Learning a new language

[Sugar Kay]

Really a question for Paige, or if any of you can, jump in!

Learning a language! I find it so blasted hard. Can you give me some
tips perhaps? I am learning French, and I am right at the beginners
stage and I am just finding it hard to remember the order words go in,
the usage, ugh.

Any help is good help!

This is all so one day I read works of Hugo and Dumas in their home
tongue!

Merci beaucoup! (<--nearly there!)

Au revoir!!

[paigerella]

Ohhhh French is so beautiful. More beautiful than Italian, I think. I remember enjoying French when I thought of it as a game. What order the words go in, the conjugation of the verbs, etc. Every sentence was like a puzzle, and I enjoyed that.

Watching movies may help your comprehension immensely. You will always learn a new word, expression, or improve on your accent. My advice is to stay away from romantic films.... like that one that just came out... with that girl who's a bartender... that was soooo boring!

Another wonderful way to learn a language is to do an intensive study on location. That means... go to Paris? There's the Sorbonne language courses, and they are extremely reasonable. Though not everyone can go to Paris... la sigh.

And last but not least: flash cards. Take 3x5's and cut them into smaller strips. Take them with you wherever you go. There are always a few minutes- standing in line at the grocery store, for example, when you can go over some vocabulary :).

There also may be French groups wherever you are-- in San Francisco there are Italian groups who get together for an official "Italian Dinner," once a month, either in SF, Marin, or the East Bay. At the dinner everyone speaks in Italian. I know that in SF we have these for French, too. You just look online for French groups in your area! Don't feel shy to jump in and share your enthusaism! Bring a bottle of wine, or a cheese dip? Something French?

Bonne chance!

-paigerella

[willarkin]

I agree French is so beautiful. Not living in the country it's so
difficult, but I listen to a lot of French podcasts - there is one
called One Thing in a French Day - a Parisian woman called Laetitia
records daily talks of about four minutes each, and posts the text as
well, so if you don;t understand it you can follow it - the text
appears on my ipod so it's perfect. If you search under French
language in itunes podcasts, there are loads - France Culture do a
lot, such as one on Albert Camus in French, as do France Inter, and I
also listen to one called Audio Guide de Paris Gratuit - short guides
to different streets or areas of Paris. I find just playing French as
I'm out walking etc encourages our natural subsconscious mimetic
abilities. At the same time you can't really get away from having to
do the more unpleasant things, like carrying a small French dictionary
and looking up words to remember!

friends of mine do "language swaps" in London, where you meet a
foreign student who lives near you and wants to learn English - you
speak for half an hour in English and half an hour in their language -
free apart from the coffee. I've not done that but have hired
occasional French tutors - students basically, who go for a coffee and
talk and correct your French for a pretty small fee. I arranged a
bunch of tutors earlier in the year in Paris and going to cafes/
restaurants with extremely enervating (and, yes, beautiful)
Parisiennes certainly gets you to try your hardest - I found it fairly
scary but hearing myself speak quite well and make myself understood
better than I thought I could was one of the best experiences I've had
in a long time.

I think the film Paigerella is so scathing about is Amelie -
personally I love it though it is indeed sentimental and soppy as
hell. French films on DVD are a great way to do it - you could try
watching them with French subtitles on (sometime they have them for
the hard of hearing) so you can see what they are saying in the
original, though bizarrely I've found the subtitles are often
unnecessarily different from the script. Read My Lips (Sur Mes levres)
is a deeply unsentimental love story and pretty cool - I like L'Homme
du Train as well, including a fantastic sequence in which a French
gangster learns some beautiful French poetry, and Le Gout des Autres
is a cool film about art and snobbery. Les Choristes is out recently,
again fairly sentimental and cliched but not bad

Anyway best of luck - it can be a very satisfying pursuit. By the way,
one of the poems they recite in L'Homme du Train is this, by Louis
Aragon:

Sur le Pont Neuf j'ai rencontr?
D'o? sort cette chanson lointaine
D'une p?niche mal ancr?e
Ou du m?tro Samaritaine

Sur le Pont Neuf j'ai rencontr?
Sans chien sans canne sans pancarte
Piti? pour les d?sesp?r?s
Devant qui la foule s'?carte

Sur le Pont Neuf j'ai rencontr?
Assis ? l'usure des pierres
Le refrain que j'ai murmur?
Le reve qui fut ma lumi?re

It's read beautifully in the film - you can read the whole poem here:
http://www.patricio00.com/post/2005/12/sur-le-pont-neuf-jai-rencontr.html

finally, does anyone have other podcast recommendations? Mine would
be

The Clive James Show if you can download videos - half hour interviews
with authors, artists etc -

In Our Time (BBC) can be fantastic, incredibly eclectic from science
to history to theology to art to anything else -

>From Our Own Correspondent (BBC) for world affairs,

Podictinary for etymology

Mark Kermode film reviews are pretty good - also BBC

I also love the American Shakespeare Centre's podcasts on the plays
they put on, and Bardcast is not bad on Shakespeare either

cheers

Andrew

> > Au revoir!!- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Sugar Kay]

Thank you guys for you replies. I have since turned my back on
learning a new lauguage! Not because of your eMails :P but because I
have decided to tackled Creative Writing from Sep!!! Yep! I have an
idea for a novel that will not leave me alone, so I am going to try
and get some hints and tips. Been writing many notes and observations,
but the finishing line is around 55,000 miles away.