sctroyenne: French, Irish, Spanish (new beginnings?)

[Arnaud]

deleted

[galaxyrocker]

So I tried again with HelloTalk. I'm not sure what I was doing wrong, but now I'm getting a whole lot more options after searching. I had some luck today with one guy I chatted with. He's studying Irish in university so had a good level of it, which is awesome. Hoping to have some more luck later on.

[sctroyenne]

So I tried again with HelloTalk. I'm not sure what I was doing wrong, but now I'm getting a whole lot more options after searching. I had some luck today with one guy I chatted with. He's studying Irish in university so had a good level of it, which is awesome. Hoping to have some more luck later on.

That's good to hear My local study group leader has caught on to it and I think he's been doing quite a bit to start a little Irish-speaking network (though not sure how he's doing in finding people at higher levels).

[sctroyenne]

First, a little French orthography lesson that is making the rounds on Twitter:



It'd be nice to have a series like this on all commonly-confused homophones

I've been watching quite a bit of YouTube lately and thought I'd share some stuff.

This investigative show brought back a lot of memories from my study abroad year - especially the obviosuly-illegal apartments my fellow students were renting and the horribly awful restaurants of the St-Michel area that all the study abroad students insisted on going to when we went out (seriously, a 25x markup on wine and food that you can cook for yourself better and cheaper?):
Enquête d'Action: Paris - enquête sur les pièges des quartiers huppés

There are quite a few prominant French vloggers which have probably already been posted somewhere on HTLAL. I noticed, though, that some of them have legit French subtitles! Like Cyprien (though not on all videos - looks like just the newer stuff):



The sketch group Golden Moustache has French and English subs:



Others added the auto-subtitles but they have well-recorded audio and speak clearly enough that the auto-subtitles are actually pretty accurate, like Usul, who has done a series of socio-political videos on major French figures (he's on the left):



Though he became known for a series of video game vlogs:



For other vloggers of interest there's Vidéothèque d'Alexandrie which is a guide to educational YouTube channels. They produce a series of "zapping" videos with clickable links to about 5-10 different videos that have been uploaded lately. Some examples:

A linguistics channel that might interest forum members: Linguisticae. He speaks way too fast for the auto subtitles so you won't get much help there but he sticks to pretty standard language (with linguistics jargon).

And there's this history channel that has real subtitles Nota Bene

As for a few others, there's LinksTheSun who does several series though one I find interesting is, "Non mais t'as vu ce que t'écoutes, where he critques the lyrics of songs in the top 50. He talks very fast and can be a bit over-the-top and obnoxious but some of his analyses are interesting, especially one of his most controversial ones (since he's not going after music that's ridiculously bad), Formidable by Stromae. In the video he does acknowledge that the song isn't about lyrical mastery but rather more of a theatrical performance so it's not quite fair to analyse it line by line. But what I really liked is he put up an example (MC Solaar) of what truly astoundingly-good lyrics can be like and shows just how much of a lyrical gap there is between songs that are ok or even good and songs that can be considered lyrical masterpieces.

And another fast-talker who will give your French a work out, a sort of Tosh.0 in the form of a French vlogger, What the cut.

[sctroyenne]

So a few years ago, the most popular French short-form comedy was bref., featuring challenging high-speed narration (really, don't get discouraged) that spawned a bunch of parodies. The "new" Canal+ (check out French news to follow all the shakeup drama, featuring Vincent Bolloré) just unveiled a successor, Bloqués, which features two very lazy guys, probably stoners. You can already tell this will spawn dozens of répliques cultes.

The first episode, Si j'étais riche, is a pretty good advanced listening exercise. The guys talk about what they would do (and sometimes what they wouldn't do) if they were very rich. They list 10 things, with a final one tagged on at the end after the credits. See how many you can list! Listen to it many times (it's only about 90 seconds), and if it's really too hard, try to identify the main thing/action mentioned even if you don't get the punchline.

There are a lot of references to pop culture (including French 80s/90s culture) which can make this pretty difficult if you're not familiar with the references. I can say that one of them had me pretty lost until I saw it quoted and I realized I never would have gotten it on my own.

Bonne chance !

