Language Audio Files: French I

Before reading this post, note that this is a response to a previous post called "The Need To Speak". Read that if you'd like to know the reasoning behind this.



And so, I've finally uploaded it. I simply feel silly, but I know its for the greater good. Did I mention that I hate the sound of my voice?

Here is the text of what I read:
Student 1: Alores, qu'est-ce que je peux faire à Montréal en trois jours?
Student 2: Trois jours seulement? C'est difficile à dire... il y a énormément à faire en ville. Commence par le Vieux-Montréal, le cœur historique de la ville. Par exemple, la place Jacques-Cartier, avec ses bâtiments du XVIIIe siècle, l'hôtel de ville, le château Ramezay et son musée. L'architecture est splendide. Et, bien sûr, une visite de la basilique Notre-Dame est indispensable.

The Need to Speak

I love to learn languages.

Well, honestly I love the concept behind language - bits and pieces of sound from our mouths, coming together in some masterful order that relays messages of any sort. And then, there are so many different ways to attach the sounds to each other that it just leaves me in awe. But I've noticed something just a few minutes ago:

I don't use them!

Really, all this time learning French and Japanese yet in the end I use English because its what I need to use. There aren't enough French and/or Japanese outlets for me into interact with on a constant basis. And because of that, all my effort slowly start to unwind themselves and I end up forgetting what I learned.

Now what is a boy to do? Is he to run away, abandon his dreams of traveling to faraway lands and actually understanding the natives instead of depending on hastily brought phrase books to get him through the trip? And heaven forbid he ever gets lost, for he won't know heads from tails, much less how to read a map.

No, he will not run away. Instead, he will create avenues to interact with the languages in a more hands on manner.

Now, I'm the type of person who when learning a language likes to only read. Reading is easy. Its personal and you can take as much time as you need to look up words and the such. But now, I'm sick of simply just reading. It doesn't help me when I need to speak, which should be most of the time. So, here is my plan to fix this:

As I look around my room right now, I see a good amount of books in French and Japanese that I've collected through nothing less than unusual means. Most of them are in a bookshelf just watching the days roll past. Now what I would like to do is once or twice a week, take a passage from one of these books and record myself reading it. Then allow for full public humiliation by posting the audio files right here on this blog.

Why would I be so willing to send myself up the river like that? Well, its because this is the area that I am lacking in - speaking in another language. I am far too bashful for my own good and my speech is choppy at best. By putting the files online, I'll have a record of my progress so I can see how far I've come and how far I still need to go.

Here is what I hope to be the most interesting part. In every post with audio, I plan to have a copy of the text I'm reading typed out for all to see. This way, not only can people who actually do speak the langauge properly can point out where I made mistakes and maybe even make audio files of their own for me and anyone else to listen to and repeat after, working on the sounds we mercilessly massacred. Matter of fact, I want anyone who is learning the language the post is in to post audio of what their reading so that they can get feedback as well.

Of course, there are some flaws I see in this. One is that its going to be seriously painful for me to go back and listen to my own files since I completely detest the sound of my own voice when recorded. Second is that no one will upload files with me. But even if that does happen, its still ok because what matters is the practice I'll get from it.

Anyways, I plan to get the first file up, if not today, then by Friday. I still can't believe this never occurred to me before...

French Translation Mission

On my friend Caroline's English-French Exchange site, a French member has recently proposed a bit of a challenge to the English speakers. That challenge is helping to translate his up and coming company's blog for a North American release.

So far, we've began the efforts and have one post done. We've started up a google doc that I believe is open to anyone wanting to jump in. Sadly, I'm really only able to give time over the weekend to participate, but its better than nothing I'd suppose. Also, it gives me an excuse to come into contact with French more often - other than my French course that recently started.

There is one noticeable downside in translating - espcially thoughts that are not your own. It is that its hard to collect all of the ideas, feelings, and idioms in language and transplant them into another. It really just becomes awkward to read. For example, here is an original paragraph:

Je n’ai pas pris de bureaux, pour des raisons d’utilité et de coûts. La société est domiciliée chez moi. Lorsque je préfère travailler à l’extérieur ou que l’équipe a besoin de se réunir, cela se fait dans des cafés. Étant par ailleurs amateur de café, cela m’a inspiré une ou deux choses.

