Adventures in French and Spanish
Posted: Tue Jul 21, 2015 3:44 am
This first post will be a placeholder post to be edited at a future date.
My Adventures in French - HTLAL
My Adventures in French - HTLAL
We talk languages
http://forum.language-learners.org/
sctroyenne wrote:It's a good year to be reading Pagnol! In a French class we read about all the festivities that are going on for the 120th anniversary of his birth. I think some restauration projects are happening and I think the articles said Daniel Auteuil should be due to finish his Pagnol films.
Le retour de Martin Guerre is great! The book is actually considered a landmark work in the study of history. While everyone else was doing big macro histories (Fernand Braudel and Les Annales), she produced a compelling micro history from a village from an era that has relatively few records and managed to stitch together this slice of life mystery which also revealed a lot about the lives of simple villagers. It's a really fascinating approach which yielded great results!
And a thousand times yes about the accent. I'm not sure if my accent actually varies in quality or if there's a sort of Dunning-Kruger effect going on. I definitely feel the better you get the more you become aware of how far you are from native. Also, an interesting recent phenomenon: when I was taking classes I had some of the strongest French in the class. After classes I would feel like my accent and my speaking skills were astronomically better. Then I'd be in conversation with French natives and I'd feel like a stumbling oaf - might as well be dressed in shorts, a giant American flag tee, and a baseball cap. Perception of my relative French skills definitely has a lot to do with it but I do wonder if confidence makes a noticeable difference in things like accent.
rlnv wrote:Hi Mohave. Great quote from Le Premier Jour. I'm always looking for good eBooks to add to my queue, and I searched amazon.com and it looks like its just available in paper. How did you like the book? Are you reading most of your books paperback? I'm looking forward to your grammar book reviews.
Mohave wrote:Hi rinv - Thanks for stopping by! I would say Le Premier Jour is ok, but honestly, it was my first Marc Levy book, and I was a little disappointed. Also, you must have a second book, La Première Nuit to finish the story. I'll pobably read it at some point, but I didnt start it right away.
I read Le Premier Jour in paperback. When I visited Belgium and France last year, I filled up a carry-on suitcase with used books that I bought for 1€ or 2€ each. I vacillate on whether I prefer to read on my iPad or prefer paper books. For me, each one is a slightly different experience, although that experience is not now as far apart as when I first started reading. When I read a "paper" book, I read more extensively. I skip over words that I may not now and I read faster, only looking up words that I see several times that I can't figure out from context. When I read an ebook, I think I read more intensively, more slowly. I enjoy both ways, but slightly different experiences for me. My favorite reads so far are: 1) Jean de Florette/Manon des Sources - Pagnol, 2) Le Petit Nicolas series, 3) Le Silence de la Mer - Vercours (short story). All of these are easy reads.