La grande aventure de Thomas dans le monde des francophones.

[extralean]

Welcome to the French/Irish club! It's fun discovering all the links between French and Celtic culture now (even in Francophone Canada!). Maybe we can all take up Breton down the line as well

If you ever get the opportunity, do go to Bretagne. I love a little port town called Quiberon and la cote sauvage, and cider, and everything about it really. I've had a look at the language, but it's one of those ones that doesn't make it past my 'usefulness' filter.

[galaxyrocker]

Tom,

Is Pronounce It Perfectly In French mainly an audio course? As I mentioned, I'm going to start having an hour commute each day, and if it's audio I think it'd be a great way to work on my French pronunciation while driving. Also, what are your opinions of it?

[tomgosse]

Tom,

Is Pronounce It Perfectly In French mainly an audio course? As I mentioned, I'm going to start having an hour commute each day, and if it's audio I think it'd be a great way to work on my French pronunciation while driving. Also, what are your opinions of it?

It is mainly an audio course. While it is nice to have a textbook to follow along with you can listen to the audio without reading it. Reading the textbook without the audio is of no use at all.

I like it very much. It is one of those programs that I'll need to keep repeating. Here are the reviews on Amazon.

One of the quirks of the audio is that some of speakers who introduce the lessons in English have very thick French accents, "In zees less-OHN we will..." I'm not sure if that was done on purpose, but I find that after listening to a lesson or two I'm speaking English with a French accent. Maybe it's to help us move into the rhythm of French easier.

-TG

[tomgosse]

Je m'appelle Tom. J'ai 65 ans. J'habite à Massachusetts, USA. J'adore la langue française. je vais étudier plus.

I'm taking a que from Bylan's French Beginnings and will attempt to try and write something in French at the beginning of each of my posts. And I will do so without resorting to Google Translate (I hope!), and will try to write something new each time.

I'm still recovering from my lithotripsy and that has slowed down my study. But, I'm still listening to the Pimsleur French lessons. I've finished lesson twelve. I've had to restart the streak on both Memrise and Duolingo. French In Action has crashed. I might put it aside for a while.

One thing I do keep up with is watching Tout Le Monde Prendre Sa Place onTV5Monde. These episodes are delayed from March and not the current ones being shown on France2.

TV5Monde is a great resource, but I have one complaint. And, it's not with them, but with my cable provider (Comcast/Xfinity). They charge me a premium to subscribe to the channel and only show it in standard definition when TV5Monde does provide a high definition signal. As far as I know, no cable provider in the United States delivers it in high definition. I don't know if it's available as streaming video on the internet.

That's it for this week.
A bientôt,
Tom

[sctroyenne]

TV5Monde is a great resource, but I have one complaint. And, it's not with them, but with my cable provider (Comcast/Xfinity). They charge me a premium to subscribe to the channel and only show it in standard definition when TV5Monde does provide a high definition signal. As far as I know, no cable provider in the United States delivers it in high definition. I don't know if it's available as streaming video on the internet.

That's American cable providers for you, always on the cutting edge.

[Arnaud]

deleted

[tomgosse]

Je m'appelle Tom. J'ai 65 ans. J'habite dans le Massachusetts, (aux) USA. J'adore la langue française. Je vais étudier plus.

If Massachusetts is a town, the preposition "à" is correct, if it's the state, it's not correct (explanations in french here)

What I write now is not sure, you'll have to check somewhere:
If the state is feminine, you use "en": J'habite en Caroline, j'habite en Californie
If the state is masculine it's: "dans le", "dans l'état de" or "en" (state starting with a vowel): J'habite dans le Nevada, j'habite en Arkansas, J'habite dans l'état de Washington. There are exceptions like: J'habite au Texas...
As you see it's not simple, it's better to learn by context according the state you want to talk about.

Merci de votre aide.

[pir]

Information about gender, and lists of continents, countries, states, provinces, cities, islands here: http://french.about.com/library/weekly/aa062400c.htm -- I agree with Arnaud that these are best learned in context, but the over-arching rules are helpful.

[tomgosse]

Experimenting with the [audio] tag.

Code: Select all

[audio]https://www.dropbox.com/s/p1mduggyqisabag/le-boudin.mp3?dl=1[/audio]

[tomgosse]

La marseillasie la flûte à bec