French listening and oral production

[Le Baron]

"S'y mettre" is also often used like we'd say "knuckle down" in American English, i.e. get to work on a task that you may not like.

Yes indeed. And also something like 'have a crack at' or 'wade in', which is what I think they meant here since the actual audio said 's'en mêlent'. It's interesting that they wrote something different, yet similar whilst keeping to the same idea.

[Kraut]

https://www.rts.ch/play/tv/emission/basik?id=13358925

basik - Play RTS
subtitled

basik est un magazine hebdomadaire de reportages. Chaque semaine, il explore des problématiques liées à l’économie, à l’argent, aux énergies, et au quotidien des romand.e.s. basik met les histoires et les destins personnels en avant.

contents (in German): https://sponsoring.srgssr.ch/de/news/basik

[Le Baron]

Yes, why? Though I like the covers generally.

[Le Baron]

Interesting little film report from 1973. About Portuguese immigrant workers taken on by the Michelin factory in Clermont-Ferrand and how the families moved into mostly abandoned and derelict houses of former French winegrowers who left the area and created a Portuguese enclave. Including what was done to accommodate the youth so they could learn French (of course).

[Le Baron]

After a bit of a break David Castello Lopes is back with a "Suisse? video form 52 Minutes. The songs in these are always a laugh. The 16-second long 'Rome' song killed me. The topic of the video is the Swiss Army and the Swiss Guard at the Vatican.

[Le Baron]

The song snippet in the video above is now a complete song and amusing. 'Rome'. This guy seems as at ease in Italian or Spanish (and sometimes German) as he is in French.

[tastyonions]

After a bit of a break David Castello Lopes is back with a "Suisse? video form 52 Minutes. The songs in these are always a laugh. The 16-second long 'Rome' song killed me. The topic of the video is the Swiss Army and the Swiss Guard at the Vatican.

Just got around to watching this, funny stuff.

A bit of slang used a few times in this video and worth noting for French learners: the word "race" in expressions like "sa race", "se prendre une race", "mise de race."

"...les États-Unis, la Chine et même la France malgré une belle mise de race en 1940" (0:45) (= defeat, asskicking)
"Toutes les armées qui ont essayé de conquérir la Suisse se sont pris de grosses, grosses races." (2:15) (= to be defeated, destroyed)
"et quand je dis 'encerclé', c'est encerclé sa race." (2:56) (= completely surrounded)

Also note the expression "se mettre une race" / "se foutre une race" has a different meaning: to get really drunk. And there are also the vulgar exclamations or insults like "putain de sa race" and "enculé de sa race."

[tastyonions]

Found this great clip from INA. The kids in this are adorable, I love their accents:

[Le Baron]

It's one of those set expressions which has lost its original meaning (in the word 'race', though not in all cases), in the way sh*t is widely employed in English. Here in NL the common swearing with horrible diseases has some examples, like 'pleuris' which is really just 'pleurisy has come to mean 'trouble' or a problem. Where people no longer think about the original meaning in this context. Another more dodgy one is the use of 'jood' in compounds.

Those phrases and expressions you picked out above using race can fall either way I'd say depending on the audience. Excellent post highlighting them.

[Amandine]

Enjoyable video of a historian from the Musée de l’armée reacting to Ridley Scott’s Napoleon trailer (and with accurate subs)

https://youtu.be/U0P7JXH6EKs