French Listening Comprehension since June 17La forêt (0105-06)
La chalet (0101)
*+
La nuit chez Maud+
Juste avante la nuitLe deuxième souffleWW2: Voutine vs Manstein
*
La boulangère de Monceau*
La carrière de Suzanne*
La collectionneuseLes grands myths: Médée, l'amour assassine
*
Claire's knee: dark and creepy; in color and the cinematography is beautiful
F is for family (0101) (dubbed)
Bojack Horseman (0101) (dubbed)
L'ombre d'un doute: Napoleon
F is for family (0101) (dubbed) (2x)
Total time so far: 81h54m of a goal of 150h.
* A note about the starred films. These are 5 of 6 directed by Eric Rohmer, which he called "moral tales." I don't know how moral they are, but all are about men chasing women and/or vice versa. They grow darker film by film (though I have not watched the last--it was on loan to someone else). The fifth and last I watched,
Claire's Knee, is more than a little creepy. You are warned.
F is for family is an adult animated series, funny, irreverent, coarse, provocative. It has high usefulness for improving listening comprehension, because the dialogue is quick, full of slang and colloqualisms, and accompanied by subtitles that catch the drift but are hardly precise. The viewer should be at least a solid A2 to follow this series. Some examples of the slang/colloquialisms/phrases I just didn't know:
faire un tabac to be a hit
oeuf mimosa deviled egg
crado nasty, dirty
tondeuse clippers, lawn mower
vous avez cap are you up for
ca va barder there will be hell to pay
Bojack Horseman is the same kind of comedy as F is for family, with maybe not quite so much slang or colloquial expressions.
A reminder that x in front of title means NOT recommended. + means recommended. The rest vary. Titles in italics are movies.
Spanish ReadingI finished the first book of Spanish translation of
La Novela de Gengi. I am at Kindle location 14236 of 26776 total locations. Although not finished, this novel ranks for me with
War and Peace and
The Brothers Karamazov and
One Hundred Years of Solitude, and I will be sorry when I finish it.
MandarinI thought I was a beginner in Mandarin, but it turns out I am a pre-beginner. Just downloading a Mandarin language pack was daunting, and once downloaded it altered unasked and unbidden my language of preference from English to German! Ach du lieber!
Ancient GreekI am halfway through Book 3 of Arrian's
Anabasis. It's mostly just Alexander kicking butt wherever he goes.
Poetry has gotten my attention, too. If there were an Ancient Greek equivalent of
On Reading French Verse by Roy Lewis, I would gobble it up. As it is, there is a
Guide to Latin Meter and Verse Composition by David J. Califf and John Traupman, whose approach may--fingers crossed--transfer over to Greek verse. One of the little poems that inspired me was this:
Τῇδε τὸν ἐκ Μελίτης ἀργὸν κύνα φησὶν ὁ πέτρος
ἴσχειν, Εὐμήλου πιστότατον φὐλακα.
Ταῦρόν μιν καλέεσκον, ὄτ’ ἦν ἔτι· νῦν δὲ τὸ κείνου
Φθέγμα σιωπηραὶ νυκτὸς ἔχουσιν ὁδοί.
--Tymnes
The stone says, the stellar Maltese hound here
is interred, the trusty watchdog of Eumelos.
We called it Bull, when was still alive. But now
the silent paths of night hold its bark.
(My loose translation).
Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson