French listening and oral production

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Le Baron
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French listening and oral production

Postby Le Baron » Wed May 04, 2022 12:45 am

It's with a bit of uncertainty that I start this thread, because there is a long-running French study thread, but also a new B1/B2 study thread, in addition to a C1/C2 one!
However I am fairly specific in what this is meant to be and to do. I'm not addressing the passing of any exams or even considering 'levels. I'm just interested in posting and others posting useful material for French listening and discussing it. Specifically materials that broach topics around being able to develop listening and perhaps develop speaking without worrying about perfection. About problems and difficulties and overcoming them. Also the acceptance and realisation that you can be active and fluent in French (though it goes for any language) without being 'indistinguishable from the natives'.

As such, and as a first post, when I was looking at all those French you tube teachers after a discussion of them in a thread, I chanced upon a video which I thought was quite useful. This person's other videos are quite short and just deal with vocabulary, idioms, useful slang sayings etc, in quite slow speech. However in this video she has a (slightly nervous at times) chat with a Romanian girl who speaks French, Despite her fluency she catalogues certain obstacles and errors; awkward pronunciations, words that seem alike; not understanding tone or having written perfection. She has a foreign accent, but the French girl understands her perfectly and she understands the French girl. This is what matters.

They probably speak quite rapidly at some bits, but I checked and there are transcript subtitles rather than rubbishy YT generated ones.

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Le Baron
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Re: French listening and oral production

Postby Le Baron » Fri May 06, 2022 4:37 pm

I'm thinking maybe I should have started this for Spanish to help myself out by getting recommendations, but it's a bit late for that now. I hope people are are taking the trouble to listen to anything posted and will make comment or discuss.

A while ago I found the archive of Radioscopie on France Inter (which was a bit like the BBC's Desert Island Discs). I've heard live rebroadcasts of these in the past, but the internet gives access to many an archive now. They're a rather intimate discussion between host Jacques Chancel and all sorts of personalities, from film stars to political figures. This one has Romy Schneider. It would be far-fetched to say she wasn't fluent in French since almost her entire career was there. Yet like many who learn the language as an L2, she never did have total control over it. The correct answer to this is: who cares?

There are tiny stumbles and errors to notice. Like at 04:38 where she says "comment dire..?...j'n sais pas le mot en français.." Not: 'je (ne) connais pas...' Several times she asks for repeats and hesitates and isn't sure of a word or the full import of a question. He clarifies, they move on. She speaks confidently for an hour. There are other people interviewed who speak French as an L2 (often very well) like Omar Sharif or fluent but less accomplished with pronunciation like Ingrid Bergman. Bergman is so confident that even when she makes mistakes it's charming and no-one cares. It's interesting to compare their approaches and word choices with an interviewee like Catherine Deneuve or François Truffaut or J.P. Sartre; who as natives have a somewhat different approach. Deneuve in particular speaks at machine gun speed at times. :D Yet others such as Jeanne Moreau or Hergé are much more relaxed and measured.

Here's Romy. She was so lovely. Chancel is trying hard to flirt with her. :lol:

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Re: French listening and oral production

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Fri May 06, 2022 6:06 pm

I watched this interview a few weeks or months ago, and today I see that I "liked" it. Easy enough for me to understand, but not enough command to be able to comment on her command of French, did not notice the "sais" for "connais." Sharif's French was a surprise, for no good reason, of course. I wonder how he learned it. I'm going to give Bergman a shot, too, just to learn something about muffing a language and being charming at the same time. ;)
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Le Baron
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Re: French listening and oral production

Postby Le Baron » Fri May 06, 2022 6:14 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:I watched this interview a few weeks or months ago, and today I see that I "liked" it. Easy enough for me to understand, but not enough command to be able to comment on her command of French, did not notice the "sais" for "connais." Sharif's French was a surprise, for no good reason, of course. I wonder how he learned it. I'm going to give Bergman a shot, too, just to learn something about muffing a language and being charming at the same time. ;)

French was still around in Egypt when Sharif was young, though I don't know his exact reasons for learning (he was a polyglot anyway). His first wife, the lovely film star Faten Hamama, also spoke French. You can see her interviews on YT. She's good too.
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Re: French listening and oral production

Postby lingohot » Tue May 10, 2022 6:05 am

Does anyone of you understand what the person in the attached audio recording says?
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guyome
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Re: French listening and oral production

Postby guyome » Tue May 10, 2022 6:46 am

lingohot wrote:Does anyone of you understand what the person in the attached audio recording says?

I hear "T'as fini par voir le ???, t'es con ou quoi ?", with ??? being something like "tempo".
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Re: French listening and oral production

Postby zenmonkey » Tue May 10, 2022 7:29 am

lingohot wrote:Does anyone of you understand what the person in the attached audio recording says?


T'as failli me perforer les tympans! T'es con ou quoi !?
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Le Baron
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Re: French listening and oral production

Postby Le Baron » Tue May 10, 2022 1:36 pm

zenmonkey wrote:T'as failli me perforer les tympans! T'es con ou quoi !?

Excellent job. Like guyome I also heard 'fini' on first listen.
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Re: French listening and oral production

Postby lingohot » Tue May 10, 2022 5:08 pm

guyome wrote:I hear "T'as fini par voir le ???, t'es con ou quoi ?", with ??? being something like "tempo".


zenmonkey wrote:
lingohot wrote:Does anyone of you understand what the person in the attached audio recording says?


T'as failli me perforer les tympans! T'es con ou quoi !?


Thanks!!! That totally makes sense in the context (the other person was screaming in the speakers ear right beforehand). If you knew how many times I listened to this little extract, I just couldn't understand it (only "t'es con ou quoi" at the end...). So hard... I had a feeling it could be "failli" but after that I didn't understand anything.

Do you think it's useful / a good idea to ask audio-related questions like this in this thread?
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Le Baron
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Re: French listening and oral production

Postby Le Baron » Tue May 10, 2022 5:41 pm

lingohot wrote:Do you think it's useful / a good idea to ask audio-related questions like this in this thread?

It certainly is. That's the sort of thing I made it for. The discussions are useful to everyone.
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