Robierre’s French C2 log

[Robierre]

2nd year
Week 6

Italian

Last week before vacations. I'll take a short break from language learning...I really need it.

So, Italian... I had a language exchange with a native speaker. I guess it was a bad day because my Italian was really poor. OK, I exaggerate, but definitely it wasn't my best edition. It is true that lately I was more concentrated on French, with lots of articles, podcasts, forums etc. I'll have to add more Italian in my daily activities - we'll see in September.


French

Full immersion continues. I had several occasions to speak French and it was really OK. Forums are helping me a lot to extend my knowledge of every day French: I learned a lot of new expressions and some colloquial vocabulary ideal for small talk conversations.

Reading:
Gustave Flaubert - Trois contes (p. 146/253)
Banine - Jours Caucasiens (p. 96/257)

[Robierre]

Summer holidays are over, it's time to think about some new strategies for my language learning. Here's what I plan to change in September:

Commuting time
Before: France culture podcasts (5-7 hours/week)
After: audio books in Italian (7+ hours/week)
I'm continuously listening to podcasts from France culture for over three years now. It's a great thing, my standard French became really advanced and I'm going to miss these programs...however this cut has to be done. I need more time for Italian. At some point I will start to add some French podcasts - but for the moment I will do just Italian recordings. The problem is that I don't have so many Italian podcasts in my links. Damasco and Ad alta voce were the only Italian programs I was listening (last year). So this new strategy will probably force me to start to dig for some new resources. I was thinking to start with an audio book from Ad alta voce, probably Lessico famigliare by Natalia Ginzburg. We'll see how difficult it is to follow an audio book in the bus, I never tried it so far. I also plan to walk back home more often, so it should be more time for podcasts also.

Daily articles
Before: Nouvel Obs (very standard French)
After: French blogs and forums (colloquial language) and articles in standard Italian
I want to do just colloquial French in September. Reading forums occasionally is just not enough - it has to become my main free time language activity. This is a huge time resource because you can do it easily before or after work and during the weekends. I'll just skip everything that is written in standard French.

Reading
Before: French classics
After: contemporary French fiction
I bought two novels by Virginie Despentes and Fred Vargas; that's something for bedtime. Both should be very colloquial, so perfect for my new September approach. I will miss classics though.

[Expugnator]

I'm trying to add forum reading to my routine, both in French and in Georgian. My first experience with French put me off a little bit. I expected people to be more friendly given the themes being discussed, but what I saw were crossed aggressions and atrocious typos and grammar mistakes (not talking about colloquial French here but rather of actual mistakes). So I wonder if the Georgian won't do more harm than good. I've already spotted a few typos but for grammar I wouldn't be able figure out most of the mistakes, so I risk internalizing inappropriate language.

[Robierre]

I'm trying to add forum reading to my routine, both in French and in Georgian. My first experience with French put me off a little bit. I expected people to be more friendly given the themes being discussed, but what I saw were crossed aggressions and atrocious typos and grammar mistakes (not talking about colloquial French here but rather of actual mistakes). So I wonder if the Georgian won't do more harm than good. I've already spotted a few typos but for grammar I wouldn't be able figure out most of the mistakes, so I risk internalizing inappropriate language.

Hi Expugnator, when I read your log I'm always impressed with your ability to learn so many interesting languages. I'm specially interested in your progress with Georgian (no experiences with this language but I visited Georgia three years ago). About forums: some of them are more formal (like this one), others are more colloquial. I think it would be useful for you to find a good "serious" forum for your intermediate Georgian and a more conversational forum for your advanced French. French typos could be a good sign that it is a conversational forum, where people don't care too much about grammar and spelling and prefer to express themselves the way they speak in everyday situations. You can learn a lot from these conversations. For example, now I'm reading about the local kermesse in my city and I'm learning from these posts some interesting vocabulary about eating and drinking :

se goinfrer =manger avidement
= s'enpriffrer
"s'enpiffrer de frites"
s'enfiler (qch) = boire goulument
"il s'est enfilé 3 pintes de bière"
la mousse = la bière
"je te paye une mousse?"
une pression = une bière pression
une tournée de bière = en.: round

[Expugnator]

There's basically forum.ge for whatever subject. When forums were much more popular, it might have been some sort of national agora for Georgians. I believe it still is. There are some people who write correctly, some typos, some trolls for sure, but then in Georgian the levels of formality differ very little altogether. My passive skills are almost on the advanced side, so the timing might be correct.

