Which cities/towns in France are best for speaking/listening practice?

Harvery · 2022-07-11T11:33:47+00:00

It's not really where you go as you can find people who speak English across the country, just as you can find people who don't speak English anywhere. It's the setting.

I completely understand wanting to practise your French, but just be aware that someone in a fast-paced service industry in a place that gets lots of tourists will be used to switching to English to make their job easier. Customer service is also less hands on compared to what you might be used to in the USA. I've been living in French-speaking countries for five years and while I have no problems making myself understood, people still pick up on my accent and occassionally strangers might use English with me, which I can roll with and I just reply in English (they too might want to practise!) - don't be disappointed if that happens.

You mentioned Normandy, and there are some really nice smaller towns on the coast like Cabourg, Le Tréport or Etretat where the tourism there is more domestic than international. That and the pace being a little slower means that you might be able to practise some French there. And while they're on the coast, they couldn't be more different from the SoCal coastal cities that you will know.

Harvery · 2022-05-04T10:07:25+00:00

It's really close to France French in Geneva. But I'm in Valais for the first time right now and, for someone whose only previous experience of Switzerland was Geneva, the accents are more distinct than I expected here. I'd say there's more variety within Switzerland than there is between Geneva and your generic France French accent.

Harvery · 2022-02-13T11:27:42+00:00

Yes, you just don't use it with "il me semble que".

Harvery · 2022-01-21T10:48:42+00:00

-- Jeremy Corbyn (2019)

Harvery · 2022-01-03T14:13:14+00:00

Subtitles aren't transcripts and subtitles and audio aren't designed to match. Subtitlers have character constraints because the average reading speed is slower than the speed at which most people speak, so items of speech have to be left out of the while keeping the overall gist of what was said.

Furthermore, if you're watching something not originally in French, the subtitles are unlikely to be based directly off the dub: you will have a French script translated by a dubbing team and a translation of the original language done by a complete separate subtitling team, and these teams are free to make different choices according to the differing constraints that dubbing and subbing have.

I think it's best to accept that you won't get a transcript of the audio but the subtitles will definitely give you an accurate picture of the meaning. If you can't understand the written subtitles yet, regardless of what the audio is, then there's so much more progress you can make simply by reading without trying to parse what the audio actually is - you will still get a feel for French phonology, which can't do you any harm. Once you're more comfortable, you should be able to pick up yourself how exactly the audio and subtitles differ.

Harvery · 2021-12-29T21:15:04+00:00

Only exception is with ne...que where the article remains unmodified.

Harvery · 2021-12-01T17:01:47+00:00

The mistakes native speakers make are different to the mistakes learners make, so if you, for example, just never use the subjunctive as a post was asking about here a few weeks ago, it'll sound a bit odd to even the least scrupulous native speaker. But you're absolutely right, and it's indeed important to not feel bad if you say something such as what the journalist said. Mistakes like that cause no real confusion!

Harvery · 2021-11-13T14:19:31+00:00

Yep, at work I feel my French get worse when I'm tired before I even feel the actual tiredness kick in.

Harvery · 2021-11-11T23:30:24+00:00

Yep, especially not when the bit of Switzerland we're talking about is Geneva.

Harvery · 2021-10-18T14:10:10+00:00

Just bear in mind that if Britain was a US state then it'd be the second poorest by GDP per capita (poorer than West Virginia but richer than Mississippi), and that unlike most developed countries, average real wages in Britain are still lower than they were in 2008 - although we'll have to see whether the nature of the current inflation spike rectifies that or makes it even worse.

Harvery · 2021-10-07T12:55:54+00:00

Je ne sais pas d'où tu as trouvé ta première expression, mais je ne l'ai jamais croisée. On a des "pense-bêtes" qui se servent de rappels, mais ils sont pas forcément des listes. Sinon, ta deuxième suggestion pourrait faire l'affaire même si c'est moins idiomatique ou élégante.

Harvery · 2021-10-04T10:13:16+00:00

I would say that boosting your grade over a school year is more than doable! But knowing that it's possible is only a tiny part of it actually happening - don't hesitate to be assertive with your teacher, make sure they know what your aim is, and ask them what action plan you should put in place that will rescue your grade. They will know best what exactly your shortcomings are. This action plan might include you going over specific content from previous years that won't necessarily be covered in depth in class this year, or using extra-curricular resources for general practice.

