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Songlines’ Deuxième langue.

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Quique
Diglot
Senior Member
Spain
cronopios.net/Registered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4680 days ago

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

 
 Message 145 of 243
15 January 2013 at 2:54pm | IP Logged 
songlines wrote:
An amusing discovery: the French term for "shower head" is "la pomme de douche" - apple of the shower!

In Spanish is `alcachofa de la ducha': artichoke of the shower! :D

Greetings from a fellow CS'er!
3 persons have voted this message useful





emk
Diglot
Moderator
United States
Joined 5530 days ago

2615 posts - 8806 votes 
Speaks: English*, FrenchB2
Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian
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 Message 146 of 243
15 January 2013 at 6:19pm | IP Logged 
songlines wrote:
While I'm grumbling, I've lately also been finding Captain Haddock rather irritating in On a marché sur la
lune
(and other titles); Someone should do an intervention and get him to an AA meeting, rather than having
him bumbling about half-pissed half of the time.


Then there's that scene in the recent Tintin movie where Haddock breathes into the empty gas tank, and his breath is flammable enough to restart the motor. That's actually painful to watch with modern eyes.

My favorite part of Objectif lune and On a marché sur la lune is that they were first published in starting in 1953, long before a moon mission was feasible. And a lot of the tiny details of mission planning are surprisingly realistic for a silly comic book. One key difference, however, is that Tintin goes to the moon on a nuclear-powered rocket. Had we actually dared to build such rockets in real life, Kennedy could have been sending manned missions to the moons of Jupiter around the time of the Apollo program.

It's little tiny details like that which make me forgive Haddock's ridiculous drunkenness, Dupont and Dupond's impossible stupity, and all the other things which can annoy me in a Tintin book. One good page can pay for all, one gasp of wonder or one telling little detail.

Edited by emk on 15 January 2013 at 6:20pm

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songlines
Pro Member
Canada
flickr.com/photos/cp
Joined 5207 days ago

729 posts - 1056 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: French
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 Message 147 of 243
17 January 2013 at 6:09am | IP Logged 
Sunja wrote:
Are you already through "De Charybde en Scylla"? Maybe your 199 pages will incite me to finally
make it through another chapter.

I got tired of Bilbo le hobbit and switched back to "Tout est sous contrôle" but I've read the first three chapters so
often, stopping and starting over the past two years, that pages 16 through 18 have loosened from the spine and
keep falling out every time I open the book. I guess it's time for me to start thinking about an iPad..


Yes, I've finished that chapter. By the way, I'm not on page 199 of The Hobbit; that figure's a total which includes
pages from the other titles which follow (i.e. Goscinny's, Conan Doyle's). But I enjoyed The Hobbit in English, and
anticipate enjoying it in French too. Do you have a copy of the English original to read as a parallel text?   Or
perhaps you may prefer a different translation? - I have sample paragraphs comparing the two French
translations, a couple of pages back:
post 136.

But of course, if you really are tired of The Hobbit, you don't have to finish it, you know. I used to feel
vaguely guilty about abandoning books mid-stream, but realized that life is too short to plod to the end of books
I'm not really enjoying, just out of a sense of duty.

Not a motto, more a wail of despair: "So many books, so little time..."


Edited by songlines on 17 January 2013 at 6:18am

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songlines
Pro Member
Canada
flickr.com/photos/cp
Joined 5207 days ago

729 posts - 1056 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: French
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 Message 148 of 243
17 January 2013 at 6:10am | IP Logged 
Quique wrote:
songlines wrote:
An amusing discovery: the French term for "shower head" is "la pomme de
douche" - apple of the shower!

In Spanish is `alcachofa de la ducha': artichoke of the shower! :D

Greetings from a fellow CS'er!


"Artichoke of the shower"? - That's even more delightful (and appropriate, if you look at the shape)!



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songlines
Pro Member
Canada
flickr.com/photos/cp
Joined 5207 days ago

729 posts - 1056 votes 
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Studies: French
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 Message 149 of 243
17 January 2013 at 6:16am | IP Logged 
emk wrote:
...One good page can pay for all, one gasp of wonder or one telling little detail.


Very nicely put. And yes, indeed.

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songlines
Pro Member
Canada
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Joined 5207 days ago

729 posts - 1056 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: French
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 Message 150 of 243
17 January 2013 at 8:12am | IP Logged 
And over in the What is Good Enough? thread,
Tastyonions posted this:

tastyonions wrote:
beano wrote:
There is a lot of common vocabulary you can only really learn by actually
living in the country where the language is spoken. There are many people who can handle business discussions
in English but wouldn't know terms like "skirting board" or "rolling pin"....things that every adult native speaker
would know.


Amusingly enough, I had to look up "skirting board," though if you had called it a "baseboard" I would have
recognized it. I wonder if that is a US / UK thing.

But I agree that having a real native-like vocabulary would mean knowing thousands of words for those kind of
commonplace items that may never even come up in a normal conversation, especially if you're not in many
domestic situations with native speakers...


Which precisely touches on the lacune in my domestic vocabulary. For a fascinating resource to cover gaps such
as these, try the Firefly Visual Dictionary (in English+ French, German, Italian, and Spanish editions respectively,
or a jumbo five-language edition 1000-page, super-pricey edition).   This amazing series (e.g.
Spanish edition) would, with judicious study, go a long way towards
covering gaps in some of the more specialized (yet common enough) areas, such as do-it-yourself home repairs,
or describing to a salesperson the style of skirts or dresses you prefer.

And, according to my Firefly French/English Visual Dictionary, a rolling pin is le rouleau à pâtisserie (though
"pâtisserie" on its own is a feminine noun); a baseboard is la plinthe.

Edited by songlines on 17 January 2013 at 8:14am

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Sunja
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 6083 days ago

2020 posts - 2295 votes 
1 sounds
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: French, Mandarin

 
 Message 151 of 243
17 January 2013 at 8:14am | IP Logged 
songlines wrote:
Yes, I've finished that chapter. By the way, I'm not on page 199 of The Hobbit; that figure's a total which includes
pages from the other titles which follow (i.e. Goscinny's, Conan Doyle's). But I enjoyed The Hobbit in English, and
anticipate enjoying it in French too. Do you have a copy of the English original to read as a parallel text?   Or
perhaps you may prefer a different translation? - I have sample paragraphs comparing the two French
translations, a couple of pages back:
post 136.


Yes, my ten-year-old is reading our English version. She's farther along than I am, especially now that the movie is out in Germany.
1 person has voted this message useful



Kerrie
Senior Member
United States
justpaste.it/Kerrie2
Joined 5393 days ago

1232 posts - 1740 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 152 of 243
18 January 2013 at 4:36am | IP Logged 
songlines wrote:
Which precisely touches on the lacune in my domestic vocabulary. For a fascinating resource to cover gaps such
as these, try the Firefly Visual Dictionary (in English+ French, German, Italian, and Spanish editions respectively,
or a jumbo five-language edition 1000-page, super-pricey edition).   This amazing series (e.g.
Spanish edition) would, with judicious study, go a long way towards
covering gaps in some of the more specialized (yet common enough) areas, such as do-it-yourself home repairs,
or describing to a salesperson the style of skirts or dresses you prefer..


I got the five-language one on eBay last year for about $15. It's really an incredible reference book, especially if you are learning more than one (or two) of the languages. Heck - there are English words in there that I don't know. :)


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