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Fixing de+le>du, à+le>au, à+les>aux | ||
Tags: Morphology | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5343 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 7 23 April 2012 at 1:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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Help! When I'm speaking French at conversational speed (and not pre-planning each
phrase), I routinely say "de le", "à le" and "à les". I have no problem with the other mandatory contractions, which are all perfectly obvious, but I just don't reliably produce "du", "au" or "aux" except in a few fixed phrases. Background: I'm around B1, studying intensively for DELF B2. My brain is just starting to spontaneously produce the "en" pronoun, and every once in a while manages "y" outside of fixed expressions. Again, all this is in conversation; I have no problems when I have time to think. I'd like to do something about "du", "au" or "aux" before they fossilize. How do people tackle problems like this? More input and time? Hours and hours of FSI drills? Asking patient native speakers for endless corrections? Edited by emk on 23 April 2012 at 1:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5192 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 2 of 7 23 April 2012 at 3:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Correct yourself every time you do it. If you have a language partner, have them give you sign every time so you can self-correct. Concentrate on the noun phrase as a unit, starting with du, au, etc. If you find that's not enough, then practice with self-talk. I really don't see how more input would help fix that.
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| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4518 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 3 of 7 23 April 2012 at 3:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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Saw it during my first French class as well. Guess it's just practice, endless practice.
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| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5202 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 4 of 7 24 April 2012 at 5:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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It wouldn't hurt here to work with a grammar exercise book and do some drills (both written and oral).
It's not so bad to do them when you're working mainly on the big picture than in language courses where all you do is drill minutia. And for this drills will be important because there all sorts of set phrases and connectors where "de" is invariable (like after a negation - Je n'ai pas de pommes, beaucoup de, etc). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5343 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 7 06 May 2012 at 8:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you for your advice! I really like the idea of focusing on complete noun phrases
as a unit, and doing some oral drills. I'll have to see if FSI has anything. Most of the examples of invariable 'de' seem to be quantity specifiers ('beaucoup de', 'un peu de', 'pas mal de', etc.) or the negative form of the partitive article ('il n'y a pas de lait'). In any case, I'm gradually starting to produce "du" automatically. It's nothing like reliable yet, but it's getting slightly better. Oddly, I think some of my progress is due my ongoing work on gender. I've been training myself to really notice the gender of words in input. Until recently, I was picking up most of gender cues from un/une, mon/ma, ton/ta and son/sa, but I was largely ignoring the distinctions between du/de la, au/à la, and even sometimes le/la in input. This basically forced me to learn every occurrence of 'du' as a special case, because my definite article was essentially 'l<mumble>' for many words. And my brain couldn't come up with a consistent rule for 'de+l<mumble> = ?'. So I'll spend another week or two firming up the gender cues, and then try your other suggestions. Thank you! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5202 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 6 of 7 10 May 2012 at 3:18am | IP Logged | ||
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It might help to review some of the general rules for gender (and their exceptions) and start drilling
them with "du" and "de la". As for the mumbling it's a common trick for foreign speakers to fudge gender they don't know so one of my teachers would insist on pronouncing the article clearly and with confidence because if you always fudge it you'll never learn. You'll need to have your wife/your teacher help you reinforce the right gender. The good thing about more advanced level of language the more regular it should get (all the "tion" words for example, which are all feminine of course). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5371 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 7 of 7 10 May 2012 at 2:42pm | IP Logged | ||
What others? If you mean "de les" -> "des" then I don't understand why you would have a problem with "du" and "au" Otherwise, can't really offer any advice, except it seemed to be one of the things most people absorbed reasonably well in school lessons, so just tradititional grammar exercises. edit: oops, you said "conversational". We didn't really do "conversational" in school, I was thinking of written language. Edited by schoenewaelder on 10 May 2012 at 2:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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