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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 41 of 57
11 February 2013 at 8:27am | IP Logged 
> Pimsleur 24
> Assimil 24

My iPeriod app configured itself to French when I changed my iPod, and I have just enough
knowledge to navigate my way through it. One thing that's confusing me though is that on
its calendar, with all of the columns separated by days of the week with each day's
three-letter abbreviation (lundi is lun, samedi is sam, and
so on), dimanche is abbreviated to sol. As far as I can tell no other
calendar on my system does that.
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Vanthie
Diglot
Newbie
United States
Joined 4141 days ago

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

 
 Message 42 of 57
12 February 2013 at 6:42am | IP Logged 
> Pimsleur II lesson 25
> Assimil lesson 25

I think one of my favorite things about Assimil is how it incorporates universal humor
into teaching French. One time in my Spanish class we were telling each other jokes
under the condition that it all had to be in Spanish, and one of them had a punchline
that required the English pun on “lion” and “lying”. Or you have Jimmy Carr's shortest
joke which goes “Venison's dear, isn't it?” which could /almost/ translate to French
with “dear” being a homophone of “deer” and cher being a homophone of
cerf if you have a lisp or something.

That'll have to be a new goal for the list: Reach B1, follow the radio conversations,
read three books, make five puns.
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Vanthie
Diglot
Newbie
United States
Joined 4141 days ago

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

 
 Message 43 of 57
13 February 2013 at 7:05am | IP Logged 
> Pimsleur II lesson 26
> Assimil lesson 26

I've read explanations on it, but I still haven't quite gotten the hang of when to use
c'est and when to use il y a. Hopefully it'll just come naturally with
practice.

I changed Chrome's language settings and the languages on all the sites I frequent, so
now a lot of navigation depends on just memory of where certain commands usually are.
Though I recognize a few words simply from reviewing them. I doubt I would remember
what ajouté means if it weren't for Anki, and it pops up a lot on blogging
sites.

To that end, Anki has been much more useful than I originally thought it would be. Even
if obscure vocabulary like le répondeur téléphonique turns out to never be
useful, it's always better to have fewer limitations in a language. I'm sure a lot of
my comprehension in English, in dialogue or lyrics, is from simply knowing that certain
sounds formed together can only be so many different words. And if there's a word I
truly don't recognize, I'm not usually thinking to myself, 'Well maybe that's a word in
English I haven't learned yet,' I'm thinking, 'This person just has really horrible
diction.'
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Vanthie
Diglot
Newbie
United States
Joined 4141 days ago

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

 
 Message 44 of 57
14 February 2013 at 8:54am | IP Logged 
> Pimsleur II lesson 27
> Assimil lesson 27

Even if Pimsleur doesn't teach me as much vocabulary as Assimil, there is still
something to repeating and recalling things. Saying J'en ai or Je n'en ai
pas
just comes automatically now (even though it might take me five years to figure
out how to write it), and I don't have to think about what the individual parts of it
mean or how it's different from English. That's really what speaking is all about.

Also, since I've changed my browser language to English, I can no longer spell check in
English, and in fact when I try to write anything other than French it usually marks it
as misspelled. On the positive side, I don't have to constantly remember the alt code
when I write words that contain œ, and I have less of a chance of looking illiterate to
the natives.
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tastyonions
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4477 days ago

1044 posts - 1823 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, Spanish
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 45 of 57
14 February 2013 at 12:55pm | IP Logged 
Vanthie wrote:
Even if Pimsleur doesn't teach me as much vocabulary as Assimil, there is still something to repeating and recalling things. Saying J'en ai or Je n'en ai pas just comes automatically now (even though it might take me five years to figure out how to write it), and I don't have to think about what the individual parts of it mean or how it's different from English. That's really what speaking is all about.

Oui, c'est très utile d'avoir certaines phrases ou groupes de mots qui coulent automatiquement et qu'on peut utiliser pour faire des phrases plus complexes !
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Vanthie
Diglot
Newbie
United States
Joined 4141 days ago

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

 
 Message 46 of 57
15 February 2013 at 10:21am | IP Logged 
> Pimsleur II lesson 28
> Assimil lesson 28

It's very fortuitous that Assimil's review day also happens to fall on the designated day
when I do practically nothing except write and skype with friends.

It's also very fortuitous that Anki has an option to extend the official “study day” past
4 AM because if past performance is any indication, I'll just not be bothered to do it
until vampiric hours of the morning.
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Vanthie
Diglot
Newbie
United States
Joined 4141 days ago

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

 
 Message 47 of 57
16 February 2013 at 8:37am | IP Logged 
> Pimsleur II lesson 29
> Assimil lesson 29

Assimil is a pretty good exercise in deciphering British English. It was only within
the last few months that I understood in detail the differences between words in the UK
and the US. “Dear” being another word for “expensive” in lesson two of Assimil would
have completely gone over my head a year ago. And similarly when they translate
assez as “quite” I have to mentally note that in the UK quite means “sort of”
instead of “very”. Whereas in Pimsleur, which is targeted at Americans, they translate
assez as “rather”.

A new English voice popped up at the end of Pimsleur and I'm worried the guy I've been
used to listening to for two whole units will be gone tomorrow. Tune in tomorrow for
the exciting conclusion to this suspenseful episode of Vanthie Learns French.
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 48 of 57
17 February 2013 at 8:53am | IP Logged 
> Pimsleur II lesson 30
> Assimil lesson 30

Today was pretty slow-going because Pimsleur's sentences were pretty long and Assimil was
a straight narrative.

But on a brighter note, it's the end of Pimsleur II! Which means it's been a straight
month of posting journal entries! \o/


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