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Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 5018 days ago

3277 posts - 6779 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

 
 Message 729 of 1317
10 October 2013 at 7:52pm | IP Logged 
sctroyenne wrote:

Speaking of DVDs, remember that just because you're ordering an Italian version doesn't mean you're limited to just Italian - different Region 2 countries will include different collections of audio tracks.


No, it doesn't automatically need only one dubbing and original but it is often the case. DVDs can come in anything from one to eight or so languages and it is always necessary to check. And far too many DVDs are only original or one+original.
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geoffw
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4697 days ago

1134 posts - 1865 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish
Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian

 
 Message 730 of 1317
10 October 2013 at 8:19pm | IP Logged 
Cavesa wrote:
I posted already a separate thread but I immediately remembered you when I found deastore.com, so I'll tell you about my lucky discovery here as well :-)

They have books in French and free shipping anywhere. And quite a wide selection. No idea about the French BDs but they have Italian ones so there is no reason to why they shouldn't have the French ones as well. Actually, they have much better selection of French books than amazon.es or amazon.it despite being and Italian shop.


WTFZOMG?! These prices look like what I paid in the bookstores in Rome. Real books at real prices, "free" shipping? How is this possible? No wait, don't tell me, I don't want to know. Just send me the books.
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montmorency
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4837 days ago

2371 posts - 3676 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Danish, Welsh

 
 Message 731 of 1317
10 October 2013 at 11:18pm | IP Logged 
@emk: I'd forgotten that he mentioned Joyce in the context of the airplane test. However,
I also noticed that "Pride and Prejudice" was on his list of Great Books, and archaisms
apart, I suspect you'd ace that, assuming that you can put up with that sort of novel (I
guess a comedy of manners and a mild satire on the social conventions of that time in
England). [Edit: In French, I mean, of course! :-) ]

Have you ever tried, or would you ever try "Le Grand Meaulnes" (Henri Alain-Fournier)? I
actually found that quite difficult in English, for some reason. Perhaps not so much the
language as for the rather confusing plot.

Edited by montmorency on 10 October 2013 at 11:25pm

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emk
Diglot
Moderator
United States
Joined 5541 days ago

2615 posts - 8806 votes 
Speaks: English*, FrenchB2
Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 732 of 1317
12 October 2013 at 9:25pm | IP Logged 
Whoo-hoo! I just finished all ~400 pages of Le Père porcher, which I started late Tuesday night after falling asleep. This puts me at 8,864 pages, with 1,136 remaining for the year. In terms of unknown vocabulary, this book was actually quite a bit more challenging than Le pont de la rivière Kwaï. I probably averaged a couple of unknown words per page, despite having read the French translations of other books in this series. That still puts me a bit above 98% vocabulary comprehension, though. We'll see what happens when I start importing these sentences into Anki; I should be busy for a while. But I find an occasional Anki binge to be quite useful, because it helps pick up the stubborn words that I can't learn from context.

My Anki backlog has been cleared out for everything but Egyptian, which is still a work in progress.

montmorency wrote:
Have you ever tried, or would you ever try "Le Grand Meaulnes" (Henri Alain-Fournier)? I actually found that quite difficult in English, for some reason. Perhaps not so much the language as for the rather confusing plot.

I just glanced at a few excerpts, and the language looks reasonable. But the plot summaries were quite long and complicated, so I can see why it might have been annoying. I already have a long backlog of genuinely good French classics, and of enjoyable books with no redeeming intellectual virtues, so I'm not very likely to ever get to it.
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Avid Learner
Diglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 4671 days ago

100 posts - 156 votes 
Speaks: French*, English
Studies: German

 
 Message 733 of 1317
13 October 2013 at 6:07am | IP Logged 
emk wrote:
Since learning French, I've realized that "knowing" a word isn't a "yes or no" kind of question. For example, I just picked up an English copy of Bujold's The Hallowed Hunt, and I found the following phrase on the second page I scanned (emphasis added):

Quote:
Ingrey was relieved to see that the hallow king had not been dragged from his sickbed and propped in some sedan chair or litter to attend his son's funeral. It would have been too much like one bier following another.

