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French: Fresh, fun & effortless media | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5532 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 409 of 1317 18 January 2013 at 1:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Over the last few weeks, I've posted a lot of BDs. Here's a list for your convenience, which I'll keep updated if I post more BDs in the future:
Astérix (humor, history and Gaulish heroism) À boire et à manger (web comic, food humor, lots of recipes) Immigrants (13 life stories of immigrants) L'Incal noir (humorous, over-the-top science fiction for adults) IRS All Watcher (international spy thriller) Les mondes d'Aldébaran (science fiction, young adult, cool aliens) Moi René Tardi, prisonnier de guerre au Stalag IIB (cover) (true story, World War II prison camp) Persepolis (growing up during the Iranian revolution and emigrating to Europe) Siegfried (epic fantasy) Tintin (action and adventure classic) Also see Quique's log, which inspired this project with lots of cool Tintin posts. As you can see, there's something for everyone on that list. There are books for your inner 12-year-old. There's action and humor and tasty food. There's serious art and social commenty that will change how you think. There are standalone books and epic series of over 20 volumes. On average, these BDs are equivalent to 10 to 30 pages of an adult book. They tend to be very heavy on conversation, and often include lots of great, idiomatic French. The big downside is the price, though you may be able to sample newer books cheaply at Izneo. Depending on your level of French, you may be telling yourself, "Boy, I really want to buy some of those books someday, when I'm good enough to read them." Let me quote Khatzumoto here:
So let's say you go out and buy some books that are a bit too hard for you. What happens then? How do you use them?
Khatzumoto knows what he's talking about here: If you surround yourself with unspeakably cool French media, stuff that you appeals to you personally, then you're going to get better. And because you love it, you'll reread it and rewatch it. And if you choose to make SRS cards out of it, you'll smile every time you see a favorite quote. Is there anything special about BDs? Well, I am rather fond of them, as I'm sure you've noticed. But French movies and French books are just as awesome. I have movies with ridiculous car chases, and serious movies about the Algerian war. I have books about secret codes, and books about marriage and sex in ancient Babylon. Some of this stuff is still pretty hard, but hey, it's all fun. Native media isn't the only way to learn a language, and it's not enough all by itself. But it's amazingly fun, and it will keep you going when you're too fried for anything else. Now, if only the Alliance française would stock this stuff and help keep my book budget under control, I'd be all set. :-) 2 persons have 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 410 of 1317 18 January 2013 at 5:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
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"comme dans un camembert bien fait"
Now there's an image for you... 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 411 of 1317 18 January 2013 at 7:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, now I know a culturally-appropriate way to say "like a knife through hot butter." :-) While I'm thinking about it, here's my current wish list, to be bought whenever the individual items turn up and I can afford to indulge myself:
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 412 of 1317 19 January 2013 at 5:38am | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks, Quique! 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 413 of 1317 19 January 2013 at 5:39am | IP Logged | |||||
That was a great series - Thank you. Edited by songlines on 19 January 2013 at 5:42am 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 414 of 1317 21 January 2013 at 5:59am | IP Logged | |||||
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Many thanks to everyone who followed along with my BD series!
I just returned from another weekend in Montreal. I had a lot of fun conversations this time, and my listening comprehension is more robust than it was several months ago. I'm starting to be able to cut through light Quebecois accents fairly well, and it's a lot easier to follow conversations between native speakers (I still miss stuff, but a lot less). I did meet one very nice man who spoke French with me for about 5 minutes until he learned that I was an American, at which point he switched to English and didn't speak another word of French. Just to amuse myself, I continued my end of the conversation in French for about 3 minutes after that, and he continued speaking English the entire time. I was impressed—most people aren't nearly stubborn enough to manage that, especially when their English is no better than my French, and we're in a multiparty conversation with other Francophones. Meanwhile, a four-year-old girl was playing with my kids, and she had started throwing their stuffed knight across the room because he was le grand méchant. Fortunately, I've heard the "On ne jette pas les jouets" conversation enough times to handle this situation in my sleep. It's amazing how those parenting conversations worm their way into your brain after a while. The most obsessive user of Assimil hears vastly less repetition that the average 3-year-old, that's for certain. There's clearly something I get from immersing myself in a full-fledged French environment that I don't get from speaking French at home. And as usual, it's clear that B2 speech skills are more than adequate enough to communicate, but they're not quite enough to integrate socially. Given a few weeks of real immersion, I know that I could kick things up a notch. Saturday evening, I dropped by the local Renaud-Bray. This is a medium-sized mall bookstore, but even so, check out these racks of bandes dessinées: 
As usual, they were missing the one book I need in each series. La vie est mal faite. Still, two low shelves and the upright shelf behind is not bad at all. You know that you want to go browse through all those titles. :-) Even so, I managed to turn up lots of cool stuff, and wipe out what little was left of my media budget: 
The cool find of the day was those two Ab irato volumes in front. This was written by an artist who lives in Montreal, and it's a sci-fi dystopia with life-extension for the rich, a corrupt government, and a popular rebellion that's about to go very sour. Sadly, only two volumes have been published to date, and I'm going to have to wait impatiently for another, because I couldn't put either of these down until they were done. I'll post a few pages the next time I set up the "scanner". In back, from left to right, are the French version of the BBC's Planet Earth, a BD about Jerusalem, a version of Intouchables which claims to have French subs, and a 4-part documentary on Quebec's independence movement between 1960 and 1980. On the lower right, there's some more classic English-language SF in translation. As I get around to watching and reading all this, I'll post reviews of the good stuff. I'm always sort of vaguely amazed that there are entire provinces and countries of people who speak French, and that they have entire bookstores full of cool stuff. Also, Montreal is a marvelous city. 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 415 of 1317 21 January 2013 at 6:41am | IP Logged | |||||
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Looks like you got what I was looking for-the first Dune volume. I thought that's what I was getting, but I actually
got the second half. The cover indicates this by following the title with two asterisks. No seriously, that's IT. The number two appears somewhere on the interior of the book. Trade you when you're done... ;-) 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 416 of 1317 21 January 2013 at 6:43am | IP Logged | |||||
Our library has the Ab irato series, - yay! Though I notice that there was a two-year gap between the publication of Tome 1 and Tome 2 (pub in 2012). Might this mean that readers'll have to wait till 2014 to find out what happens next..? On Amazon.ca, the "Bilingual version" purports to have both French and English subtitles. - Is that the edition you have, EMK? Or is yours the "Version française"? - Looking forward to more scans and to your reviews. - And you're making me hanker for a trip to Montreal. Though perhaps not en plein hiver... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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