As for French, I usually can tell serious writers that write formally from people who write informally but still want to contribute to people who have poor writing skills to plain trolls, but doing so is often an advanced skill, hence my concern about Georgian.

It's great to learn those synonyms in French. I really like colloquial French, it demolishes all those stereotypes of French being associated to highbrow culture. French for me is a language of linguistic creativity, vivacity, contemporary spirit. I get a lot of such vocabulary from novels and then meet them again on series. That's why I strongly prefer to write novels written in the XXI Century. I'm taking a similar approach with Italian, to my delight. It's great to learn how people actually speak. That's the point of native materials actually. I can get bookish language from textbooks already ( this stage becomes shorter with every new language). It's great when you talk to a native who expects you to talk like in a 60's Linguaphone course and then you are up to date with the slang (just don't overdo it; it'd be safe as a foreigner to stay at least one subregister above in formality when you're still becoming familiarized with your interlocutor, I'd think).

[Robierre]

It's great when you talk to a native who expects you to talk like in a 60's Linguaphone course and then you are up to date with the slang (just don't overdo it; it'd be safe as a foreigner to stay at least one subregister above in formality when you're still becoming familiarized with your interlocutor, I'd think).

I'm glad you mentioned the old school Linguaphone courses because at the time you wrote the message I was reading my uncle's Linguaphone grammar from the '60s. More in this week's log:

2nd year
Week 7

Français


Après les vacances je me sens en pleine forme. Car c'étaient deux semaines sans un mot de langues étrangères. Et alors, les derniers deux jours de ce dolce far niente, j'ai trouvé sur les étagères de la maison de mes parents une vielle grammaire Linguaphone des années 1960 (comme celle sur la photo à droite). Avec le nom de mon oncle à la première page blanche, probablement utilisé aussi par mon père, au lycée. J'adore les vielles grammaires, ils ont une systématique classique, il n'y pas de couleurs, d'illustrations, de milliers de fonts et styles différents qui, au bout de compte, ne sont parfois qu'une distraction. J'ai parcouru quelques 120 pages et j'en ai laissé une quarantaine pour les finir pendant mes prochaines vacances.


J'ai terminé le livre Jours Caucasiens (257 pages). C'est l'autobiographie de l'écrivaine azérie, connu en France sous le nom Banine. Elle raconte son enfance dans l'Azerbaïdjan des années 1920, au sein d'une famille pétrolière très riche, au moment de grands évènements historiques et avant de partir pour Paris ou’ elle passera le reste de sa vie très inconventionnelle. Elle utilise un langage littéraire, mais pas trop difficile.

D'ailleurs, je suis en train de lire ces deux livres:
Trois contes de Gustave Flaubert (p. 161/253), et
Vernon Subutex, deuxieme tome, de Virginie Despentes (p. 32/405)

J'ai travaillé sur le vocabulaire utile pour la vie quotidienne en utilisant le site Speaklanguages.com. Les expressions concernent une soixantaine de situations fréquentes, par exemple: demander et indiquer des directions, location de voiture, se déplacer en taxi etc.


Italiano

Era la prima settimana che ho sostituito dei podcast francesi con quegli in italiano. Cosi, faccio un audiolibro, un romanzo di Natalia Ginzburg, Lessico famigliare. E devo dire che era una buona scelta perché, finora, lo seguo senza nessun problema. O quasi. Cerco di sentire ogni puntata due volte, per non perdere niente dalla storia. Sono alla settima puntata.

[Robierre]

2nd year
Week 8

Italiano

Natalia Ginzburg - Lessico famigliare, audiolibro, puntate 7-16/20

Domani finirò quel bellissimo audiolibro con cui ho cominciato i miei ascolti quotidiani in italiano. Ci ho messo 15 ore di ascolto, visto che ogni puntata ripeto almeno una volta di più. Così sono sicuro che non perdo niente della storia nei momenti in cui manco un po’ di concentrazione. Lessico famigliare è un romanzo con uno stile particolare; è un'autobiografia senza una storia vera e propria e senza l'ordine cronologico. Sono piuttosto delle piccole storielle sui personaggi, persone dalla vita della scrittrice, di cui molti anche importantissimi per la storia e la letteratura italiana (Cesare Pavese, Leone Ginzburg, Einaudi, Adriano Olivetti...). Inoltre è un buon esercizio per i vari stili di lingua; ognuno di noi usa un linguaggio particolare e ogni famiglia ha la sua piccola lingua privata. Cosi tra i dialoghi si possono sentire anche molte parole in dialetto.


