Good luck to YOU nest0r! And thanks for all the resources/fish. :-)

Knowing absolutely nothing about it, I have friends who are both French from France and French Canadian. They tell me that for formal settings, such as the news and French learning materials Canadians use International French, so basically the same as French French. Listening to Radio Canada or something would be fine, so I'm told.

Apparently Quebecois comedians are popular in France, and they do use dialect and distinct accents (maybe a bit like the Osakans of the Francophile world!) and in movies you might find a lot of dialect being used (a great example if you like the buddy cop movie genre in funny bilingual form is Bon Cop Bad Cop). The problem is there is a lot more great content coming out of Quebec that France - French tv dramas are terrible! The highest rated programs are usually American (apparently). On the other hand I'm also told that a lot of young Quebecers are adopting more working class accents to be cooler (sort of like the Estuary English or "Mockney" by people like Jamie Oliver). So I'm not too sure about podcasts right now...

This is off-topic but speaking of Osakan humour, has anyone seen this excellent video:

Thanks for the info, I was wondering about that. I was using French Canadian like it was a dirty word. ;p "As if I want to sound like I'm speaking Canadian French. Pah!" - Not that I was going to do much 'speaking' focus per se, that's for a different resource/tactic...

I just watched a French guy get beat up and refuse to fight the next round on The Ultimate Fighter after getting me excited when he began to speak of how he wanted to show everyone that French fighters are strong and spirited. There went my dreams of UFC: France. Guess we're stuck with England, where everyone in the audience is willing to poke fighters in the eye as they steal their hats.

nest0r Wrote:Thanks for the info, I was wondering about that. I was using French Canadian like it was a dirty word. ;p "As if I want to sound like I'm speaking Canadian French. Pah!" - Not that I was going to do much 'speaking' focus per se, that's for a different resource/tactic...

I just watched a French guy get beat up and refuse to fight the next round on The Ultimate Fighter after getting me excited when he began to speak of how he wanted to show everyone that French fighters are strong and spirited. There went my dreams of UFC: France. Guess we're stuck with England, where everyone in the audience is willing to poke fighters in the eye as they steal their hats.

Interesting.

nest0r Wrote:I guess I'm wondering if you can go into more detail of what you mean?

It's not a huge thing, I will explain for each sentence what feels wrong. Bear in mind that for French I can be a bit extreme, in the way that some people will insist on rules they have learned but which aren't actually true.


Le tireur a frappé son objectif.
The shooter hit his target.

The English is idiomatic, in English you can shoot a gun and say that *you* hit the target. In French, "frapper" implies a contact, so he would have to hit physically. But this doesn't fit with "shooter", which implies that some object (bullet, soccer ball) is sent and that object makes contact.



Les frites sont faîtes à partir des patates.
French fries are made from potatoes.

The sentence is meant generically, but they use "des" which reads here as a contraction of "de les" and gives the feeling that we are in a specific situation, someone is showing you around a school kitchen for instance and says "and here the fries are made from the potatoes". To get the generic idea across I would say "à partir de pommes de terre" (in the generic case I would also use the less casual "pommes de terre").



Le couple a marché à travers le parc en se tenant les mains.
The couple walked through the park holding hands.

The "marché à travers le parc" is correct but feels a bit strange to my hears, I would say "a traversé le parc" or rather "s'est promené dans le parc". The other part is "en se tenant les mains". Because of the "se", the "tenir" action is reciprocal, mutual, and we usually say in French "en se tenant la main" to mean the usual English "holding hands". The translation "en se tenant les mains" implies for me that they are holding both hands, which doesn't fit so well with "walked".



J'espère que vous avez eu un vol plaisant.
I hope you had a pleasant flight.

We don't use "plaisant" that much in this kind of sentence, it would be something like "agréable".




La soupe est trop chaude pour manger.
The soup is still too hot to eat.

When you use a construction like this with an infinitive (pour manger), you have to be a bit careful. There are impersonal constructions or maybe other examples where what I will say does not apply. There is an unstated subject to the infinitif (we, I, someone...) and the meaning is that the soup is too hot to be eaten. If there is a real subject in the main sentence ("la soupe") it should be the subject of the infinitif clause, which is not the case here. I would rewrite this as "La soupe est trop chaude pour être mangée", or "La soupe est trop chaude pour que je puisse la manger" or "La souep est trop chaude pour qu'on la mange". The last two versions have different subjects in the subordinate and main clauses, and therefore do not use an infinitive construction.