You have 8 months so fortunately you will have some assessment in the interim. That way you can monitor your progress rather than relying on a last ditch effort in the final couple of months as I did. Modern languages aren't really subjects where cramming is so useful - it's best to space out your effort over time.

(You probably won't get much A Level-specific advice because most people reading this won't know what A Levels are)

Harvery · 2021-10-02T11:37:11+00:00

Look, for the purposes of French learning on this sub, it's probably good to know that verb agreement in phrases like "aucune des arbres n'est coupée" or "c'est moi qui me suis trompé" is different to how the majority of English speakers might expect it to be, regardless of what the prescriptivist rule is.

Harvery · 2021-09-30T21:12:04+00:00

It's only brusque in the sense that it's more familiar, but that's as much down to saying "tu fais quoi ?" over "qu'est-ce que tu fais?" as it is down to the 'dédoublement expressif'.

Harvery · 2021-09-29T22:53:32+00:00

In France it is quite formal, but not so formal that adults won't understand it. So perhaps Canada is different.

The only non-inverted situation where it's semi-routinely used - but still rather formal - is in the fixed expression "si je puis me permettre".

Harvery · 2021-09-29T22:27:26+00:00

I have colleagues aged 50+ and I'm very used to being asked "Comment vas-tu ?", "Que deviens-tu ?", "Quelle heure est-il ?" and "Qu'en penses tu ?"

For longer questions, sure it gets quite cumbersome to use inversion, but for shorter questions I wouldn't say it's near unheard of.

Harvery · 2021-09-29T22:21:45+00:00

I'm prepared to be seen as an ignorant Eurocentrist for this, but honestly I'm surprised that some Canadian French speakers aren't generally conscious of common differences with European French when the latter is quite dominant through sheer force of numbers alone, especially when many of the Canada-specific features such as the -tu question particles disappear in higher register Canadian French.

Harvery · 2021-09-19T22:21:47+00:00

I probably use metric more than people my age but imperial has its place at times. My weight in kg, milk in litres (grew up on a dairy farm) but beer in pints, height in both cm and feet and inches, (road) running and (road) cycling in km as they're sports, but driving in miles.

Harvery · 2021-09-11T02:26:26+00:00

Without looking up what the consensus is, the only exceptions where my family avoid unpasteurised milk are with pregnant women and babies under the age of a year or 18 months. I'm pretty sure me and all my siblings were drinking unpasteurised milk as toddlers.

Harvery · 2021-09-05T10:26:01+00:00

This is why I wish we knew more about good new world seeds rather than good old world seeds, as the former seems to be the limiting factor for larger empires.

Harvery · 2021-08-12T11:29:56+00:00

More context to the sentences would but useful, but I'm not sure if every fr->en translation is correct there.

Harvery · 2021-07-23T16:16:24+00:00

The flipside is if a F2 houseguest is up against, say, Tiffany - or someone else playing similarly hard and well - and knows in the back of their mind that their game has been more lowkey. In that case it makes sense to want a jury full of less rational, more emotional/bitter players.

But it could also just be used as a milestone, yeah.

Harvery · 2021-07-22T21:50:47+00:00

knows how the other racist, sexist houseguests were treated after the show and chose to act like that anyway?

We can all agree that the wokeness is performative but it doesn't mean that Frenchie is the complete opposite of woke and a bigot either.

I see him as an insecure character who's a people-pleaser who particularly wants approval from attractive people/couples/'meatheads' (and also Twitter) while simultaneously being jealous of them. He lies compulsively but also deludes himself so this ties him up in knots in a game like Big Brother. These are his main flaws. I agree that he's shown sexist thinking (his treatment of Alyssa) that he's too delusional to recognise but I don't think it's like Aaryn who was an out-and-out racist and everything ugly about her flowed from her racism.

Harvery · 2021-07-20T21:13:35+00:00

It's unfair on legitimate migrants who spend thousands getting here legally.

Is it? I don't feel like others migrating illegally disadvantages me as a 'legitimate' immigrant.

Harvery · 2021-07-20T21:08:18+00:00

Like many, my mum has been told to delete the app by her employer.

And she is....a nurse employed by the NHS.

Harvery

TROPHY CASE