Ani's 2017 Log

[PeterMollenburg]

Second, take the pressure off, kick back and just watch heaps of stufff. Use this time to put your feet up and let the DVD/Internet do it's work. Don't pause, just binge watch a series and feel sorry for yourself. You might be surprised after a a number of episodes. Don't do anything 'intensive' until you've watched so much that French feels like English and you're ready to do something different. Just an idea, up to you

Thank you! You know I won't actually give up Just feeling moody. Most of the time French feels just like English, but those sneaky bits really throw my confidence. Just in the last couple days I realized I can't understand a *word* most of the criminals say in Engranages. I apparently have an entire register completely missing from my vocabulary.

Engrenages is super dooper tough stuff and then some... imo. If it makes you feel better I suspect you've surpassed my French abilities some time ago. My progress is slow, yours to me appears to have been relatively swift, all the while you've been studying more languages than I. All is well, I believe

[Systematiker]

Thank you! You know I won't actually give up Just feeling moody. Most of the time French feels just like English, but those sneaky bits really throw my confidence. Just in the last couple days I realized I can't understand a *word* most of the criminals say in Engranages. I apparently have an entire register completely missing from my vocabulary.

This type of stuff I reeeeeally wouldn't worry about at this stage - I know the temptation because I've gone through the exact same thing myself. Realistically, though, I'd wager there are native English speakers you wouldn't easily understand, so it's not really a reflection of your skills in French necessarily. I'd watch some vlogs to get used to more colloquial/faster/less formal chatter.

Hang in there!

I want to second this - especially if there's a chance that it's verlan (or "TV-verlan"), too. Think about what it would be like to come down where I am and talk to my granny (my wife can barely understand her), or go to, say, Atlanta and talk to a comparable individual from a comparable register. Don't feel bad at all about that (NB not that I've watched Engranages).

[Ani]

Engrenages is super dooper tough stuff and then some... imo. If it makes you feel better I suspect you've surpassed my French abilities some time ago. My progress is slow, yours to me appears to have been relatively swift, all the while you've been studying more languages than I. All is well, I believe

I am not sure that is true, but it is very kind of you to say so! It makes me feel a lot better

This type of stuff I reeeeeally wouldn't worry about at this stage - I know the temptation because I've gone through the exact same thing myself. Realistically, though, I'd wager there are native English speakers you wouldn't easily understand, so it's not really a reflection of your skills in French necessarily. I'd watch some vlogs to get used to more colloquial/faster/less formal chatter.

Hang in there!

You are right. And I should probably focus more on yt/vlogs. I mostly stick to women speaking Swiss French, which might be my target accent but isn't helping me branch out. Last time I listened to Cyprien I found him fairly hard to understand, but I haven't tried in a while. I should go back to that. Also about the native speakers I'll write below....

I want to second this - especially if there's a chance that it's verlan (or "TV-verlan"), too. Think about what it would be like to come down where I am and talk to my granny (my wife can barely understand her), or go to, say, Atlanta and talk to a comparable individual from a comparable register. Don't feel bad at all about that (NB not that I've watched Engranages).

Yes.. TV-verlan. What I find so frustrating is that I can't parse the sentence though. It is not just unknown words but something else in the speech pattern. After I finish the series, I'll check out transcripts and figure out what is throwing me off so much.
Now I am curious where your granny is from I would be fine with similar register Baltimore to Atlanta for sure.. (no fancy upbringing here!) It is British English I can't understand I tried to watch The Crown with DH in English but I had to make him turn on subtitles My (6 year old) daughter has fallen in love with the audiobook for the Secret Garden on librivox and now she claims "Yorkshire" is her foreign language study for school this year.

[Ani]

Feeling better about things today. Spent most of yesterday holding a sick toddler. As those things go, he is fine now. It gave me time to finish Engrenages saison 2. Just when I started really understanding Aziz, who was the easiest of the criminal set, he was gone. Farouk speaks clearly but I was just getting comfortable with Mustapha and he's gone now too. Now I am finding a couple of the other new characters difficult to understand. This show really keeps me on my toes!

Computer is functional again so I got back to Russian. I did about 40 mins but it was mostly all review. I am a few pages behind where I should be to hit my very un-ambitious goal for the year. I need to be sure to do 4 pages/week. Usually I do a short review and about half a page. It is good to realize I need to step it up a tiny bit.

Planning to dig out Finnish today. Right before the computer died, I found a Finnish-only beginners course with audio. Can't even remember the name now. If I can dig out those files from the mess leftover from hard drive recovery I am going to start that and see if it suits me better than Assimil.

[tastyonions]

I remember listening to an interview with the actor who played Aziz (Reda Kateb) on "La bande originale" a while back. He seems like a really nice and laid back guy, totally unlike the vicious character he was on the show.

[Cavesa]

I agree that Engrenages is a very hard series. Not because of Verlan or too much slang (even though there is slang) or other linguistic qualities. There is a lot of background noise most of the times (that's why I understood much better the lawyers than the policemen at the beginning), the speed is huge (again, there is a difference between the policemen and the lawyers), I think there is smaller volume difference between the speech and the background than in many other series, and so on.

There are various aspects to it. Don't beat yourself over not understanding perfectly. Enjoy the show or leave it for later, but surely return later. If you are struggling with Engrenages now, that is not a bad news. It means you are definitely ready to tackle easier shows and they will feel even easier thanks to the comparison!

[Systematiker]

Definitely do not feel bad - I went and watched the first episode, since I'm trying to find a series in French anyway, and there were scenes I did not follow as well. I'm probably going to watch it now, even though I don't really like police procedurals, because of that challenge.