Ma peau est trop délicate pour utiliser du savon rugueux.
My skin is too delicate to use harsh soap on.

Same as above on the infinitive (it's not "my peau" that "utilise"). Also I would not translate "harsh" as rugueux, but probably use "aggressif".

I forgot to mention FrenchPod, which has audio. If you want to listen to the podcasts and do the lessons and whatnot you have to pay a subscription, but if you want the words you can go to the glossary and it shows you example sentences with audio for free:

http://frenchpod.com/resources/glossary
e.g. http://frenchpod.com/resources/glossary/entry/domaine

I found the suggestion from this blog, which seems to follow AJATT:
http://www.spanish-only.com/2009/10/fren...ces-audio/

You still have to do it by hand though. What you can do is get a frequency-based wordlist, generate urls of the http://frenchpod.com/resources/glossary/entry/* kind, (slowly) crawl the site to download each page then strip the source for the mp3 link.

Nest0r, if you know of a good clean frequency list I can try and do it (er, eventually, when I have time ). I've been on the lookout for a good frequency list for French for a while now. I downloaded the frequency list for French from here: http://corpora.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/download.html but it seems pretty messy and full of rubbish.

This: http://bit.ly/bOCSaW would be good if it was in a useful machine readable format.

@nyquil - Oh, thanks for the breakdown. Well that sucks. Why would anyone invest in having so many sentences read by a native speaker, using unnaturally literal translations? They must think people want to learn unnatural French by studying heavily from the translation? How could someone learn words in context if the word usage is unnatural? Sounds bloody foolish.

Are the conjugations and word order and the like correct, at least? As in, are these sentences grammatically correct as 'skeletal' structures, regardless of meaning/naturalness?

@nemotoad - That is awesome, thanks! Have you seen this? http://french.languagedaily.com/wordsand...mmon-words - Most common 1000 French words.

That Spanish Only site has some good tips, I was checking it out yesterday and it was like reading a RevTKer's blog, if they had a blog instead of just posting here.

@Nemotoad - What do you make of this?

http://translate.google.com/translate?js...l=fr&tl=en

@Nemotoad

Ahem, thanks for the link to that book, which I will post a link for buying here, that is to say, 'I file it' away--I mean I'm filing it away for future reference: http://sn.im/e30p2ga

This comment makes more sense if you've read my books thread.

@nest0r
Thanks, I came across the Lexique site before and it's great data for corpus linguistics research, slightly less good for the exercise of pulling audio from the web. The lists still need a bit of cleaning (by a francophone). Languagedaily, which I hadn't come across before, is a good clean version of the list... except it seems to have only the first 300, not 1000. Bummer. Also the way they've refined the list looks slightly different to other frequency lists I've seen for French (usually 'de' seems to be the most frequently occurring word, not 'etre'). But that's enough to start off with. Keep in mind with FrenchPod you won't get unique sentences for every word - it will return every sentence that the query word appears in, including strings that just look the same but don't have the same meaning.

Hmm... I just sorted the lexique list and it does start with "de" as the top word. The positions don't reflect what's on the languagedaily list, though it overlaps. I'm a bit skeptical about languagedaily's list now, but on the other hand it's nicely annotated...

The same kind of thing with unnatural sentences happens in Rosetta Stone and similar language courses. They have a template and just whack out the different language versions for the same sentences regardless if it makes sense or not in terms of localisation.

@Nemotoad

I believe the versions on Language Daily and the like are from here: http://www.lexique.org/public/gougenheim.php -- être appears at the top of that list.

By the way, I think we should just give up. We shouldn't use, say, that Language Daily 300 to create a deck of sentences with native audio. We definitely should not share such a deck at a site that rhymes with 'sega', 'pup', or 'toad'. Here is a link to point out how bad it would be to share such a deck: http://tinyurl.com/VSD89PU1 -- Now don't get excited by that string of random numbers and letters in the shortened URL, I know it might seem familiar somehow, as if it resembled another type of URL, but that is only a coincidence.

Likewise with the link above to the freq. dictionary on Amazon. 'I file it'--I mean I filed it away for later purchase, that snipped Amazon link, that's all. There's nothing more to .it -- I mean to it. Yep, I just Googled that phrase I typed twice, put it in quotes and everything, it's definitely an incorrect grammar construction. Filed. Filing. That's better.

nest0r Wrote:@nyquil - Oh, thanks for the breakdown. Well that sucks. Why would anyone invest in having so many sentences read by a native speaker, using unnaturally literal translations? They must think people want to learn unnatural French by studying heavily from the translation? How could someone learn words in context if the word usage is unnatural? Sounds bloody foolish.
Are the conjugations and word order and the like correct, at least? As in, are these sentences grammatically correct as 'skeletal' structures, regardless of meaning/naturalness?

