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Madame Bovary for first LR French? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Footnoted Newbie United States Joined 4843 days ago 35 posts - 42 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 6 04 September 2011 at 1:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am interesting in supplementing my study of French by trying the LR method for the first time, and I would
prefer to buy a commercial dual language text. I noticed that currently on amazon.com there is such a text available for this title. Although the idea of reading a great work of literature while improving my fledgling French appeals to me, I thought perhaps a more recent novel would be a better idea because of changing idioms, terminology, etc. I would appreciate any comments. Also, when acquiring the audio to go with an older text such as this, how can one be sure it is an audio of the exact same version/edition/revision as the text? Thanks for any replies! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5457 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 2 of 6 04 September 2011 at 3:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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If your French is "fledgling" as you say, I would pass on this idea. Seeing that this novel is available for free download in both French and English on the project Gutenburg site, I had a quick look at the French version and I would not read it myself despite studying French for the past 5 years. Although to be fair, I have little interest in literature and am focused on speaking fluency.
If your interest in French is literary or academic in nature then you may enjoy it. If however you desire to speak fluently sometime soon, then this will not help you, it will slow you down. The book is 19th century and therefore a bit dated plus it is full of the literary verb tense Passé Simple which you never use in conversation. I would go further and say that even a modern novel is a bad idea. Novels are just not written the way people speak plus they use a much larger vocabulary than you find in day to day interactions. At an early stage of study I think it is more important to develop a very strong active familiarity with a smaller core vocabulary than a passive knowledge of a large one. I have read a 'modern' French novel and learned some new words from it but when I then used these words in conversation people looked me strangely and told me that they have either never heard of it themselves or would never use it when speaking. I figured if a native francophone over 50 years old has either never heard of this word or never uses it, then I sure don't need to know it. Anyway, those are my thoughts, perhaps someone who is a fan of LRing will offer an opposing view. I would recommend reading 'bande dessinée' however as the text is basically a spoken dialog. Edited by microsnout on 04 September 2011 at 4:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4995 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 3 of 6 04 September 2011 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am not a fan of L-R method (haven't tried yet), but as a huge fan of both reading books and audiobooks I cannot fully agree with microsnaut.
Passé simple is used not only in old books. Some modern fantasy books for older childer/younger teenagers I've recently read are full of it as well so I guess you'll encounter it no matter what you read. If you wish to use French among other things for reading (and I believe being able to read a not too difficult novel is a part of fluency), passive knowledge of passé simple will be very useful to you. Active is useless, unless you dream of writing books in French, microspout is completely right about this. Depends mostly on one thing. Do you like the book by itself? If yes, go for it and don't be afraid of outdated vocabulary (it is not that hard to supplement it with modern one if you get exposed to it enough). If you don't like the book, it might only demotivate you. And in most L-R threads I've read, people who have experience with it highlight that you should read something you enjoy because you will spend a lot of time with it and read it several times. While I understand microsnouts reasoning, I believe L-R cannot hurt you. It is a lot of exposure and input, which will help you not only to learn new things but to solidify your knowledge as well which is quite necessary step before making at least part of it active. But, as I said, read something you enjoy. There must be a lot of bilingual English-French texts available. And if not, it's not that bad to use two separate books as long as the translation doesn't differ from original too much. Edited by Cavesa on 04 September 2011 at 4:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Abdalan Triglot Senior Member Brazil abdalan.wordpress.co Joined 5032 days ago 120 posts - 194 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, English Studies: German | Message 4 of 6 04 September 2011 at 5:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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It’s marvelous book. Short for LR (stricto sensu), though - but useful. I guess Madame
Bovary is read in less than 15 hours. You can use during 60 hours or so (two or three weeks?) in the passive phase. It won’t hurt and I think you’re going to love the whole process. You will probably never need to actually use the passé simple (surtout aux deuxièmes personnes qui y sont peu employées), but it is important to recognize it. And between us, Gustave Flaubert is more than passé simple… …OK, that and: More than 100.000 words including (different): 1. 5000 mots, 2. 1500 adjectifs, 3. 1600 verbes, -a. 39,1% imparfait -b. 27,2% passé -c. 17,8% présent 4. 850 adverbs, 5. 230 prépositions, 6. 130 conjonctions. Amazon? Consider also: http://www.litteratureaudio.com/livre-audio-gratuit-mp3/flau bert-gustave-madame- bovary.html http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Madame_Bovary EDIT: Slips of the finger Edited by Abdalan on 04 September 2011 at 5:37pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4995 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 5 of 6 05 September 2011 at 2:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Abdalan, where did you get the stats about the book? Do you know such details about other books as well? Or are those available somewhere on the internet?
