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Vanthie Learns French

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Vanthie
Diglot
Newbie
United States
Joined 4141 days ago

38 posts - 39 votes
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: French

 
 Message 9 of 57
22 January 2013 at 5:05am | IP Logged 
microsnout wrote:
If you spent years learning how to type well, why risk messing up
that skill, just get a French Canadian keyboard
which just adds the accented characters to the QWERTY layout. You can get used to
typing French in days.

Oh! I'll definitely look into that, if for no other reason than I sorely miss playing
WASD flash games. Thanks so much. *u*

Sunja wrote:
If I'm in Word, I hold (Strg + ,) release, then (c) to get ç (online it
doesn't work) 
... 

Caps I haven't figured out yet and I'm still using codes for those (ugh), but it's
better than guessing what accents are under what keys.

I don't think my browser quite understands what the Alt Gr key is for. It always makes
a noise of protest as if I'm holding the Alt key, yet it still types the character as
intended...

Back in my Spanish-learning days, I memorized the alt codes for all the upside-down
punctuation, so I'll really never need a Spanish keyboard as long as I have one that
can efficiently produce the accents. It's definitely better to have everything you'll
need in one device.


> Pimsleur II lesson 4
> Assimil lesson 4

Pimsleur continues to be filled with grammatical enigmas. I think I might review the
last couple of lessons tomorrow just so I'm not learning brand new words in the context
of barely-remembered words.

In Assimil I did a bit of deduction in the written exercises, since I always read the
English explanation of the lessons last. The English explanation today happened to give
instructions on the gender/quantity agreements in adjectives, which I completely
neglected to read before doing the exercise on it. Pluralization I didn't have too much
trouble with, since it's essentially identical to the Spanish rules. But I didn't
realize immediately that the different gender rules applied as well, and at first I was
only changing the adjectives to be plural. So halfway through, the thought occurred to
me that adjectives were always different in Pimsleur when women or men were involved,
and I went back over to revise the feminine words with e's.

Edited by Vanthie on 22 January 2013 at 5:14am

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Vanthie
Diglot
Newbie
United States
Joined 4141 days ago

38 posts - 39 votes
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: French

 
 Message 10 of 57
23 January 2013 at 3:59am | IP Logged 
> Pimsleur II lesson 5
> Assimil lesson 5

My dad says my accent is getting better, though I haven't noticed any change myself. He
also said to focus on one thing at a time in Pimsleur and not worry about remembering a
word and where it goes in a sentence at the same time. Sounds simple enough in
theory. I guess it mostly counts as a success if I manage to get out the words when
prompted, even if they're out of order or in the wrong tense.

I learned the word hirondelle in Assimil and it's probably one of my favorite
words so far, right next to the word for "unfortunately" as taught in Pimsleur.
1 person has voted this message useful



Vanthie
Diglot
Newbie
United States
Joined 4141 days ago

38 posts - 39 votes
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: French

 
 Message 11 of 57
24 January 2013 at 3:37am | IP Logged 
> Pimsleur II lesson 6
> Assimil lesson 6

I ran through the first five Pimsleurs of volume II. At this point, it's just easier to
shadow a line I'm totally lost on instead of trying to echo the sentence in its
entirety. The sentences are getting longer and I tend to focus on one trying phrase and
then ignore the rest of the sentence. It makes it much less frustrating and gets me to
say all of it out loud instead of cradling my head in my hands and resigning myself to
a life of failure.

I learned in Assimil when to use de instead of du or de la or
des (after flunking the exercise on it). It's amazing how you can hear and use
something like that a hundred times but it doesn't ever hit you until you read an
explanation on it.

Also: I don't know what I expected aujourd'hui to look like, but that was not
it.

Edited by Vanthie on 24 January 2013 at 5:04am

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emk
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Moderator
United States
Joined 5344 days ago

2615 posts - 8806 votes 
Speaks: English*, FrenchB2
Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 12 of 57
24 January 2013 at 3:52am | IP Logged 
Vanthie wrote:
Also: I don't know what I expected aujourd'hui to look like, but that was not it.


This is a fun and slightly weird word. It comes from au jour d'hui, where hui comes from the Latin hodie, meaning "today". But hui has completely disappeared from French, leaving only the compound form.

Just to make things even stranger, some authors occasionally write au jour d'aujourd'hui. The Académie française says, "The essential thing is not to abuse it, but in itself, this turn of phrase isn't incorrect."
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Quique
Diglot
Senior Member
Spain
cronopios.net/Registered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4494 days ago

183 posts - 313 votes 
Speaks: Spanish*, English
Studies: French, German

 
 Message 13 of 57
24 January 2013 at 8:56am | IP Logged 
emk wrote:
This is a fun and slightly weird word. It comes from au jour d'hui, where hui comes from the Latin hodie, meaning "today". But hui has completely disappeared from French, leaving only the compound form.

I've been told that this happened because oui and hui are pronounced the same.
To avoid confusion, there was often a need to clarify: au jour d'hui, and finally it was left like that even when there was no ambiguity.

emk wrote:
Just to make things even stranger, some authors occasionally write au jour d'aujourd'hui.

But that's not exactly the same. We have same idiom in Spanish («a día de hoy»), it rather means `as of today'.
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Arekkusu
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Senior Member
Canada
bit.ly/qc_10_lec
Joined 5193 days ago

3971 posts - 7747 votes 
Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto
Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian

 
 Message 14 of 57
24 January 2013 at 6:24pm | IP Logged 
Quique wrote:
I've been told that this happened because oui and hui are pronounced the same.
To avoid confusion, there was often a need to clarify: au jour d'hui, and finally it was left like that even when there was no ambiguity.

There aren't pronounced the same, so the story doesn't work. oui is [wi], hui is [yi] (a front, high, rounded semi-vowel, a short version of y -- the real symbol is more like an inverted h). The same distinction exists in Louis/lui, enfoui/enfui, etc.


On another note, we use the QWERTY keyboard in Québec, so there is no need to change to AZERTY!

Edited by Arekkusu on 24 January 2013 at 6:28pm

2 persons have voted this message useful



Quique
Diglot
Senior Member
Spain
cronopios.net/Registered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4494 days ago

183 posts - 313 votes 
Speaks: Spanish*, English
Studies: French, German

 
 Message 15 of 57
24 January 2013 at 7:33pm | IP Logged 
Arekkusu wrote:
Quique wrote:
I've been told that this happened because oui and hui are pronounced the same.
To avoid confusion, there was often a need to clarify: au jour d'hui, and finally it was left like that even when there was no ambiguity.

There aren't pronounced the same, so the story doesn't work. oui is [wi], hui is [yi] (a front, high, rounded semi-vowel, a short version of y -- the real symbol is more like an inverted h). The same distinction exists in Louis/lui, enfoui/enfui, etc.

Maybe the semi-vowels [w] and [ɥ] were close enough to cause confusion, or possibly the story is apocryphal.
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Vanthie
Diglot
Newbie
United States
Joined 4141 days ago

38 posts - 39 votes
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: French

 
 Message 16 of 57
25 January 2013 at 4:21am | IP Logged 
> Pimsleur II lesson 7
> Assimil lesson 7

Pimsleur was significantly easier today. I'm glad to finally start learning the days of
the week so that I can read the date on my computer and iPod properly.

Assimil was a review lesson so that was also pretty easygoing.

Good French days are the best days.


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