Well I guess they could be close enough that as a first contact with French they'd be OK, some of the things I outlined above are a bit subtle and if you ask someone else at first glance they might say the sentences are alright. The thing I would be careful is use in an SRS: high repetition of even slightly unnatural sentences doesn't sound like a good idea.
As for the grammar, it seems mostly OK, apart from the two sentences with "pour" and an infinitif, which I think is incorrect but once again I may be wrong.

nyquil Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:@nyquil - Oh, thanks for the breakdown. Well that sucks. Why would anyone invest in having so many sentences read by a native speaker, using unnaturally literal translations? They must think people want to learn unnatural French by studying heavily from the translation? How could someone learn words in context if the word usage is unnatural? Sounds bloody foolish.
Are the conjugations and word order and the like correct, at least? As in, are these sentences grammatically correct as 'skeletal' structures, regardless of meaning/naturalness?

Well I guess they could be close enough that as a first contact with French they'd be OK, some of the things I outlined above are a bit subtle and if you ask someone else at first glance they might say the sentences are alright. The thing I would be careful is use in an SRS: high repetition of even slightly unnatural sentences doesn't sound like a good idea.
As for the grammar, it seems mostly OK, apart from the two sentences with "pour" and an infinitif, which I think is incorrect but once again I may be wrong.

That was my fear as well. It's all good, as they say. Switched over to Frenchpod's example sentences via the glossary, per Nemotoad's comment and my follow-ups. ^_^

@Nest0r, truly you have a dizzying intellect. <_<

I'll be attempting to give up in the next few days, and when I'm done giving up I will be avoiding all sega systems (unless it's running bubble bobble), puppies and toads as suggested.

Filing still has me confused but what's new... Book thread? What book thread? Were there kittens and frogs and playstations that I missed? Where is this mysterious string of seemingly random numbers and letters? Enquiring minds wish to know.

Thanks for the pointer to that list. I'm still wondering why être is at the top though. Most French frequency lists agree on 'de' being at the top. What a shame I can't actually read French to find out more. Anyway in practice I'm sure it doesn't make a difference, the first 300 probably has plenty of overlap.

I used to work with a lot of these frequency lists for other research and for some reason never thought about the language learning aspect. I really wish now I'd kept copies of the many fine lists I had. Sigh.

Apparently the Gougenheim is based on much spoken word (interviews or somesuch), so perhaps that resulted in a slight skew somehow. I compared it to some other lists and the first 500 words, at least, seem to have much overlap.

I was referring to my 'totally innocent books' thread, about Japanese books and how not to find them.

Since you pointed me in the right direction, re: Frenchpod, I'll clarify a little. What I meant was that some URLs for certain kinds of bad sites you should avoid have random strings of numbers and letters. It depends on the site, but usually this is the case. I can think of at least two sites like that. Oddly enough, I've noticed that when I generate shortened URLs to totally legitimate sites, they have similar alphanumeric strings. But don't think they're related, it's just a coincidence.

Some of these sites might rhyme with 'sega', 'pup', and/or 'toad'. I'm not saying they do, but they might.

Apologies again for mistyping 'I file it', my repeating that phrase has no special significance to above posts, it simply must be that my grammar is suffering from learning French and Japanese. So don't look any deeper into 'I file it', especially don't Google it.

At any rate, I now have two resources that render unnecessary further obsession with this topic. Until I reach the level where I want more resources in a couple of years...

It seems I and your obscurity are the merest acquaintances at present, but luckily I met my uncle's wife who pointed me in the right direction. I think. (Sheesh. My head hurts. All I wanted was some kittens and frogs). I hadn't read that innocent books thread before so thanks for that. It's amazing the things you don't find on the interwebs.

Right well, I shall attempt crawling like the thousand-legged worm I am with whatever nonexistent things I happen to find lying around. Will report back once I'm done.

Nemotoad Wrote:It seems I and your obscurity are the merest acquaintances at present, but luckily I met my uncle's wife who pointed me in the right direction. I think. (Sheesh. My head hurts. All I wanted was some kittens and frogs). I hadn't read that innocent books thread before so thanks for that. It's amazing the things you don't find on the interwebs.

Right well, I shall attempt crawling like the thousand-legged worm I am with whatever nonexistent things I happen to find lying around. Will report back once I'm done.

