Who's on First? (Jack's French Log)

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jackb
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Re: Who's on First? (Jack's French Log)

Postby jackb » Mon Jul 25, 2022 11:47 pm

The summer is moving along and I've been doing a good amount of reading, too bad it hasn't been in french. I'm catching up on a couple of series I follow. The time isn't wasted, but I was feeling bad about it for a little bit. Nothing special, just the normal 'why isn't this easy yet'. I'll pick up where I left off eventually. Reading on twitter has gotten much easier recently, so there's that.

I noticed that my own personal audio description is much more fluid, but it's a grammatical mess. Time for some much needed grammar. I just joined the DC Alliance Française to get access to their library. They have a number of the well reviewed grammar workbooks with associated CDs/answer keys that I plan to borrow. I'll probably burn through a handful of graded readers to ease back into reading too. They don't have hours since covid, but they have a weekly reservation and pickup service which coincides with the one day a week I have to go into the office. We'll see how well this works out.

My listening is coming along nicely. I finished the last season of Heartland. There were 4 or 5 seasons that didn't have French dubbing, so the total number if minutes is lower than expected. I'm happy with the overall experience and I'm glad to be done with it. When the French dub picked back up, the characters had different voices and the vocab for the English slang changed. It was weird that it happened, but cool I picked it up. I'm about 40% through the video portion of a double super challenge. Not sure what will be the next binge.

I had my first feelings of intrigue with another language, actually 2. There's a show called Dark Winds, a murder mystery that takes place on the Navajo reservation in Arizona/New Mexico/Utah. They speak some Navajo in every episode and it sounds so different I found it interesting. The other was when I watched an episode of C'est la vie on youtube. The episode I was watching finished and it played the next one with the Wolof dub. I liked the sound of it so much I watched it until the commercial. It's hard to describe, it just felt right in my ears. I won't dabble in either language, but mostly because I wouldn't know where to start.

Anyone know of a longish (50 episodes) soap opera-type show in French that's accessible from the US? I'm not too happy with the Netflix offerings. All of there shows are either fast talking Parisian comedies or movies. Right now it's looking like youtube is my only option.
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DaveAgain
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Re: Who's on First? (Jack's French Log)

Postby DaveAgain » Tue Jul 26, 2022 6:03 am

jackb wrote:Anyone know of a longish (50 episodes) soap opera-type show in French that's accessible from the US? I'm not too happy with the Netflix offerings. All of there shows are either fast talking Parisian comedies or movies. Right now it's looking like youtube is my only option.
En Therapie has lots of short episodes, I think you'll be able to watch that. There were two seasons on Arte.tv, but season 1 seems to have been deleted.

Unité 9 on tv5mondeplus.com has lots of episodes. (soap set in a Canadian prison).

The radio adaptation of L'amie prodigieuse has 20 episodes: tome 1, tome 2.
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jackb
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Re: Who's on First? (Jack's French Log)

Postby jackb » Tue Jul 26, 2022 12:10 pm

Thanks for the suggestions DaveAgain. The Arte show gives me the error message that isn't available in this country. It looks like tv5mondeplus is only available if I have a subscription through my cable service. The largest providers (Verizon, Comcast or Directtv) aren't in the list. If anyone is wondering here's the supported list: Altice One, Cox, Dish, Frontier, Hotwire, Lus Fiber, Slingtv, Optimum, and Spectrum.

I'll definitely give the radio play a listen.
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jackb
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Re: Who's on First? (Jack's French Log)

Postby jackb » Wed Jul 27, 2022 1:44 am

Ok, so in order to get the tv5mondeplus stuff, I'd have to get at subscription to tv5monde usa. This subscription is available as an add on from the major cable providers. By the way the usa tv5monde, has subtitles for most of the shows and they can't be removed. From their site(https://usa.tv5monde.com/en/about/faq-250767):

How do I turn the subtitles off/on?
Currently, it is not possible to choose your subtitle preferences as our subtitles are embedded into our programming. To see which of our programs do or do not have subtitles, please click on our "View Schedule" page. Subtitled programs are marked with an American flag or a French flag icon, depending on subtitle language availability.


