Amanda's 2020 Log: Spanish, French, and Occasionally Ancient Greek

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overscore
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Re: Amanda's 2020 Log: Spanish, French, and Occasionally Ancient Greek

Postby overscore » Thu Aug 27, 2020 5:53 pm

philomath wrote:Today I read Chapter 3 of Le Petit Prince, paying extra attention to the verb conjugations. Before, I was a little worried I would have trouble with the passé simple while reading, but it doesn't seem too complicated. I'm glad I don't have to worry about that tense while speaking though!

I also made a few more Anki flashcards. One thing I'm nervous about is that I don't too much of the vocabulary from Le Petit Prince to enter my active vocabulary, since some of the words might be too old-fashioned. Therefore I added a tag to my Anki flashcards so I know the words came from Le Petit Prince, and I started making basic front-->back flashcards instead of cloze deletion flashcards. So now the flashcards look like this:

Front
le chef-d’œuvre

Back
masterpiece
J’ai montré mon chef-d’œuvre aux grandes personnes.

Since these flashcards are testing my ability to recall the English translation rather than produce the French word, I don't think I'll have to worry about getting these words stuck in my active vocabulary. Of course, if I see the words elsewhere (in a more modern context), then I'll know I can start using them in my speech.


I'd say get more info in your cards, in this case the whole sentence is fine for the front, because it's all useful french and the sweet spot for humans is about 7 items at a time.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_nombre ... ite_note-1

What I do is underline the word i'm focussing on, but still fail the card if the sentence doesn't really come naturally when reviewing.

Q: "J’ai montré mon chef-d’œuvre aux grandes personnes."
A: remek-delo

Ah, also use wiktionary! get the IPA for the words you learn and put it on the front, or back, as you want.

if i were learning "anticonstitutionnellement", id go and get
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/anticons ... nnellement
then put on my card "/ɑ̃.ti.kɔ̃s.ti.ty.sjɔ.nɛl.mɑ̃/".
etc. etc.

french has a many to one writing system, so after a while you'll read with pretty good accuracy. writing is where the confusion sets in. our language is a bit like chinese with its one million homonyms and constant rythm
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Re: Amanda's 2020 Log: Spanish, French, and Occasionally Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Sat Aug 29, 2020 3:38 am

pinkyslippers wrote:I don’t know if you are into bandes dessinées but there are quite a few on insta. I like Théo Grosjean but there are many others: https://www.ladn.eu/mondes-creatifs/ins ... oller/amp/

Thank you for the recommendations! I like that many of the comics use informal speech or slang; I think I'll learn a lot of useful phrases.

overscore wrote:Ah, also use wiktionary! get the IPA for the words you learn and put it on the front, or back, as you want.

if i were learning "anticonstitutionnellement", id go and get
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/anticons ... nnellement
then put on my card "/ɑ̃.ti.kɔ̃s.ti.ty.sjɔ.nɛl.mɑ̃/".
etc. etc.

This is a good idea, and I started adding IPA to some of my flashcards today. I still have trouble with the vowel sounds so I think this will help me.
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Re: Amanda's 2020 Log: Spanish, French, and Occasionally Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Fri Sep 04, 2020 2:59 pm

(See the bottom of the post for an English translation.)

Cette semaine, je n'ai pas beaucoup étudié le français. Hier soir, j'ai regardé le deuxième épisode de Dix pour cent. J'aime bien la série et je suis triste qu'il y ait seulement seize épisodes en plus. Je dois trouver une nouvelle série à regarder. Hier, j'ai parlé avec mon collègue et il m'a dit qu'il a un VPN parce que sa fille veut regarder des séries du Japon. Je pense que c'est une bonne idée. Si j'obtiens un VPN je peux regarder plein de séries françaises.

