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Vanthie Learns French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Vanthie Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4327 days ago 38 posts - 39 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 49 of 57 18 February 2013 at 8:02am | IP Logged | ||
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> Pimsleur III lesson 1
> Assimil lesson 31 My Pimsleur “mom and dad” are gone and I don't like the replacements as much. The lessons seem to be reiterating how to survive in a conversation with a stranger with different ways of saying essentially the same thing, just fancier (“Allow me to introduce myself”, “Pleased to make your acquaintance”). Assimil is becoming progressively more comprehensible thanks to reviewing on Anki, and some of the old grammar rules that were odd before are pretty familiar now. I'm still utterly lost on the radio, but French Youtube is a lot better since I have some visual context to go along with it. I'll be searching more for some commentated Let's Plays of video games that a) I'm familiar with and b) don't rely heavily on spoken or written dialogue to advance in the game, like in The Walking Dead or Heavy Rain. It's hard enough trying to focus on /English/ play-throughs when the game's story and commentary are going at the same time. Edited by Vanthie on 18 February 2013 at 8:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Vanthie Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4327 days ago 38 posts - 39 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 50 of 57 19 February 2013 at 3:40am | IP Logged | ||
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> Pimsleur III lesson 2
> Assimil lesson 32 I watched a play-through of Super Meat Boy, and immediately began to notice a few words —not in French, but in English. They were words that made sense to borrow for the purposes of video games, though, like “Let's Play”. But about half-way through I kept thinking to myself 'Is he saying “fail” or am I just imagining things?' Now for those who are unfamiliar with the game, Super Meat Boy is a 2D platformer that starts off easy and gets progressively more difficult as time goes on. There's a popular video if you search for “Rage Quit Super Meat Boy” on youtube (warning for language) that shows just how difficult it gets. One of the reasons I searched for a French player for this is because I was curious what they would say when they inevitably start screaming and cursing in frustration. This particular video was on the beginning chapters, so there was no real raging going on, and it was clear he'd played this before. He wasn't really reacting as far as I could tell, maybe explaining what to do in a few levels but for the most part he was speaking to fill in the silence. Occasionally when he died he would throw in a sarcastic parfait. But then he bombed it really hard. I don't know if his finger slipped or something but his character just flew off screen, and in a clear French accent he goes, “Epic fail!” And I just /lost it/. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Vanthie Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4327 days ago 38 posts - 39 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 51 of 57 20 February 2013 at 6:50am | IP Logged | ||
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> Pimsleur III lesson 3
> Assimil lesson 33 One thing I am never sure of is what to do when an s-ending word preceeds a vowel- starting word, particularly with pas. With Pimsleur, they go back and forth between pronouncing the s or leaving it off. I think the only phrase they've been consistent with is pas encore, where the s is always pronounced. My guess is that it's a mixture of practice and just saying what feels right. I looked through the videos of the same guy I found yesterday and watched one of Happy Wheels, and I'm really happy with everything that I managed to understand. At one point he restarted a level, made the same mistake, died in the exact same way, and said “Exactement comme la première fois. Bon.” There were a lot more reactions to things happening as they happened, and it really made all the difference. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Vanthie Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4327 days ago 38 posts - 39 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 52 of 57 21 February 2013 at 6:24am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm pretty mentally exhausted today, and I can hardly put together two words in English
much less French, so I took the day off lessons and just watched youtube and a few dubs. My listening comprehension needs some help anyway. Tomorrow is also review in Assimil, so doubling-up won't be too demanding. Youtube guy obviously has a working understanding of English, though, since he played a Minecraft map with English instruction signs on it. And I say this not to undermine his manlihood or make fun of foreign accents, because I know how difficult it is—but hearing him read English with a French accent is probably the most adorable thing I've heard all week. And I frequent the baby sloths and kittens part of the internet. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5530 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 53 of 57 21 February 2013 at 5:53pm | IP Logged | ||
The first time I heard that in a French video game walkthrough, I almost fell over laughing. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Vanthie Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4327 days ago 38 posts - 39 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 54 of 57 22 February 2013 at 5:28am | IP Logged | ||
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> Pimsleur III lessons 4 & 5
> Assimil lessons 34 & 35 I don't know if it's because of the shoddy recording or what, but the new male speaker on Pimsleur is often difficult for me to understand, especially when he's responsible for introducing new material. Every time I hear the old speaker saying something for French instruction, I stroke my computer monitor and sing Baby Come Back. But save for its relative decrease in quality, Pimsleur is still worth it just for the fact that it can pinpoint my immediate weaknesses in thirty minutes or less. Like I've realized just from lesson 5 alone that I still have a lot of trouble assigning plural possessive pronouns because my mind is still so fixated on not screwing up the genders. I may look foolish in an innumerable amount of other ways, but the genders will not be one of them! So there! And amazingly, I have slacked on updating Anki and now need to go back through the past ten or so lessons from Assimil to make new cards. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Vanthie Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4327 days ago 38 posts - 39 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 55 of 57 23 February 2013 at 8:17am | IP Logged | ||
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> Pimsleur III lesson 6
> Assimil lesson 36 Assimil was a breeze today thanks to Pimsleur already teaching like 80% of the lesson. I've also learned from my dad that my Assimil readers sometimes use “stage speech” when pronouncing things, which is why they'll do things like pronounce 52 as “cinqaunte /et/ deux” even though in normal speech it would just be “cinqaunte deux”. This is also why, when Pimsleur first introduced the phrase “classical music” to me, I was taken aback that they didn't emphasize the 'ue' at the end of musique. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Vanthie Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4327 days ago 38 posts - 39 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 56 of 57 24 February 2013 at 8:17am | IP Logged | ||
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Remember when I posted at reasonable waking hours? 'Cause I don't.
Skipped the lessons again (which I'll really thank myself for tomorrow I'm sure) to instead marathon Let's Plays. At certain points it's almost like I can understand exactly what they're saying, but I still don't know what it's about. It's sort of the opposite of knowing the general topic but missing the details; I can recognize details, but I'm still just that much in the dark that the context escapes me. For once in my life, youtube comments that do nothing else but transcribe the funny parts are /really/ helpful now. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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