A language learners’ forum

Systematiker wrote:

Ani wrote:

Systematiker wrote: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.

Just wanted to say thanks very much for this! I just reactivated my Netflix subscription to watch it, and also found a list of other shows that looked pretty cool as well: http://frenchculture.org/film-tv-and-ne ... platform-0

whatiftheblog wrote:
Just wanted to say thanks very much for this! I just reactivated my Netflix subscription to watch it, and also found a list of other shows that looked pretty cool as well: http://frenchculture.org/film-tv-and-ne ... platform-0

Thats a great list! I couldn't find all of them with French audio but it looks like there are a few good new things to watch on there. I started Au Service de la France yesterday and it is really funny. Harder than Engrenages -- I'm definitely missing a lot of the jokes, especially what I assume are plays on words ( but I can't verify it), but still fun watching even if I have lower comprehension. UNOGS is where I usually search for shows with French audio on Netflix. It isn't perfect, and the categories don't work at all, but it is pretty helpful.



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My head is all fuzzy today and I can't concentrate on anything. I had dream like Brun Ugle recently described in the language nerd thread where I was translating things back and forth French/English and fretting about not remembering the right conditionnel/subjonctif forms of avoir. I did in fact have them all wrong in my dream I'm about 100 pages into the Chroniques de l'oiseau à ressort. I like that so far it has gone over a bunch of really mundane vocabulary. Things I know but haven't ever seen in a book -- topics like colored tissues and descriptive vocabulary for ironing shirts. I think I am going to take my box of tissues and book back to bed for the afternoon.

Heh, I seem to make way more errors speaking my TLs in dreams than in real life.

tastyonions wrote:Heh, I seem to make way more errors speaking my TLs in dreams than in real life.

In my dreams, night time and day dreams, I speak with a flawless French accent. But in real life, Je parle comme une vache espagnole1!

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1 I speak like a Spanish cow!

Ani wrote:Thats a great list! I couldn't find all of them with French audio but it looks like there are a few good new things to watch on there. I started Au Service de la France yesterday and it is really funny. Harder than Engrenages -- I'm definitely missing a lot of the jokes, especially what I assume are plays on words ( but I can't verify it), but still fun watching even if I have lower comprehension. UNOGS is where I usually search for shows with French audio on Netflix. It isn't perfect, and the categories don't work at all, but it is pretty helpful.

Just started this as well - thanks for the recommendation! I did all my undergrad research on France in Africa and I love this period, so it's extra awesome.

tomgosse wrote:Je parle comme une vache espagnole

One of the few phrases that is in my extremely limited french repertoire!

neofight78 wrote:

tomgosse wrote:Je parle comme une vache espagnole

One of the few phrases that is in my extremely limited french repertoire!

Not so limited if you speak english and russian. There are a lot of french words in both languages and well known expressions in russian like "cherchez la femme" or "je ne mange pas six jours"* that every russian knows. [*grammaticaly incorrect]
You can learn a few "super frequent" verbs like to have, to be, to do, to take and speak basic french by playing with the "language bricks": the "Michel Thomas" method is very good for that kind of game (it explains how the pronounciation is altered from one language to the other)
You could even reactivate your french (if you learnt it a long time ago at school) through russian, as there are a lot of free russian ressources on the internet.

Arnaud wrote:There are a lot of french words in both languages

"A lot" is definitely relative with Russian. I'm scraping along at below 50% known words during Russian intensive reading precisely because there are so few cognates with German, English, French and Spanish, and most cognates I encounter actually come from German. All in all very little overlap with French, although of course you'll find some French expressions and bits of French here and there in classic Russian literature.

With English it's a different matter. There are massive amounts of cognates! As one of my French friends said to me once: "Before we taught the English how to speak, they could only grunt" Between English and Spanish I had 65-70% known words with intensive reading in French right from the start.

Arnaud wrote:Not so limited if you speak english and russian. There are a lot of french words in both languages and well known expressions in russian like "cherchez la femme" or "je ne mange pas six jours"* that every russian knows. [*grammaticaly incorrect]
You can learn a few "super frequent" verbs like to have, to be, to do, to take and speak basic french by playing with the "language bricks": the "Michel Thomas" method is very good for that kind of game (it explains how the pronounciation is altered from one language to the other)
You could even reactivate your french (if you learnt it a long time ago at school) through russian, as there are a lot of free russian ressources on the internet.

You are trying to tempt me, I knew it was dangerous posting on a French thread!

Reactivating my school french is not something you want to do, the result would be something like the following:



Perhaps I'll give it a go after I've finished Russian.

Nice to see everyone stopping by

neofight78 wrote:
You are trying to tempt me, I knew it was dangerous posting on a French thread!

Meh, given my extremely lofty goal of A1 Russian by the end of the year, you could get away with saying it's a French and Russian thread. Video clips with both French and Russian are fair game, no matter how grammatically incorrect