Hier soir, j'ai aussi regardé des vidéos sur YouTube en français. J'avais dit à mon prof de français que j'écoute le podcast InnerFrench et il m'avait dit que je devrais regarder la chaine YouTube. (En fait, mon prof connaît le mec de InnerFrench et ils sont des amis !) Donc hier, j'ai regardé quelques vidéos de la chaine YouTube d'InnerFrench. La première vidéo que j'ai vu c'était une entrevue avec Damon Dominique de la chaine YouTube Damon and Jo. J'adore cette chaine, donc j'étais très enthousiaste de regarder l'entrevue. Damon est américain, mais il parle très bien le français parce qu'il avait un copain français pendant six ans. Je n'ai pas de copain français, mais son entrevue en français m'a donné l'espoir que je peux parler bien le français un jour.

-----

This week, I didn't study French much. Last night I watched the second episode of Call My Agent. I like the show and I'm sad that there are only sixteen more episodes. I have to find a new series to watch. Yesterday I spoke with my coworker and he told me he has a VPN because his daughter wants to watch TV shows from Japan. I think this is a good idea. If I get a VPN I can watch a lot of French series.

Last night, I also watched videos on YouTube in French. I had told my French teacher that I listen to the InnerFrench podcast and he had told me that I should watch the YouTube channel. (Actually my teacher knows the guy from InnerFrench and they're friends!) So yesterday I watched some videos from the InnerFrench YouTube channel. The first video I saw was an interview with Damon Dominique from the YouTube channel Damon and Jo. I love that channel, so I was very excited to watch the interview. Damon is American, but he speaks French very well because he had a French boyfriend for six years. I don't have a French boyfriend, but his interview in French gave me hope that I can speak French well one day.
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Re: Amanda's 2020 Log: Spanish, French, and Occasionally Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Fri Sep 11, 2020 12:16 am

I've been very busy lately so I haven't studied French much. Tonight I reviewed my Anki flashcards and finished Lesson 4 of the FSI French Phonology course. Then I read Chapters 8 and 9 of Le Petit Prince.
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Re: Amanda's 2020 Log: Spanish, French, and Occasionally Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Tue Sep 15, 2020 2:40 am

Tonight I did Lesson 5, Part 1 of the FSI French Phonology Course. It was hard! The sentences were longer than usual and there wasn't a long enough pause for me to repeat them. Next time I think I should pause the recording so I can make sure my pronunciation is correct rather than rush myself.

I've got to say, I'm looking forward to studying a language with "easier" pronunciation than French. I've found myself dreaming of going back to Spanish or picking up Italian. :lol: I've got to persevere with French though!
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Re: Amanda's 2020 Log: Spanish, French, and Occasionally Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Mon Sep 28, 2020 3:01 am

Yesterday I had my first French lesson this month. It was nice seeing my French teacher again, but my speaking skills had definitely declined since our last lesson. I forgot some basic words and made a lot more grammatical mistakes than usual. I think my pronunciation might've been worse as well. :cry: I definitely need to practice speaking more often, but I'd rather not do a language exchange with a native speaker. Instead, what if I started making videos of myself speaking French? I'm not planning on publishing the videos anywhere, but I think they might motivate me to speak more often and about more interesting topics. Maybe I'll try that this week.
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Re: Amanda's 2020 Log: Spanish, French, and Occasionally Ancient Greek

Postby Miss_French_2020 » Mon Sep 28, 2020 6:03 am

philomath wrote:Instead, what if I started making videos of myself speaking French?