Français

Lecture intensive:
(1) Les boloss des belles lettres, un blog littéraire écrit exclusivement en argot. J'ai commencé à lire le blog avec cet article. En gros, ce sont des résumés des grandes œuvres classiques. C'est très difficile. Les dictionnaires classiques souvent ne servent pas grand-chose; j'utilise Bob (dictionnaire d'argot, de français familier et de français populaire), Wordreference et, surtout, Google.
(2) Forum Hardware.fr, le forum que je lis régulièrement depuis quelque temps, en prenant des notes. C'est là que j'apprends des expressions très utiles comme: bien fichu, ici ou là, tenir qqn au jus, se faire carotter, palpitant etc.

Lecture extensive:
Virginie Despentes: Vernon Subutex 2, p. 32-87/405. Excellent pour le langage familier. Et pas mal come roman non plus: j'ai déjà lu le premier tome, il y en a beaucoup d'humeur, d'ironie, de sarcasme etc. Bref, un page-turner.

[Robierre]

2nd year
Week 9

Italian

Started with a new audio book this week: Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I'm also reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in Croatian. However, I had some problems with the first two episodes of Tom Sawyer: the quality of sound could be much better; when not passing trough silent streets I can barely hear anything. Also, the tempo is very fast, I often lose my concentration. I don't want to give up too soon, but it's going to be hard.

French

Virginie Despentes: Vernon Subutex 2, p. 87 - 157/405
Forums, 3 or 4 long newspaper articles, a little bit of TV also.

[Robierre]

2nd year
Week 10

French

As some of you may know, lately I'm putting a big effort to improve my langue familiere (typical words and expressions used in everyday oral conversations, mostly considered as lower registers and therefore not used in our text books). Moreover, from the beginning of this month I'm learning just colloquial French. I wanted to share here some general impressions:

French learners know it (and I guess it is the same thing with all other languages), standard French is like a never ending ocean of different words and expressions. The colloquial French, on the other side, might seem as a separate language, another ocean of endless vocabulary. The good news is that it isn't really an ocean, it's just a small sea, with it's own rules. I don't have impression that, after all these long years of learning standard (and some colloquial French), I will need the same amount of time to master this part of the language. In fact most of those words are very frequent and repetitive.

The second conclusion concerns the method of learning. I decided to learn it from written texts and not from real conversations. In the second phase I will start to add more films, series and real conversations where I'll be already able to recognize these words and expressions, previously learned from books, forums, blogs etc. The bad news is that this kind of language is not a typical written language; often it's considered a bad style of writing. Still, the contemporary literature is more open to every day French and internet is also a great resource. So far I have plenty of texts.

The third phase should be more output orientated. Because, that's finally the goal of learning the colloquial language - to speak it with native speakers. At the moment I don't have too many occasions for long conversations in French; but I do speak it from time to time and I've noticed that these conversations are becoming more and more colloquial. Most of the things I'm reading right now are very concrete - the usual topics from every day situations.


Italian

Audio book: Mark Twain - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Le avventure di Tom Sawyer)
Things are getting better with this book; I'm on episode 6 right now, which is not a big progress, but considering the content I'm much more comfortable with the speed of reading. I did a simultaneous reading-listening for some episodes and it was a huge help. On the other side, I've finished The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in Croatian, or better to say in some kind of mix of standard Croatian and its dialects, which was quite nice and funny because the translator wanted to show the difference between various American dialects used in the novel. I'm continuing with Tom Sawyer in Italian...

[Robierre]

2nd year
Week 11

Français

Deux livres terminés cette semaine.


Virginie Despentes: Vernon Subutex 2 (405 pages)
Apres avoir lu le premier tome, le deuxième a été beaucoup plus facile. A mon avis, il est aussi plus intéressant que le premier. Il y avait des chapitres qui étaient parfois très drôles. En somme, ce roman n'est pas mal pour connaitre mieux la société contemporaine et la littérature française actuelle. Le langage familier y est très fréquent. Et puis, il y aura aussi le troisième (et dernier) tome; peut-être je le lirai quand il sort.


Gustave Flaubert: Trois contes (255 pages)
Trois contes classiques de Flaubert: Le cœur simple, Saint Julien l'hospitalier et Hérodias. Une belle lecture, pas trop difficile.


Italiano

Audiolibro: Le avventure di Tom Sawyer, puntate 6-9/20