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Spanky - Freutsch - the Shallow End | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5698 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes  Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 9 of 54 31 December 2011 at 1:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am so excited to be on a team with you, Spanky – your logs tend to have a way of rapidly becoming my favorites.
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| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5961 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 10 of 54 16 January 2012 at 8:45am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks very much for your very kind post Jinx! I am excited about the team project
and working with you as well (I have been following your exploits now for some time). I am equal parts pleased and surprised that others may have found my previous babblings to have been worth reading from time to time. I figure that if I can't have an interesting actual life (you know, like others who may be living abroad, studying for an advanced degree in another language, being a recording artist - some of these may resonate with you perhaps), then at least I can try to have an interesting virtual life, and I am comfortable enough with that trade off. But now I am going to feel doubly-bad now when I wind up fulfilling my destiny and doing what I am doomed repeatedly to do as I work my unsteady way through life now in a team environment: fall dramatically short of a commitment to the team when, as undoubtedly will be the case, I get distracted by a butterfly passing by or a shiny penny or something similar and forget for months and months to study! Edited by Spanky on 16 January 2012 at 9:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5961 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 11 of 54 16 January 2012 at 8:55am | IP Logged | ||
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I tend to plan too compulsively, and execute plans far far too imperfectly, so I am
taking things in a bit more of a casual and unscripted manner this year in terms of planning, but hopefully with considerably more consistent and sustained actual study efforts than in previous years. German My past exposure to German includes multiple listening to the first six discs of Michel Thomas, German for Beginners (Foundation course), as well as repeated listening to Units 1 – 10 of Pimsleur German I, and some miscellaneous German study (Deutsche Welle’s Warum nicht? and some miscellaneous units from the German.about.com website quite a number of months ago. Other than that I am a complete beginner. In the past I have periodically tried (largely unsuccessfully) to track my study hours, mostly in an attempt to motivate myself, and I will give this a try with German this year, partly for motivation and partly as an experiment to put to the test the claim I have read that 750 hours is a reasonable amount of study time required to develop some reasonable facility with the language (I don’t have the exact text of the estimate handy at the moment). Taking into account the guestimated 35 hours of previous study time described above, that works out to approximately 2 hours per day of German study this year if I am to hit 750 hours, though I am pretty sure that is far too optimistic a goal. I have decided to start by reviewing the Michel Thomas material I had previously worked through, as a much-needed refresher and to scrape away the rust. I am making notes as I go (contrary to MT’s suggestion), and creating an Anki deck from the words and phrases as I learn them. Since I am pretty much starting from scratch, I am keeping a vocabulary spreadsheet and will be able to determine accurately and exactly how large of a vocabulary I may have learned from time to time. French For French, while I would like to think it is an agonizing step backwards rather than forward, I am starting by running again through the FSI Phonology course, just for fun and so that I may reduce as far as I can the pain native French speakers inextricably seem to suffer the odd time I try out my French. As will be the case with German, I will also be keeping track of my French study and passive exposure hours this year, just from a motivational perspective. I would love to log at least 365 hours of French this year, an average of an easy-peasy hour per day. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5961 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 12 of 54 16 January 2012 at 9:01am | IP Logged | ||
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From January 1st to date, I had limited opportunity to get started, so I am already
hopelessly behind my anticipated level of progress. A brief summary: German 8:35 hours study hours - Michel Thomas (Discs 1, 2 and most of 3) - Anki input and review - creating and populating vocabulary spreadsheet French 1:45 hours study and about 1:15 hours French language media - FSI Phonology, Units 1, 2 - French language radio - Movie excerpts: Paris, je t’aime (with English subtitles) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5214 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 13 of 54 16 January 2012 at 7:22pm | IP Logged | ||
Are there (French) captions for this version? And did you have a favourite sequence? I saw it almost five years ago at the TIFF , and although some of the sections have blurred into others (short summary at Wikipedia: ), "le 14eme" made an impression on me. For those who don't know it, it's a monologue by a middle-aged, American woman from the Midwest, on her first trip to Europe. In heavily American-accented French, she talks about her holiday. Her accent is wince-inducingly bad, and the viewer's initial response is to laugh (or at least smirk) at this unsophisticated, badly-dressed, tourist (never mind that some of our accents aren't much better, and our vocab equally limited). But, by the end, we find ourselves touched - and shamed - by her very lack of pretension and the honest naïveté of her response to Paris. The film may be satirical, but the last laugh is on not the polyester-pantsuited "Carol", but on ourselves. (Edited to correct typo.) Edited by songlines on 25 January 2012 at 5:50am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5961 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 14 of 54 17 January 2012 at 8:51am | IP Logged | ||
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I absolutely love your description of the final segment Songlines - your description
alone made me rush back to watch it again. By the way, when pressed for some way to describe my French accent, I have resorted to saying it is much like a gruffier Carol in terms of accent, pacing, etc, but without ultimately any shadow of her humanity or soul. Or perhaps a somewhat less gruff version of Nick Nolte’s French from one of the other segments. Favourite sequnence? I am unable to identify a favourite segment that would not be replaced tomorrow with a different segment, and then again by yet a different one next week. Hated the Père Lachaise Oscar Wilde segment and not a huge fan of the Quartier des enfants rouges piece, but I really liked most of the others for different reasons. The Tuileries piece by les frères Cohen ranks up among my favourite of the 18 episodes just because it is so quirky, and the Tour Eiffel segment gets lots of votes from me because it helped me get over a lifelong near-pathological fear of French mimes. As long as you promise to keep it a secret just between us, possibly my favourite is the Faubourg Saint-Denis segment just because I am a hopeless romantic deep deep inside in a place I try to keep hidden from the real world. For those who have not seen the movie yet (and honestly, why haven’t you – it has vampires, a cowboy sort of, Steve Buscemi, energetic hairdressers and such), attached is a link to one of the official trailers for the film: Paris, je t'aime trailer The disc that I have (which was purchased as a previously-viewed disc from a Blockbusters in Canada) oddly only has English and Spanish subtitles. While most of the segments are mostly or entirely in French, there are some segments exclusively or partially in English (and even the theme song, “La même histoire/We’re all in the dance,” is intermingled with both English and French) so it is odd that the version distributed in Canada does not also have French subtitles – perhaps this is just a Blockbuster-related issue if they sourced their discs from an American distributor. Edited by Spanky on 17 January 2012 at 9:18am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Adrean TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member France adrean83.wordpress.c Joined 6173 days ago 348 posts - 411 votes Speaks: FrenchC1 | Message 15 of 54 17 January 2012 at 9:21am | IP Logged | ||
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I remember seeing that film from when I first began French. I think you'd agree some
stories fall flat but there are a couple of stand-outs. I remember the middle aged woman American one you both refer to of course. How appropriate for us French learners. Hey on the subject of vignette films about Paris, there is one which I'm yet to see, save for one story. 'Six in Paris' Paris vu par... from 1965 combines a heady mix of directors at an interesting time. Godard, Rohmer and Chabrol among others all make contributions. A personal favourite is 'Rendezvous in Paris' Les rendez-vous de Paris. Three short films by Eric Rohmer, if you are well versed with Paris you will love the middle story. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5961 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 16 of 54 18 January 2012 at 9:10am | IP Logged | ||
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Merci pour les recommandations Adrean. Je vais essayer trouver ces films, mais
j’espère qu’ils ne présentent pas de mimes françaises (c'est vrai que j'ai encore une petite peur des mimes ... Edited by Spanky on 18 January 2012 at 9:11am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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