[Ani]

I remember listening to an interview with the actor who played Aziz (Reda Kateb) on "La bande originale" a while back. He seems like a really nice and laid back guy, totally unlike the vicious character he was on the show.

That's great I always wonder what it takes to be a dramatic actor. My cousin is a Film/TV actor and (at least to my eyes) his characters aren't so far removed from his real personality. It must be something to be able to flip a switch to psycho vicious killer

I agree that Engrenages is a very hard series. Not because of Verlan or too much slang (even though there is slang) or other linguistic qualities. There is a lot of background noise most of the times (that's why I understood much better the lawyers than the policemen at the beginning), the speed is huge (again, there is a difference between the policemen and the lawyers), I think there is smaller volume difference between the speech and the background than in many other series, and so on.

Thanks for stopping by! Fortunately, it was only the criminals who were arrested that were giving me trouble, and sometimes when people yell over each other. My brain can't choose who to listen to and I definitely can't listen to both yet! Now in season 3, there is only Procureur Machard that I can't understand

Definitely do not feel bad - I went and watched the first episode, since I'm trying to find a series in French anyway, and there were scenes I did not follow as well. I'm probably going to watch it now, even though I don't really like police procedurals, because of that challenge.

I am not really a fan of the gore myself. Some of them are crimes that make me really sick to my stomach, but there are other aspects of the show that I like. Since I mostly watch from my phone at random times, I need shows that are available on Netflix and it is sometimes hard to figure out what to watch. I just realized this minute that Ainsi soient-ils that you have been talking about is also on Netflix. I'll have to watch that next to calmn my brain back down

[Systematiker]

Definitely do not feel bad - I went and watched the first episode, since I'm trying to find a series in French anyway, and there were scenes I did not follow as well. I'm probably going to watch it now, even though I don't really like police procedurals, because of that challenge.

I am not really a fan of the gore myself. Some of them are crimes that make me really sick to my stomach, but there are other aspects of the show that I like. Since I mostly watch from my phone at random times, I need shows that are available on Netflix and it is sometimes hard to figure out what to watch. I just realized this minute that Ainsi soient-ils that you have been talking about is also on Netflix. I'll have to watch that next to calmn my brain back down

It's really quite good - there are, of course, the two obligatory subplots when you've got any show about the Roman Catholics, the "homosexual priest" and the "abuse" plots. The former includes some things I could have done without seeing in the first season, but is handled throughout as pretty authentic (the struggle for the seminarian/priest). The latter is handled extremely well, and despite the ubiquity of the association is only present in the third season, plus it gives the fairest treatment of the Church as a whole I've ever seen in cinema.

The biggest downside of the whole series is that it ends in a manner that leaves so many loose ends. they clearly anticipated continuing it and weren't able to, for whatever reason.

[Ani]

I think.. I think I am going to quit Finnish for the time being. I am a little bit sad. I have my copy of Harry Potter in Finnish waiting for me and it was a goal to read that this year. My son will be starting Greek any day now though and I honestly am feeling a little anxious about 3 beginner languages. My goals are not ambitious for whatever I start this year, but still I'd like to see SOMETHING that looks like progress. I don't have great interest in learning Greek at this point, but it will be 30 minutes a day going to another beginner language. My sleep deprived brain may not handle 3 different completely new languages very well. In addition, I keep getting this ideas for intensive projects I'd like to do in French. I have a physics book I'd like to translate into French and I want to study philosophy (mostly as ammunition for intellectual debates with my husband. He really likes philosophy and I really like to talk to him ). I'll never do intensive work if I am doing something like 1.5h/day in beginner languages. So that's that..

Speaking of my husband, we had an interesting discussion today about the value of ideas related to languages. I'd like to bring the discussion here at some point, but I don't have it all nailed down to a distinct question yet. I think we have more to discuss on this topic so there was a lot of sorting out of ideas in order to analyse what we were thinking. The root of this discussion was prompted by some friends who are planning to teach their young children Latin. In discussion, the friends said the reason to start early was so that the children would have deep knowledge of the language in order to impose higher order thinking on to.. presumably the various original latin texts. The discussion evolved into the assertion that the thinking and ideas most valuable to the world came through Latin and Greek. I think that is kind of a dumb statement since it is unverifiable, but it prompted a great discussion. If you are going to teach a child a language for the ideas found in its culture or roots, should that language have a significantly larger corpus of valuable texts than other languages? And if you are going to teach a dead language, shouldn't it have an even larger corpus to outweigh the negatives of not having another use besides studying texts. To this end, how do we separate what is cultural signaling in educational choices from what has a quantitative value.. or is it even possible to quantify or analyze great thought across distinct cultures. And how does the idea that "the length of time a work has survived is indicative of the value of ideas it contains" relate here..?

None of those ideas are meant to represent a position. Just a bunch of things rolling around my head. They look less interesting when I write them out so poorly too, but I am going to leave them here and maybe I'll be able to consolidate my ideas into something more suitable for discussion later.

Oh and in one last bit of news, I finished 1Q84 (livre 1) today. After how much I disliked it at the halfway point, I'm rather surprised to admit I immediately bought books 2 and 3. I was rather pleasantly surprised to see references to Sakhalin near the end. One of my travel dreams is to go from Alaska to Sakhalin and take the ferry to Japan. I tried to plan and actually do it a few years ago, but was really disappointed to realize I missed my chance for an Alaska -> Sakhalin connection by a couple years and it is no longer possible.