I never thought there are 230 prépositions in French. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Abdalan Triglot Senior Member Brazil abdalan.wordpress.co Joined 5032 days ago 120 posts - 194 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, English Studies: German | Message 6 of 6 05 September 2011 at 6:14pm | IP Logged | ||
I guess there are several softwares to do that. There's a friend of mine who works with text stats (french and portuguese as far as I know); I always ask him a hand to do that when I'm going to read a book such as this one. Here are the prepositions in the book we're discussing here (by number of occurrences) - not absolutely, but as they functioned at the sentence analyzed: 1. de 3488 2. à 1756 3. d 118 1 4. dans 10 68 5. en 79 2 6. sur 789 7. pour 639 8. avec 461 9. par 445 10. sous 181 11. vers 136 12. contre 130 13. chez 129 14. sans 129 15. entre 123 16. jusqu 111 17. devant 108 18. après 94 19. derrière 49 20. pendant 48 21. depuis 40 22. près de 40 23. voilà 40 24. parmi 34 25. dès 31 26. afin de 27 27. malgré 25 28. près d 24 29. autour de 23 30. avant 23 31. selon 22 32. autour d 19 33. au milieu de 16 34. afin d 15 35. au bord de 15 36. au fond de 15 37. par-dessus 15 38. au bout de 13 39. le long des 13 40. quant à 13 41. auprès 12 42. durant 12 43. à cause de 11 44. au milieu des 11 45. au lieu de 10 46. au milieu du 10 47. le long de 10 48. à travers 9 49. au bout d 8 50. de chez 8 51. à propos de 7 52. à travers les 7 53. autour des 7 54. autour du 7 55. hors 7 56. à cause du 6 57. à côté d 6 58. à force d 6 59. à travers la 6 60. au bord du 6 61. outre 6 62. au milieu d 5 63. du côté de 5 64. en face de 5 65. plein de 5 66. près du 5 67. quant au 5 68. à force de 4 69. à la lueur des 4 70. à travers le 4 71. au bord des 4 72. au fond d 4 73. au fond du 4 74. au lieu d 4 75. du côté des 4 76. en forme de 4 77. en manière de 4 78. en signe d 4 79. face à 4 80. jusque 4 81. loin de 4 82. lors du 4 83. vis-à-vis 4 84. voici 4 85. à côté de 3 86. à la vue d 3 87. à partir de 3 88. de peur de 3 89. en face d 3 90. envers 3 91. faute de 3 92. le long du 3 93. par suite de 3 94. plein 3 95. plein d 3 96. près des 3 97. quant aux 3 98. à bout d 2 99. à cause d 2 100. à cause des 2 101. à l'encontre 2 102. à la hauteur de 2 103. à la manière d 2 104. à la pointe des 2 105. à l’angle des 2 106. à propos d 2 107. à ras de 2 108. au bout du 2 109. au bras de 2 110. au commencement du 2 111. au fond des 2 112. au nom du 2 113. au risque de 2 114. au seuil de 2 115. au sortir de 2 116. aux pieds de 2 117. dans les ténèbres 2 118. dans l’espoir d 2 119. dans l’intérêt de 2 120. de glace 2 121. de peur des 2 122. en dehors des 2 123. en dehors du 2 124. en train de 2 125. en vertu de 2 126. grâce à 2 127. loin du 2 128. moyennant 2 129. sauf 2 130. sous prétexte d 2 131. suivant 2 132. à coups de 1 133. à défaut d 1 134. à la face du 1 135. à la façon d 1 136. à la façon de 1 137. à la façon des 1 138. à la façon du 1 139. à la hauteur du 1 140. à la manière de 1 141. à la manière du 1 142. à la place des 1 143. à la place du 1 144. à la recherche d 1 145. à la rencontre d 1 146. à la rencontre de 1 147. à la sortie du 1 148. à la vue des 1 149. à l’adresse du 1 150. à l’aspect des 1 151. à l’extrémité du 1 152. à l’idée de 1 153. à l’idée des 1 154. à l’ordre de 1 155. à même 1 156. à part 1 157. à propos du 1 158. à ras du 1 159. à travers l 1 160. au bord d 1 161. au bras du 1 162. au commencement d 1 163. au complet 1 164. au courant de 1 165. au courant des 1 166. au début d 1 167. au début de 1 168. au détriment de 1 169. au hasard du 1 170. au moment du 1 171. au moyen d 1 172. au plaisir de 1 173. au point de vue du 1 174. au point du 1 175. au rythme de 1 176. au sujet d 1 177. auprès de 1 178. aux environs de 1 179. aux pieds du 1 180. dans la crainte d 1 181. dans l’espoir de 1 182. dans un rayon de 1 183. de façon à 1 184. de la part de 1 185. de l’ordre de 1 186. de par 1 187. de préférence aux 1 188. du côté d 1 189. d’avec 1 190. d’entre 1 191. d’humeur aux 1 192. en bas de 1 193. en bloc 1 194. en cas d 1 195. en compagnie de 1 196. en dedans de 1 197. en dehors de 1 198. en face du 1 199. en guise de 1 200. en présence du 1 201. en prévision de 1 202. en tête de 1 203. en train d 1 204. en travers de 1 205. en travers des 1 206. ensuite d 1 207. eu égard à 1 208. grâce aux 1 209. histoire d 1 210. le long d 1 211. loin d 1 212. lors de 1 213. lors des 1 214. non pas d 1 215. non sans 1 216. par égard pour 1 217. par la bouche de 1 218. par peur d 1 219. par-dessous 1 220. par-devant 1 221. plutôt que d 1 222. plutôt que de 1 223. pour le bonheur de 1 224. relativement à 1 225. sans danger 1 226. sans égard pour 1 227. sous la pression d 1 228. sous le nom de 1 229. suite à 1 230. sur la place d 1 231. sur la place du 1 By the way, this book is said to have 'only' 7,7% of vocabulary unusual, rare – 2,2% très rare. (66,5% of “vocabulaire de base” and 25% of “vocabulaire usuel”). There’s something called “Echelle orthographique Dubois Buyse” [http://o.bacquet.free.fr/db2.htm ]I recommend you to reseach. This book scores 78,6% inside it. Alors, ce text est accessible. Edited by Abdalan on 05 September 2011 at 6:31pm 8 persons have voted this message useful |
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