Now here is the translation I provided:

I didn’t take the office because of usefulness and cost. The company is based at my house. When I prefer to work outside or when the team needs to meet, we do so in cafes. Being furthermore amateurs of coffee, it has inspired me one or two things.

See what I mean by the awkwardness? It just doesn't flow in English. And thus, its that lack of flow that I really want of focus on in my upcoming work. Who wants to read a choppy copy of French text online, eh?

Anyways, anyone interested in practicing French with our band of misfits, feel free to head to the exchange site and introduce yourself (link provided above). It'll be nice to get as much people as possible doing whatever role they can. Plus doing stuff like this in a group makes it a whole lot more fun.

Wiki in French!

Hey, just wanted to say that a French translation of my wiki project is under works. All the credit must go to my Belgium friend Caroline, for all of the time and effort she is putting into it.

And here I thought that my dream of seeing it translated was never going to happen... (ha!)

You all can find the site here.

Reading and Comprehension

I've been thinking lately about my training in languages. My Japanese is slowly moving somewhere, though not as fast as I would like it to be, and I'm starting to forget my French (which mortifies me). So because of this, I've started to place this new idea into action. I've asked friends who speak the two target languages to assist me with this concept. Basically, I'm asking them to just glance over articles that I've chosen to read and create questions based off the readings for me to answer. This is nothing new - its a popular way of teaching languages in school. I myself remember being drilled in such ways. And remember that it did help. And now that my old ways aren't working as well as they once were, I need to change things up again. Hopefully I can get somewhere with this.

*Edit: I realize now that this would be something very interesting to research. The link between reading and comprehension. Know what? I think I will go poke around the web and then post my findings here. Save everyone else the trouble.

New Language Books and (Semi)Update to Guides

I recently ran into a bunch of books on grammar for Japanese and French. Some of which include the titles "Minna no Nihongo", "A dictionary of basic Japanese grammar", "A dictionary of Japanese Particles", and "Schaum's Outline of French Grammar". I've been looking through them, trying to come up with a method of study that would wield the most results. So far I've been most drawn to the Minna no Nihongo and the basic Japanese grammar book. They seem to have a lot of quality sentences for me to steal and enter into Anki (for those of you who don't understand what I mean by that, I'm sure to write a little something about it in upcoming days. Google "anki" in the meantime if you'd like...) Schaum's outline of French looks nice as well, but not as nice as the other books I already have. Hopefully I will still have a use for it.

The greater importance of this post is that I'm still figuring out how I should write the so-called guides I've been contemplating. Should they be a collection of notes or me actually doing lessons. I'm leaning towards notes, for I'm simply just not that good in either languages. But nevertheless, I'll figure it out. And soon. Spring Break type soon - tentatively.

Possible Series of New Posts ~ Plans for the Fall

At hunter college, I'm applying to take a new introductory class for the fall of my senior year. I can only get into one of my listed choices, so I'm gunning for a class in French or Japanese (and another subject that is outside of this post's focus). For French, I'm leaning towards an Intensive Elementary course that covers both the 101 and 102 classes, and in Japanese I'm fine with 101 class, though by now I should be able to handle a 102 class (hopefully).
Anyways, in any of the classes that I get into, so long as they are pertaining to these languages, I'm going to have to go over content that I've learned either on my own or in pervious classes. This, of course, is the point of me signing up for them - I want to go through content I've seen before to make sure that I still at least remember it. And that is what leads me to this idea; I want to start reviewing things now and while doing that, write little notes/guides for myself and post it up here for others that may be learning the same languages as well. I'm always being told that the best way to learn anything is to have to teach it to others, so this is my attempt at doing so. Finally, I must ask this: Is anyone interested in seeing such a feature brought to life? If so, tell me any ideas you may have. Same goes for if you don't think its a good idea.

Other blogs of interest

In many ways, this blog was created in response to my then growing interest reading other blogs. Particularly blogs about learning languages, or that are actually in my target languages. Because of this, I figure that writing a small list of sites that I frequently visit or find delightful would be useful in some way or form.

English blogs and/or sites:

http://cocoablogs.com/ - a directory of blogs dealing with people who program in cocoa. I still have plans to learn this programming language and all, but for now I can only put in a limited amount of time to it.


the linguist - Interesting blog. This guy seems to have some really cool ideas on learning languages, many of which that make sense.

