Tiberius Diglot Groupie Moldova lawinmoldova.blogspoRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6291 days ago 70 posts - 85 votes Studies: Romanian, Russian*, EnglishC2 Studies: French
| Message 17 of 24 18 February 2010 at 5:45pm | IP Logged |
Trying to make some exercises from my textbook. Jeez, I make SO MANY mistakes. :))
Happily I have a book with the keys. But still...
The only thing that makes me feel good about it is that there are much more correct
answers :))
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Tiberius Diglot Groupie Moldova lawinmoldova.blogspoRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6291 days ago 70 posts - 85 votes Studies: Romanian, Russian*, EnglishC2 Studies: French
| Message 18 of 24 21 February 2010 at 11:30am | IP Logged |
I'm pretty motivated about my french studies. But I yesterday I found one more source
of motivation. :)
We were sitting in a bar with my friend having a pint. He recently decided to improve
his English. And he looks pretty resolved. So, I proposed a bet. He's working on
improving his English. And I continue learning French. The bet was that in a year I
will speak French better than he speaks English. It will be difficult as he already has
some basis in English. But that will be even more interesting and challenging. :)))
Three six-packs of beer are at stake. But, after all,... it's not about beer, of
course.
... Back to french nasal vowels that I try to master. I'm getting better in it but
still have a lot to work. And a funny thought occurred. In Russian we sometimes say
that French is the language of love. So, I probably understood why.
I was sitting at home and practicing these vowels. And in a while my wife came in
asking what I was doing because she heard SUCH sounds! She said it really sounded
erotic. Well... :)))
Edited by Tiberius on 21 February 2010 at 11:32am
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Tiberius Diglot Groupie Moldova lawinmoldova.blogspoRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6291 days ago 70 posts - 85 votes Studies: Romanian, Russian*, EnglishC2 Studies: French
| Message 19 of 24 25 February 2010 at 9:47am | IP Logged |
Consider me a dinosaur, but I never used an MP3 player before. I just bought one two
days ago. What a great tool in language studies it turned to be. For the last couple of
days French "goes" with me almost everywhere. I downloaded in the player various
podcasts, audio records from different courses. So, my ears almost permanently (at
least when I'm on my way somewhere) is getting more and more used to the new language.
I've also never heard before about the FSI courses. I saw the abbreviation on the forum
several times and decided to find out what it means. And it turned to be a course
elaborated by the US State Department for it employees, and absolutely FREE.
So, I downloaded the "French basic course" textbooks and recordings. Wow, 1000-pages
course. Very thorough. Hours and hours of listening comprehensions. Exactly the type of
programme I like.
I read a lot of negative review about it. But most of them claim that the course is TOO
boring. For me, if something works (and even according to the majority of those who
dislike the course it works) I can stand its boredom and monotony. The guys elaborating
the course for diplomats probably knew what they did. So, I added it to my other
materials for studyings. It's claimed to last for about 6 months. BUT, with 6 hours of
daily studies. Definitely not my case. So, I would be happy to complete it in a year.
I sometimes think that now I have too many various materials. In fact, I do work
regularly with all of them, and it gives the possibility not to get bored with only one
particular course.
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TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5467 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian
| Message 20 of 24 25 February 2010 at 11:17am | IP Logged |
Tiberius wrote:
Three six-packs of beer are at stake. But, after all,... it's not about
beer, of
course. |
|
|
NEVER underestimate the power of beer! There are a lot of things I would do for three
six-packs of the golden nectar ;)
Good luck with your bet. I look forward to reading about your progress.
Edited by TixhiiDon on 25 February 2010 at 11:30am
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Tiberius Diglot Groupie Moldova lawinmoldova.blogspoRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6291 days ago 70 posts - 85 votes Studies: Romanian, Russian*, EnglishC2 Studies: French
| Message 21 of 24 23 March 2010 at 8:27pm | IP Logged |
What a great site I've found. At least for those who speak Russian and learn some other
languages (French included)...
I decided to add some pleasure to my French studies. And I was listening to one of my
favourite songs in French on Youtube - Sous le ciel de Paris. And just thought why not to
learn it? I started to google for the lyrics for this song. And came across this site:
http://fr-lyrics.ru/
It has just TONS of lyrics of French songs. Alongside there's a Russian translation
provided. And on the same page you can click and listen to it.
Beside French it's also available for Italian, Spanish, German and English. But all the
translations from these languages are made into Russian.
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Tiberius Diglot Groupie Moldova lawinmoldova.blogspoRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6291 days ago 70 posts - 85 votes Studies: Romanian, Russian*, EnglishC2 Studies: French
| Message 22 of 24 31 March 2010 at 10:24pm | IP Logged |
Completed Pimsleur-I today. It took more than 30 days to complete, but not because it
was difficult, but simply because I sometimes missed the sessions.
Most of the vocabulary and grammar have already been known to me, so it seemed
sometimes too easy. But frankly, if I had used it without any other materials I'm not
sure I would have been able to complete even the first part of the course. Particularly
because there're no transcripts.
Yesterday I prepared several bilingual French-Russian books for which I found audio
versions and started to work intensively with them. I tried shadowing about a month ago
with "Le Petit Prince". But that time I felt it was too difficult. Now it's STILL
difficult (as there's a lot of unknown words), but now it really works as I became
accustomed to the pace of speech in audiobooks, have developed a bit more my reading
skills and now can easily follow the original text while listening. So, today I tried
about half an hour of such work beside working with my textbook.
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Tiberius Diglot Groupie Moldova lawinmoldova.blogspoRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6291 days ago 70 posts - 85 votes Studies: Romanian, Russian*, EnglishC2 Studies: French
| Message 23 of 24 31 March 2010 at 10:29pm | IP Logged |
Oh, BTW, french numbers from 70 to 99 are very funny :)))
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Tiberius Diglot Groupie Moldova lawinmoldova.blogspoRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6291 days ago 70 posts - 85 votes Studies: Romanian, Russian*, EnglishC2 Studies: French
| Message 24 of 24 31 March 2010 at 10:32pm | IP Logged |
And yes, I still fight with this weird sound in words like un, parfum,
lundi
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