Reading French

[StringerBell]

I checked youtube to see if there was some audio to be found for Le Français par la « méthode nature » (since I found something on YT for Italian version of that series), but alas I couldn't find it. However, I did come across this for Beginner French learners, which seems like it could be useful, so I wanted to post it here in case you don't already know about it (or haven't written it off):



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How did you decide on French as opposed to one of the other romance languages?

p.s. There's an addendum on my reply to you in my log, I forgot to add it originally.

[Querneus]

Wow, I see typing in French is going to be difficult. After adding the French keyboard to my laptop, I couldn't see how to make the 'ê' so just googled the word. Will need to check out all the shortcuts later. I already knew the French keyboard changed some of the letters around but didn't know they changed even the number's row xD

Getting used to an official French keyboard layout is the best approach, but hey, if you're on Linux you can type French with minimal hassle by using the "English (US, intl., with dead keys)" keyboard layout instead. It's basically the US English keyboard on steroids. (EDIT: Just read that you do intend to move to France or such, in which case I say nevermind.)

I hope you enjoy your experience acquiring French, advancing in leaps and bounds. I've definitely had a much easier time with French than Mandarin myself... If I recall correctly, La Méthode Nature comes with an IPA transcription, so that seems like a good choice.

Also, I had never noticed that you were only studying Korean and Mandarin while having a Japanese username.

[StringerBell]

Found a French Youtuber who seems interesting

Who?

[Querneus]

Still iffy if want to bother with learning IPA, never used or seen it before so not sure if worth it or not. Is it as simple as going to a website to hear the French to IPA sounds, hmm...

I think getting used to conventions for transcribing a particular language with the IPA is useful if it is commonly used in dictionaries or related tools. This is the case with French.

Regarding General IPA... It's interesting in its own right but not really necessary, unless you're interested in languages other than the commonly learned ones and you want to use resources linguists make (especially when intended for other linguists), or the topic of speech therapy.

Note that General IPA is not the same as the IPA conventions of a particular language, some of which are quite old and are almost conventional alphabets on their own right. For example, the French vowels normally transcribed "[ɔ ɛ̃ ɔ̃]" in French IPA conventions would be [ʌ æ̃ õ] in General IPA (when describing usual Parisian accents), and the English "[u ʌ 3˞]" sounds would be General IPA "[ʉ ɐ ɵ˞]" (when describing most American accents).

I've been studying Russian recently and I've been astounded by how bad/outdated the Russian IPA conventions are. Descriptions of Russian pronunciation typically transcribe the -ая -aya ending as [əjə], but if you hear recordings of -ая words on Forvo you'll mostly hear [əj] or simply [ə]. In some cases -ая seems to be skipped entirely, as in this recording of Москательная линия Moskatél'naya líniya, which linguists would transcribe as [mɐskəˈtʲelʲnʲəjə ˈlʲinʲɪjə] but I actually hear [mɐskəˈtʲelʲnʲ ˈlʲinʲɪə] (no [əjə]).

[Lianne]

Notes:

• ?,!,: and <</>> require a space before and after them. This must be a new rule because I don't see it in Le Français.
• Finished listening to Unit 0 of Learn French with Vincent.

I don't know if it's a new rule or not, but it does seem to be inconsistently shown in learning resources, in my experience.

[MorkTheFiddle]

[*]Noticed today that 'il/ils' and 'elle/elles' sound the same. You don't pronounce the 's'?

Noticed today that 'il/ils' and 'elle/elles' sound the same. You don't pronounce the 's'?

The plural ‘-s’ ending is always silent, according to the Assimil course. It gets mentioned in lesson 22 for sure and I think I ran into the explanation in at least one earlier lesson, too. ETA: Also lesson 4 and lesson 7 (review lesson).

Just to let you know, Assimil is correct, but in French there is the phenomenon of liaison when a letter of the s/x/z family ends a word. Start with Wikipedia on liaison I guess to get a handle on liaison. You'll need to know something about the so-called mute h, too. But take the pronunciation of French one step at a time, and know that even native French speakers get confused about liaison from time to time. My two cents, anyway.

[MorkTheFiddle]

Notes:

• ?,!,: and <</>> require a space before and after them. This must be a new rule because I don't see it in Le Français.
• Finished listening to Unit 0 of Learn French with Vincent.

I don't know if it's a new rule or not, but it does seem to be inconsistently shown in learning resources, in my experience.

I don't know whether any authoritative French grammars exist on the internet, but I suggest you use the space with all those punctuation marks. If I pick up a French book at random from my shelves, I see a couple of quotations and at least one colon: all with the space. (Pages 174-175 of L'été meurtrier*, Sébastien Japrisot, Éditions Denoel, 1977.)
* The capitalization of titles also follow different rules (sometimes).

[Sayonaroo]

so have you read any French yet??? I just ask since your last 2 posts don't match the name of the thread. I recommend who is she on lingq. It has translation, notes, and the transcription.
https://www.lingq.com/fr/learn/fr/web/course/20000
It seems like you have to login to access the content. signing up is free though.

I eased into French by watching my american shows with French subs (I have no desire to watch french dubs of american shows and I don't read the French subs intensely. I just use it to learn/notice whatever I can easily learn/notice.), doing some anki reviews of cards that were generated from french subs of american shows via subs2srs (no audio, just french and english text from subtitles so the cards are definitely not perfect. Sometimes I used deepl to generate a translation so I can have another reference besides the original English dialogue) and morphman (it orders the cards in i+1 order which is really helpful have you have 30,000 + cards !), going through who is she lingq, and currently I'm watching season 1 of Gossip Girl with French subs so I can learn from the dub since the transcript of the French dub is available. My anki settings are extremely lax and I cap the number of reviews since I still get the benefits without spending a lot of time on anki.

They also have mini-stories for French but I never got interested in going through them since I'd rather read something else. I think I might have felt inclined to go through them if I had no foundation in Spanish which gives me foundation in French to some extent.
https://www.lingq.com/en/learn/en/web/c ... es-courses

By the way lingq also has The Stranger by Albert Camus with the translation and audio. I plan on reading/listening to that once I understand daily conversation French on Gossip Girl.

[Arnaud]

[*]In France, do the students really have Thursday and Sunday off of school? Or has this changed to Sat/Sun?

Thursday was a day off a long time ago (more than 40 or 50 years ago). Thursday became Wednesday (with school the Saturday morning).
Then it was decided to do the week of 4 days and Saturday was without school. Then it was decided to do the week of 4.5 days with school the Wednesday morning...
4 or 4.5 days is a hot debate in France, it regularly changes (see the article on Wikipedia: réforme des rythmes scolaires)

[StringerBell]

Are you continuing to do anything with Mandarin for maintenance while you are studying French, or is that shelved temporarily/permanently?