[extralean]

First, a little French orthography lesson that is making the rounds on Twitter:



It'd be nice to have a series like this on all commonly-confused homophones



A linguistics channel that might interest forum members: [url=Linguisticae]https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCofQxJWd4qkqc7ZgaLkZfcw[/url]. He speaks way too fast for the auto subtitles so you won't get much help there but he sticks to pretty standard language (with linguistics jargon).

Thanks, I enjoyed both of these, I can't believe that gangbang was missing from my vocabulary. I suppose it's not something that comes up when talking to your inlaws, unless you're from certain parts of the USA. I will also watch much more of linguisticaes videos.

ps. your link is broken.

[garyb]

I enjoyed Bref when it came out so I'll need to check out Bloqués. I'm enjoying your log in general: these days I've kinda lost touch with French popular culture so reading it is helping me not get completely disconnected.

That said, I've read/seen too many modern films and books to not know "partouze". In the film "Les Kaïra" there's a part where the characters use a website for finding invite-only libertine parties called "Passe-partouze", which always makes me laugh.

[sctroyenne]

ps. your link is broken.

Fixed - merci !

That said, I've read/seen too many modern films and books to not know "partouze". In the film "Les Kaïra" there's a part where the characters use a website for finding invite-only libertine parties called "Passe-partouze", which always makes me laugh.

That's pretty clever I should watch Kaïra - I remember seeing posters for it when it came out in France but it didn't look like one of my kind of movies. But I just heard it mentioned in a podcast on good and bad depictions of the banlieue in French film and it was cited as a decent one so I'll check it out.

Speaking of podcasts, I've been collecting some podcasts of note which I'll do a write up on soon.

[garyb]

It's a bit of a silly film but it's a good laugh, and indeed beneath the silliness you see some banlieue life. Plus it has plenty slang yet it's not as difficult to understand as I thought it might be.

[sctroyenne]

So it's getting time for me to get serious about taking a test if I want to maybe move to Quebec since there's a decent wait after submitting all the required paperwork. There are a few options for exams since they'll covert the results into their own points system. I'm leaning (or more than just leaning) towards the TCF or TCF Quebec since no matter what I'll come out with something which is important for not losing months of application time and not wasting a bunch of money. The speaking portion seems easier too - just 15 minutes and they ask you questions that go from talking about yourself to talking about abstract subjects (with some question dealing with a hypothetical in between - a "What would you do if you were rich" sort of thing).

I took a practice test on the TV5Monde website which has the multiple choice portion. And I was not very pleased. C1/C2 on structure, C1 on reading, and a really disappointing B2 on listening. I think getting one question wrong in each category puts you at C1/C2, two at C1, etc. I selected another question set and tried the listening portion again and got 100% (C2). I hate many "comprehension" questions because it feels like they can be really tricky. It almost makes me prefer the C2 DALF setup where you have to write/speak about the written/oral documents you're given rather than have it all depend on how you interpret a multiple choice question. I'll probably try a few more practice rounds to see if I get the hang of the question style or if it really feels like too much of a crapshoot between B2 and C2.

Something I noticed about all the documents and selections used in the sample test - a lot (sorry James29!) of them had something to do with climate change, ecology, or business. It might be a good idea to get concentrate less on podcasts that are purely political and listen to more that are topical (though with the upcoming COP21 in Paris, I may not have a choice anyway - warning, the website plays audio).

I used to share vocab in my old log and it seems like a popular feature in extralean's so I'll mention some stuff I encountered or finally used in chats lately:

L'amiante (m) - asbestos
une lésion cérébrale - brain damage
l'intoxication au monoxyde de carbone - carbon monoxide poisoning
soupe au lait - I've had this expression around a while but hadn't nailed down a clear meaning for it yet so I asked my conversation partner who said: "quelqu'un qui est sensible, qui prend vite la mouche, s'énerve vite et fort et redescend vite" (and of course now there's an easy translation in wordreference - quick temper, hotheaded)
un pervers narcissique - a narcissist that will make you suffer in personal relationships (apparently narcissistic personality disorder can be considered something different yet related) - manipulative, uses people, someone who might gaslight you (one of my favorite English terms and movies!)
une injonction de domicile - a restraining order
l'erreur médicale - medical malpractice
le foutoir - a shambles, a mess
le zonzon - prison
un boui-boui - a greasy spoon/hole in the wall restaurant/diner
le nombrilisme/nombriliste - navel-gazing