere in the streets of San Francisco. But after struggling for a while, I switched to Asterix, which helped me forget my headache. I've been suffering from a weird effect for the last few days. Normally, I'm much more fluent with the "tu" forms (because I speak almost exclusively with my wife and her family), and I have to think a bit to use "vous" forms. But lately, the vous forms have become semi-automatic, and I have to deliberately override them. I have no idea why this is happening, unless it's all the dialog in Le Tour du Monde. I suspect that 80% of my French gets learned at a subconcious level, and much of the other 20% consists of forcing myself to notice things. For the next few days, I'll be busy with work, so I won't be able to spend much time on French. ... And now it's time a French writing exercise. It's my weakest skill by far, because I learned French via Assimil's L/R method, informal conversation, and consuming native materials. I probably haven't written 5 pages of French in my life, and 2/3rds of that was in online chat. Here's how I would speak in French, transcribed with my "best guess" spelling:
After a spelling and grammar check, and one small fix by my wife:
I have a copy of Assimil's Using French that I started 3 years ago. I bailed on it sometime around lesson 15, when I started struggling, and I switched to easier native materials. Maybe it's about time to try it again, once I finish Le Tour du Monde? I'd like to shadow some more advanced texts, in hopes of developing a more natural French syntax. (And how is Assimil's Business French, anyway?) So much French left to learn. Oh, well, at least it's fun. Edited by emk on 01 March 2012 at 4:15pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5532 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 1317 01 March 2012 at 4:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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On the 27th:
I tried watching some French DVDs last night, with frustrating results: * Ronin: A gritty spy movie starring Robert De Niro and Jean Reno. It was shot in English, but it has a pretty native-sounding French soundtrack. Result: I understood no more than 40% of the dialog in the first 25 minutes, despite being familiar with the movie. * The Battle for Algiers: A "docu-drama" about the French-Algierian war, and the use of terrorism and torture. Result: Maybe 30 to 40%. I had fewer problems with the audio, and more with the vocabulary. * Caillou: An children's TV series from Quebec, aimed at kids from 2 to 6 years of age. My older son watches this in French, and he adores it. Result: I understood over 90% of the dialog the first time through. So I appear to have the listening skills of a French preschooler. It's a start. :-) I need to find some other DVDs with clearly-spoken dialog, which probably means shopping for a multi-region DVD player. I flipped through Assimil's Using French some more. I think that I may use this for a while, but I haven't yet decided how. An ordinary "passive wave" wouldn't help very much at this point, but maybe I can figure out something more intensive. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4688 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 13 of 1317 01 March 2012 at 4:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
I know the feeling, especially when I try to watch movies. But I try not to worry too much about it, because for some reason I can never follow the dialogue in movies in English, either. I can hear fine, and my English is native--I can't explain it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5532 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 14 of 1317 01 March 2012 at 4:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thank you for the encouragement! I'll find something a bit easier and keep working at it. My wife and continue to speak in French most of the time. It's getting easier, and even if we switch to English temporarily, we drift right back to French. I've been too busy with work to spend much time reading Le Tour du Monde. I did, however, listen to a lot of recorded audio and read small pieces of other books at random. I also had a chance to pick up some new materials, including: * Several science fiction books by Bernard Werber, including Nos amis les humains. * The Assimil Business French course. * Several books from a local used book store. * A bande designée titled immigrants, by 13 authors. Looks well done. I'm trying to find a wide range of books: New, old, academic, casual, business, and anything else which catches my eye. There was a great piece of advice in the Assimil Using French course:
So rather than reading all of Jules Verne's stories (as tempting as that might be), I'm going to mix things up a bit. 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 15 of 1317 01 March 2012 at 5:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
That's a great quote. Thanks for posting it. As far as the French DVDs go, I take it there are no French language captions (for the hearing impaired) available to help you? Here in Canada, that's often an option: French soundtrack, and French captions. It's not always guaranteed; some titles coming up from the U.S. have Spanish captions instead; and others have none at all. But that's something I always check before renting or buying a DVD now. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4688 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 16 of 1317 01 March 2012 at 5:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Here in the US it seems like almost every DVD has both French language dubbing and subtitles available. I've basically never seen German-language subtitles for ANYTHING, though. I don't even think my copy of Das Boot has them, though I'm not positive on that.
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