Here's an update. I mean, uh, here's a link to the ever-updated Wikipedia, about multimodal integration: http://sn.im/d10be370 - I think I spotted a bit of vandalism that was quickly corrected, someone randomly typed in something, can't remember what--scare flea? cher plea? It sounded something like that. Maybe if I read my Japanese Subtitles thread it'll jog my memory...

nyquil Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:@nyquil - Oh, thanks for the breakdown. Well that sucks. Why would anyone invest in having so many sentences read by a native speaker, using unnaturally literal translations? They must think people want to learn unnatural French by studying heavily from the translation? How could someone learn words in context if the word usage is unnatural? Sounds bloody foolish.
Are the conjugations and word order and the like correct, at least? As in, are these sentences grammatically correct as 'skeletal' structures, regardless of meaning/naturalness?

Well I guess they could be close enough that as a first contact with French they'd be OK, some of the things I outlined above are a bit subtle and if you ask someone else at first glance they might say the sentences are alright. The thing I would be careful is use in an SRS: high repetition of even slightly unnatural sentences doesn't sound like a good idea.
As for the grammar, it seems mostly OK, apart from the two sentences with "pour" and an infinitif, which I think is incorrect but once again I may be wrong.

You're right in every points, some of these sentences are grammaticaly incorrect, but in a spoken context, the person in front of you should be able to understand you without any difficulties.

By the way, are you a native french speaker?

And just in case I've been too obscure: Yes, I now have an Anki deck that is 'French Core ~2000', i.e. sentences with translations and native audio. I am 10 times more confident in these sentences than the ones nyquil critiqued, which I deemed unacceptable for my purposes. Thanks to those who gave tips. In exchange please accept the above cryptic hints, should you ever study French.

Elidan456 Wrote:You're right in every points, some of these sentences are grammaticaly incorrect, but in a spoken context, the person in front of you should be able to understand you without any difficulties.

By the way, are you a native french speaker?

Yes, I'm a native French speaker. And I agree that the intended meaning is clear in those sentences, and that in a spoken context it wouldn't matter too much.

wow, it's a damn shame that that company doesn't have GermanPod.com
germanpod101 is...probably not going to give me what I want

Nice job nest0r, single-handedly doing what smart.fm did with Japanese, except for French.

You know, a friend once told me gullible wasn't in the American Heritage Dictionary and I actually went and checked. Yep, I'm just that slow.

@nest0r, I am overawed by your skills and/or scared. Since I am thicker than the average plank of wood, I am assuming this thing is done and dusted and these scripts (my screenplay, natch) I've been working on I should just print out and hang on my wall. Nest0r, as always, many thanks, this is brilliant!

Hey nestor, would you care to share your Core 2000 for French? I'm interested.

@mentat_kgs - See above: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...0#pid95810 - But to clarify: http://sn.im/d10be370 - It's possible to customize sn.im URLs. So that what looks random (the alphanumeric string) might not actually be random! Amazingly enough, it resembles the kind of numbers and letters you might find in other URLs. URLs of download sites that you should avoid, wink wink. Sites that rhyme with 'scare flea' or something like that. Maybe it's not 'scare flea', perhaps if you go here and read these links it will jog your memory: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...7#pid65667 - cher plea? hair beat?

@Nemotoad - I don't even know scripting and such, either. Just very stubborn and determined. ;p Plus make sure you got the 'updated' version above.

If anyone's still unclear, follow the same principle blackmacros talks about: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...2#pid90832 - Just with a site that rhymes with 'scare flea' instead of 'sega pup toad' for the above. Damn, should I just find an easier way to do this? It's so fun being cryptic, though. Plus at least we know the method works, somehow.

I call this method Gunnming! http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...4#pid94194

Nemotoad, mentat -- Did you get everything OK? hehe, Just want to make sure...

Cheers and many thanks Nest0r, I did indeed (after much head-desk theatrics). It's great and a big help to my studies! When I have time I might try and extract the pop up word by word definitions they have for each sentence as well in case that would be useful to anyone.

Oh also, after much trouble I finally found the audio repository I mentioned earlier in the thread: http://shtooka.net/collections/fra/en/

Not sure if it's been posted here before for some other reason. Although the audio is all for vocab, and no sentences, there's also a section for French proverbs and idiomatic expressions, which might come in handy: http://swac-collections.org/

You've probably also already heard of this, which has native speaker audio for French words and phrases: http://www.forvo.com/languages/fr/

Some day a deck of these might magically appear, you never know! <_<