For those following my posts in the French/German thread, apologies for harping on about it, but I thought it was worth its own thread, potentially: http://www.example-sentence.com/french (also has German and Spanish).

This has example sentences (~1000?) in the target language, English translation, and native audio. The problem is that it's a randomly presented sentence per page refresh rather than allowing you to browse the list--presumably to pull users into the Comprehencia site, which appears to be like smart.fm, but with paid subscriptions. Even the same rhetoric about using an SRS system as if it was only just invented by them. ;p Learn with Science™! Haha.

Anyway, the other problem is that nyquil mentioned the French sentences were incorrect or more like French Canadian or something. For the German, Evil_Dragon said the sentences seemed stiff but correct. Any other observations? Because I would like to make this one of my consistent resources, in some fashion or another.

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Yeah the french spoken sentence have a very small Canadian tone but it also sounds a little bit like some part of France, it's hard to say. I'd worry about other things, the spoken words are just fine.

It's more the intonation going up and down which is less natural but that doesn't matter much as you pick that up in real world usage or listening, the pronunciation of words individually is just fine.

Hopefully you're not using french television programmes (*gasp*) for your "immersion"

One source you could use is http://fr.euronews.net

The pronunciation sounds like typical TV presenter, but is more natural. Skip all the so called "news", and further down you'll find plenty of Science/Space, Cultural etc. All videos have spoken language, except for "No Comment" For example "Closer to the sun" http://fr.euronews.net/2010/04/02/plus-pres-du-soleil/

Ah, thanks for the reply! I was feeling quite deflated. Does this mean you find the structures are grammatically correct? That is, if I deconstruct these sentences to internalize how French sentences are put together, having studied grammar beforehand, will I just be screwing myself up?

And thanks, I'll check it out. I am entirely unfamiliar with French media outside of artsy/vintage films and literature of a certain period. Though I'm quite fond of the translations I've read of Dupuy and Berberian, so I'll look into sequential art (fancy name for comics/graphic novels ;p).

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They look fine (I tried a dozen), but they are really boring

[ファブリス]

I'm a big fan of the french graphic novels of the seventies and eighties. Wonderful stuff from Pratt, Manara, Druillet, Caza, Moebius, and so on, can't go wrong there! But there are of course so many others.

PPS: Can't help much with french audio suggestions as I'll admit I do 99% of my surfing in English. Just this one: ARTE is a cultural TV channel, they have lots of boring stuff but also lots of programs you won't see on the more popular channels. I guess you'll find some interesting video/audio there.

ファブリス Wrote:I'm a big fan of the french graphic novels of the seventies and eighties. Wonderful stuff from Pratt, Manara, Druillet, Caza, Moebius, and so on, can't go wrong there! But there are of course so many others.

I've added them to The List. We'll see whether they mesh with my preference for 'ligne claire'. Every time I try to switch to non-Japanese sequential art, I end up reading a page or two backwards and being really confused.

And great, I'm relieved I can use those sentences as post-grammar cement, as it were. I don't think I'll have to use them as long as I did smart.fm/KO2001, given there isn't the issue of readings.

Caza is probably my favorite artist of all time! Druillets stuff is f*****g epic/amazing and Moebius is also incredible - one of the greatest. I only wish I knew French! Moebius is super famous and has a lot of stuff translated into English -> I have seen a few of Drullets' works translated (I used to have one in French too, though I couldn't read it), but I have NEVER seen Caza's graphic novels here in the States =( But I love his style, it has an original "je ne se quoi" that marks him for me as my favorite artist, despite the fact that I have never gotten to read his work (only have seen his art on the net).

When I think on these artists, I realize that these three probably have influenced my personal style as an artist more than any others (along with Sergio Aragones LOL).