I don't think the tv5mondeplus shows have plastered subtitles, but I'm going to find out soon. The add-on for verizon fios (my provider) is $12/month. This is probably easier than trolling youtube, but is it worth $100+/year?
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jackb
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Re: Who's on First? (Jack's French Log)

Postby jackb » Mon Nov 28, 2022 3:26 am

It's been a long time since I've posted. I'm humming along on the super challenge.... well, at least the video part. I did some training for work that was available in French, so I did the reading part and counted it for the super challenge. There is more training available in a few months that will also have French versions. When I do those courses, I'll take the French option.

For now, I'm taking a good, hard look at Esperanto with the Fastest C1 challenge hosted by Spranchprofi. We're meeting weekly on Zoom to activate what we learned in from the chapter for this week. We've met twice so far and I've been a babbling idiot both times. This is the first time I've done anything like this and I don't feel comfortable at all. I need to prepare differently this week so I just don't have words bouncing around in my head. Part of the problem is that I did the first two chapters not as thoroughly as I could. The other thing that didn't help is that I watched 3 episodes of Astrid and Raphaelle. French was getting in my way big time.

It's a strange thing. I thought I had an English brain and a French brain, but it it turns out that I a have an English brain and an Other brain. I guess that's what interference really is. I need to start creating my Esperanto brain.

I'm going to have to do things differently than I've done in the past. I'm still not sure what to do about it, but I need to figure it out quick. I might stick the chapter 3 stuff into anki and see how that works. There's not a ton of vocab, so it will be easier to prevent the torture machine effect.
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Re: Who's on First? (Jack's French Log)

Postby Amandine » Mon Nov 28, 2022 3:51 am

Good luck with the Esperanto C1 - what a fun thing to do!
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jackb
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Re: Who's on First? (Jack's French Log)

Postby jackb » Tue Nov 29, 2022 2:04 pm

Thanks Amandine. It's been fun and interesting the first couple of weeks. Spranchprofi is kind, generous and plain old awesome for doing something like this for free.

At first I couldn't decide exactly what to do differently, so I just put all of the new words in Anki after doing chapter 3. If anything, it will be an electronic way to keep the list of words. In the meantime, I'll just do the reps. I'm doing my reps in the morning and writing sentences with the same words later. The first day was yesterday. It's just 3 to 5 unrelated sentences per word, but I'm already feeling more comfortable with the small set of words. It will definitely be slower that just doing cards, but it's ok because I'm also practicing output. This should make the next meeting more comfortable.

Parking French. As I've said before, I'm a serial language monogamist so I'm not going do be doing any actual study. My video/movie watching will be knocked down to 5-10 hours a week and never on the weekend to prevent interference. Hopefully this will keep my listening at or near the same level. A bunch of my twitter feed is in French so I'll get some reading in there.

I'll probably be posting more often so I can keep track of my thoughts and methods a little during this whole thing.
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jackb
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Re: Who's on First? (Jack's French Log)

Postby jackb » Thu Dec 01, 2022 9:08 pm

This is my first time doing beginner material in a while and different questions/thoughts keep popping up. I used to just think of it as kind of a word bank. Just put the words in and they'll be there when I need them. This time, I ask myself 'how will I use this word/phrase/construction?'. Coupled with the sentence writing, I feel like I'm remembering things better.

Anki just isn't helping. I'm not sure what it is, but I'm just not interested in doing the cards. There always seems to be something better to do. The sentence writing actually gets me excited. I look forward to doing it. At some point, I'm going to put the words into a spreadsheet and pull them from that list to do sentences. This may have been my last go at it.

In my internet travels, I found this: http://www.longwood.edu/staff/goetzla/strategies.htm . It's a college professors list of strategies for learning a foreign language. Most of the strategies are well know in these parts, but it was the first time I'd seen all of these in the same place. The one's I found most interesting are for reading and writing. I'm putting it here for easy access and reminders.

10. Reading strategies: When reading anything in another language, such as instructions for homework exercises, captions under pictures, magazine or newspaper articles, stories, anything, you should follow these steps:

DO:
a. First skim: read for the gist, not for details. Guess at meanings, based on the context, and try to get a general idea. Take into account any pictures, titles, subtitles and format.

b. Think about what you already know about the topic. Bringing to mind concepts that may have something to do with what you are reading will help you to understand more.

c. Assume that cognates mean what they look like (although they don't always). Guess. Guessing is good, if it is based on things like the context, what you already know about the topic, the part of speech, etc.

d. Skip words you don't understand. (Skipping is good; guessing is good.)

e. Predict and revise your predictions about what is going to occur in the reading.

f. If at this point you really can't get an idea about what's going on, choose two or three words to look up. No more.

g. Read the passage over several times, revising your predictions. Each time you read it you will understand more.

h. Make lists in the target language of relevant ideas from the reading: characters, places, events, objects, chronology, whatever seems to be pertinent.