French blogs and/or sites:

Alive in Paris - This is a bilingual blog about little events and things going on in Paris. I find that I sometimes go to rely upon the english when the words get to hard, but its still good practice.

Les photos de Moune. - Lots of pictures. Great for when I just want to look at something. The pictures are nice, plus you have French underneath. Only this time, no english to help you out.

Naked Translations - Another bilingual French and English blog. The woman behind the site is a translator and writes about some of her translation woes, among other things. Once again, great practice for anyone learning French.

Japanese blogs and/or sites:

Japanese Wikipedia - Reading articles from Wikipedia in any language is really helpful.

Crunchyroll - Something a friend of mine just recently showed me. The name itself is a bit silly, but the site is a youtube for japanese shows. With subtitles. Really, really nice to watch when you have the time.

So thats it for now. I may do this again sometime into the future but this should be a good start.

Encore Une Fois questions and answers

I've finally got around to posting this up. Been working on it for a while ago and (sadly) I've yet to post it up. Just remember all of these writings in other languages have little mistakes, so I'll gladly take corrections.

Chapter one pg.8
1. Qui va être le narrateur de cette histoire?
2. Où Nicolas et ses amis font-ils leurs étudies?
3. Comment se comportent-ils?
4. Faites le portrait de Nicolas.
5. Faites le portrait d'Alceste. Quel est son principal trait de caractère?
6. Faites le portrait d'Agnan.
7. Pourquoi l'appelle-t-on le chouchou de la maîtresse?
8. Quelle est la conséquence heureuse des lunettes d'Agnan?
9. Faites le portrait de Clotaire.
10. Pourquoi ne peut-il pas jouer à la récré?
11. Qu'est-ce que c'est qu'un cancre?
12. Comment Geoffroy est-il habillé?
13. Qu'est-ce qu'Eude aime bien faire?
14. Quel est le métier du père de Rufus?
16. Faites le portrait de Louisette.

1. Nicolas va être le narrateur.
2. À une école parisienne.
3. Ils sont insupportsblrd, msid ils sont toujours sympathiques. les math.
4. Il est huit ans. Il porte une chemise et un short. Il a les cheveux ébouriffés.
5. C'est le gros qui mange tout le temps. Son principal trait est que il est gros.
6. Agnan est toujours le premier de la classe. Il porte une vester et une cravate.
7. Il s'appelle 'le chouchou' parce que la maîtresse l'aime bien.
9. Clotaire est toujours le dernier en tout. Il ne répond jamais aux questions de la maîtresse parce qu'il ne comprend jamais bien ses questions. Il a le bras cassé.
10. Il ne peut pas jouer à la récré parce que il a le bras cassé.
11. C'est cancre est un "lazy student".
12. Geoffroy est habillé en vrai cowboy.
13. Il aime bien se battre avec ses copains.
14. Le père de Eude est agent de police.
16. Elle est la voisine de Nicolas. Elle a un shoot terrible quand ils jouent ensemble au foot-ball. Louisette a les cheveux blonds et les yuex blue.

Blogs and Langauges and (half) a Resolution

I've recently started to read blogs written in French and Japanese. Or at least, I'm trying to read. While I don't understand every thing, I try to get as much as I can, playing attention to how the words are used. So far, I've found some interesting stuff. For one, many of them are from people trying to learn English, so its cool to see how it is on the other side of the fence. There are even a few that I've read across which are people's attempts to practice their skills in English. Even though there are some mistakes, the thing is that they're not afraid make them. It makes me wonder why can't I put aside any pride I may be feeling and go for it. Which leads me to part one* of my first ever actual New Year Resolution. And that will be to read, write, and listen to my target languages.

*The second part is of no real relevance to this post.

New plan for language study

I've reached a mental plateau. In my French and Japanese studies, I've noticed that I've just leveled out. I don't feel like I'm learning anything new and because of this I need to shake up how I'm doing things. I decided to go back to Pimsleur and the FSI for one. Also I want to make time to start using the Rosetta Stone more often. Finally, I'm looking to take more opportunities to use them in. Because of that on Monday I'm going to a group meet-up in which I have to speak Japanese. There are no if and buts. I've also got into a French language class at Hunter College starting in January. At this point, if I truly wish to keep going in these languages I have to expose myself more to them more often. I can't be as shy as I once use to.