Hi Philomath! I love your log :D

The idea of recording yourself seems interesting and is something I hadn't thought of! Do you intend to work with the recordings in some way or is it more about just getting you speaking more? I'm guessing that you could limit what you say to what you know you say correctly to avoid the grammar or pronunciation errors, or go through the recordings afterwards to identify errors though that might necessitate a native speaker? I would just have the concern of getting used to my bad habits if I wasn't also speaking with and getting corrected by native speakers.
While I do like to use tutors and language exchanges regularly, I've also found that reading out loud helps too. Lots of listening too, and sometimes repeating phrases I hear. I also thought Levels 4 & 5 of Pimsleur were especially useful for improving basic fluency.
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Re: Amanda's 2020 Log: Spanish, French, and Occasionally Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Tue Sep 29, 2020 11:29 pm

Yesterday I reviewed my Anki flashcards and listened to three more chapters of Le Petit Prince while reading along. I had three Audible credits, so afterward I decided to spend them on more French audiobooks to motivate myself to read. I did some research to make sure I was buying books that interested me, and I ended up getting the following:
  • Chanson douce, de Leïla Slimani
  • Bonjour tristesse, de Françoise Sagan
  • Les Fiancés de l'hiver: La Passe-Miroir 1, de Christelle Dabos
Now I really want to finish reading Le Petit Prince so I can start one of these new books. :)

Today I finished Lesson 6 of the FSI French Phonology course. Part of the lesson was dedicated to discussing when the letter 'e' is pronounced in French. Some of it was unsurprising: for example, the phrase "Je ne sais pas" sounds more like "Jen sais pas". However during other parts of the lesson, I was like "Huh? :?" One example phrase was "aller et retour", which the lesson pronounced more like "a llerr tour". (Sorry, I don't trust myself to try transcribing that into IPA.) Then the phrase "Avez-vous le billet?" was pronounced "Avez-voul billet?" I knew that native speakers smoosh a lot of words together when they speak, but this lesson made it really clear to me how much I don't do that when I speak French. I think it will be difficult for me to start consciously doing that more though. French pronunciation is hard. :(
Miss_French_2020 wrote:Hi Philomath! I love your log :D

The idea of recording yourself seems interesting and is something I hadn't thought of! Do you intend to work with the recordings in some way or is it more about just getting you speaking more? I'm guessing that you could limit what you say to what you know you say correctly to avoid the grammar or pronunciation errors, or go through the recordings afterwards to identify errors though that might necessitate a native speaker? I would just have the concern of getting used to my bad habits if I wasn't also speaking with and getting corrected by native speakers.
While I do like to use tutors and language exchanges regularly, I've also found that reading out loud helps too. Lots of listening too, and sometimes repeating phrases I hear. I also thought Levels 4 & 5 of Pimsleur were especially useful for improving basic fluency.

Thanks! :D

I've tried recording myself in the past and did not find it super helpful to listen to the recordings afterward, as it took up a lot of time and it was frustrating when I spoke slowly. Instead, while making the recording, I would pause whenever I had trouble saying something and write it down. Then when I was done recording myself, I would look up all of the phrases I had trouble with and ask native speakers how to say them correctly (usually through iTalki). I'm a little worried about reinforcing mistakes by practicing without a native speaker to correct me, but hopefully any big mistakes will come up during my iTalki lessons and it won't be too late to fix them.
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Re: Amanda's 2020 Log: Spanish, French, and Occasionally Ancient Greek

Postby jackb » Wed Sep 30, 2020 1:40 pm

I think it will be difficult for me to start consciously doing that more though. French pronunciation is hard.


Hi Philomath,

If you are interested, the FSI Basic course for French is available to help with the speaking part. When doing the drills, they use the kind of 'smooshing' you talk about. I end up repeating the words the way I hear them. You might too. I'm in the early stages of the course, but so far I like it.
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Re: Amanda's 2020 Log: Spanish, French, and Occasionally Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Thu Oct 08, 2020 3:03 am

jackb wrote:Hi Philomath,

If you are interested, the FSI Basic course for French is available to help with the speaking part. When doing the drills, they use the kind of 'smooshing' you talk about. I end up repeating the words the way I hear them. You might too. I'm in the early stages of the course, but so far I like it.

Thanks! I think I'll check it out. I tried the FSI Basic course for Spanish a while back and it was too tedious for me, but I'm at a much lower level in French than I was in Spanish, and I could definitely use some more pronunciation training.
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