DON'T:
a. Don't look up lots of words in the dictionary; limit yourself to looking up one word per 100 that you read, or less. You don't have to know everything, and you won't remember those words and all that looking up will interrupt your train of thought. When you read in English, you usually don't look up words you don't understand. You use the context to get the general idea. Do the same in your second language.

b. Don't translate into English. You'll understand much more if you stay in the target language, and you will be progressing toward being able to read easily. But if you translate many words, or whole lines into English, you will only be teaching yourself to translate, and to understand the English you wrote.

11. Writing Strategies: When writing in a foreign language, you should follow these steps:

a. DON'T write in English and then translate. You will make your task much more tedious and time-consuming than necessary, and the language will be very far from accurate, making what you write very difficult for anyone to understand.

b. DO: Brainstorm ideas and words you will need. Think of how to say things with words you already know in the target language. Keep it simple. Look up two or three words if you think you must. Make a list of words as you brainstorm.

c. Write down ideas and make lists as you think of them, even if you have some notes partly in English.

d. Identify your audience: who are you writing to?

e. Identify your purpose: why are you writing? What do you want to accomplish?

f. Start composing in the target language, using simple language. Compose on the computer (here at Longwood you have Word in French, German and Spanish, as well as the keyboards for those languages, available on your personal computer and in the Language Lab). Circumlocute, using words and grammar you know, and keeping in mind your audience and purpose.

g. Print it out.

h. Read over your text and add ideas; re-arrange ideas. Think about information that would make it more interesting or more precise and add it.

i. Read it over again, to see if you are covering all of the points necessary to achieve your purpose. Put yourself in the place of the intended audience: does it achieve your purpose? How does it affect you? Is it convincing? What are the omissions or weakness in the arguments or ideas? Make revisions.

j. Read it again, this time looking at the verbs. Check the tenses and make sure the verbs agree with their subjects. Make corrections.

k. Read it again, this time looking at adjectives. Adding adjectives can make your text more interesting and vivid. After adding adjectives, check them all for endings that agree with their nouns.

l. Read your text again and correct the punctuation, spelling and diacritical marks.
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jackb
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Re: Who's on First? (Jack's French Log)

Postby jackb » Wed Dec 07, 2022 1:03 pm

Not much studying so far this week. I've listened to chapter 4, but haven't gone through anything in the book or written any sentences. My kids' pre-winter break school activities are in fill swing so my evenings have been full.

On a positive note, my performance at the meeting this week was better than the first two. Better, but not good. I did realize that there are only a few of us that are actual beginners. It seems like more than half of the group have already been through the duolingo tree for esperanto. There will be a break in meetings for a few weeks at the end of the year. I'll have to do my catch up work then.
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jackb
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Re: Who's on First? (Jack's French Log)

Postby jackb » Fri Dec 15, 2023 10:36 pm

I thought it was a while since I posted and it has been...apparently just over a year. I've a number of mental posts, just never got around to making them real.

I've been thinking a lot about languages and what they are to me. Relationships with languages aren't all that different from the ones with real people. There's the friend that I've know for as long as I can remember. I'm not sure if their thoughts are mine or vice versa. For me that would be English.

French is the solid friend that you have a lot of history with so you don't need to maintain that much. You can go a few weeks without talking, but when you get together it's like you saw each other yesterday.

Then there's the friend that moved into the neighborhood and you hit it off from the very beginning. We like spending time together, we have a lot in common. It's just comfortable. Out of nowhere they get transferred to the other side of the country and things stop as soon as they started. No hard feelings or anything. It's just that neither of us can find the time to genuinely connect outside of a few tweets/texts every so often. Esperanto is that friend.

All this time, there's been someone in the background. Our kids are the same age, do the same activities and go to the same school. We know and like each other, but it never quite makes it to friendship. I often ask myself, "Why don't I hang out with them more?" This is me with Spanish. I somehow have more Spanish in my twitter/youtube feed than Esperanto. Sometimes I feel like I can read Spanish better than Esperanto. "Why haven't I started to learn Spanish?"

It's been a busy year and I haven't had enough time for my friends or languages. I'm going to try to change that this year.
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