What does hallowed actually mean? I would guess "holy", because I know the phrases "Hallowed be Thy name", "hallowed ground" and other similar collocations. But I can't give you a rigorous definition. The same with bier—I'm guessing it means "place where you put a dead body (somewhat archaic and formal)", but again, I'm guessing.

Actually, "bière", in French, is a synonym for "cercueil". That's not the word we use in everyday language, of course. ;)

See etymology #2 here. It apparently comes from old French, so it amuses me that you happened to use this as an example of an English word you didn't know. ;)

Edited by Avid Learner on 13 October 2013 at 6:09am

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sctroyenne
Diglot
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5400 days ago

739 posts - 1312 votes 
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Spanish, Irish

 
 Message 734 of 1317
13 October 2013 at 6:34pm | IP Logged 
Avid Learner wrote:
Actually, "bière", in French, is a synonym for "cercueil". That's
not the word we use in everyday language, of course. ;)

See etymology #2 here. It
apparently
comes from old French, so it amuses me that you happened to use this as an example of
an English word you didn't know. ;)


When I reread L'Etranger not too long ago I was beating myself up for encountering this
word that I didn't know right at the beginning (from the context I knew that there was
no
way he could be talking about beer) until I looked it up and realized I didn't know the
word in English either. Reading Lolita in French I also experienced this but I caught
on
early enough that Vladimir Nabokov is quite the lexicomane.

Edited by sctroyenne on 14 October 2013 at 5:28am

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emk
Diglot
Moderator
United States
Joined 5541 days ago

2615 posts - 8806 votes 
Speaks: English*, FrenchB2
Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian
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 Message 735 of 1317
14 October 2013 at 5:13am | IP Logged 
My next novel is Le Déchronologue, another bit of French science fiction. According to Amazon.fr, Le roman a été récompensé par le prix européen Utopiales, le prix du Lundi, le prix Bob Morane et le Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire, which is a pretty nice slate of prizes.

The basic idea is "17th century French pirates in a world where the past and future are leaking into the present." Happily, the author takes this premise quite seriously, and builds rich characters and a believable background.

The vocabulary is moderately challenging, thanks to lots of archaic maritime details. But if you like either science fiction or old-fashioned sailing ships, this looks like a winner.

Avid Learner wrote:
Actually, "bière", in French, is a synonym for "cercueil". That's not the word we use in everyday language, of course. ;)

In English, it turns out that I guessed correctly: A bier is a table on which you lay either a dead body, or (in modern times) a coffin containing a dead body.

sctroyenne wrote:
When I reread L'Etranger not too long ago I was beating myself up for encountering this
word that I didn't know right at the beginning (from the context I knew that there was no
way he could be talking about beer) until I looked it up and realized I didn't know the
word in English either.

I got beat up occasionally by certain Assimil Egyptian lessons, which featured vocabulary that I didn't know in English or in French. Both the wildlife and the culture of ancient Egypt cam be pretty alien.

Playing around

Also, a minor distraction for Saturday and Sunday. It's still very much an experiment, and it's headed in a different direction than either LingQ, LWT or readlang:




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Bakunin
Diglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
outerkhmer.blogspot.
Joined 5139 days ago

531 posts - 1126 votes 
Speaks: German*, Thai
Studies: Khmer

 
 Message 736 of 1317
14 October 2013 at 5:43am | IP Logged 
emk wrote:
Playing around

Also, a minor distraction for Saturday and Sunday. It's still very much an experiment, and it's headed in a different direction than either LingQ, LWT or readlang:





What's this, emk? It looks monolingual and very interesting! Is it what I hope it is, a reading application that allows you to mark sentences, a word in it, which is then looked up automatically in a monolingual dictionary, and then a flashcard is created for export to Anki? Are you going to share this?


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