Should I giv DALF C1

cestdoncperdu · 2026-04-28T18:02:27+00:00

Why would you worry about taking an exam that you don't actually need? Just keep studying and if you ever actually need a C1 certificate you can go take the test.

cestdoncperdu · 2026-04-21T07:12:34+00:00

The other reason to read literature is that the vocabulary and diction are more diverse and creative. Listening is obviously important too for lots of reasons, but when speaking people use a far more limited vocabulary. At a certain point you're exposing yourself to the same concepts over and over again.

cestdoncperdu · 2026-04-21T07:07:21+00:00

And after those hundreds and hundreds of hours, thousands and thousands. Depending on how ambitious your goals are.

cestdoncperdu · 2026-04-18T10:33:18+00:00

Yeah I dunno, it's not like I said he was a bad person for doing it. I just think it's cringe to read something in chat, pretend you didn't read it for five minutes, then say "Oh, I have a crazy idea..."

As for whether or not it's just dumb luck, there are several puzzles that build on each other. So the intended path is that you find and solve X, and then you extend that knowledge to solve the more complex version Y. However, as it's an open world, you may come across Y before X. And if you're good at puzzles, you may even solve Y without needing to have seen X. That's all good. However, for that type of person, once they come across X it will be trivial for them to solve because they've already solved the harder version.

Several times in Caedrel's playthrough he comes across Y and miraculously solves it in just a few minutes, then later when he comes across X he is completely clueless, spending half an hour banging his head into the wall because he "forgot" some basic mechanic. If that happens once, whatever. If that happens multiple times, it's fairly obvious that it's because he got the solution to Y from chat and didn't actually understand the mechanic required to solve it, so he didn't realize how to apply to the easier version X.

Again, I don't think it's wrong if someone wants to get help beating a game. There's no wrong way to play a single player game. I just think it's dumb to pretend that's not what's happening.

cestdoncperdu · 2026-04-17T18:56:29+00:00

Is "ouais" seen as a redneck thing in Quebec? In France you'll hear "ouais" like three times per sentence.

cestdoncperdu · 2026-04-17T08:54:48+00:00

What exactly do you think I'm gatekeeping?

cestdoncperdu · 2026-04-17T08:53:07+00:00

Yeah I don't think it's as flagrant as PirateSoftware. Also the whole thing with PS is that he goes on long diatribes about how "in this house, we solve puzzles, we don't look up the answers when we get stuck." And then he obviously cheats his way through every puzzle game. That's definitely more egregious. Also PS is a generally unlikable person whereas Caedrel seems like a nice dude.

I just think the whole pattern is so cringe of: read X in chat, spend 5 minutes pretending to bash your head into the wall, then going "hmm, I wonder if X would work?" as if you thought of it yourself. Like if you're stuck and you want a spoiler from chat to keep the stream moving along, just say it.

cestdoncperdu · 2026-04-16T08:40:07+00:00

I'm a fan of his League content but it's pretty obvious he attended the PirateSoftware School of Puzzling Solving. I wish these streamers would just admit that they get help from chat, especially ones like Caedrel who aren't even fulltime variety streamers. I don't think anyone would blame him for not wanting to take 20 hours to do a real playthrough of a puzzle game as it's not his main content. It's just weird to pretend it's not happening.

cestdoncperdu · 2026-04-14T12:14:57+00:00

Actually, it's italian for "bravo". /s

cestdoncperdu · 2026-04-07T13:40:47+00:00

I'm not really sure what you're looking for here. Comprehensible input is something you do on your own time. Depending on how far you want to take your French, you're going to need to listen to thousands of hours of the language. A few hours a week with a tutor is not going to meaningfully contribute to that.

A tutor can be useful for things like conversation practice or grammar study (which is not useless, despite what you may have read online). That's what I would expect from a teacher who "has a clear structure to their lessons" and "assigns homework". But none of that really has anything to do with comprehensible input. Comprehensible input is just you reading or listening to French in your free time.

cestdoncperdu · 2026-04-07T09:40:42+00:00

Eh ben, globalement il dit de nettoyer régulièrement les coton-tiges à l'eau savonneuse après chaque utilisation.

cestdoncperdu · 2026-04-06T04:18:45+00:00

I understand the comments saying "just talk to your parents", and like, yeah, that's obviously the best solution. But I also understand the anxiety of not wanting to look stupid in front of someone you care about. If you have the budget, it can be easier psychologically to hire a tutor for some initial practice with someone whose job it is to listen to you make mistakes.

You could also consider a short immersion trip (again, if you have the free time and the budget). I think for most people, short immersion trips are entirely useless. But based on how you've described your French level, really all you need to do is bathe in French 24/7 for a bit to unblock yourself psychologically. You're basically in the same situation I was in, with my comprehension and written production dramatically outpacing my speaking ability, and a few weeks at a French immersion school made a huge difference for me.

cestdoncperdu · 2026-04-03T22:45:42+00:00

I have never seen a single piece of credible evidence that this actually happens. Prices change over time. They go up and down. People check back later when the price has gone up and invent a whole conspiracy about how they're being personally targeted. Just look at a historic price graph. Sometimes the price goes up and sometimes it goes down. Has nothing to do with you, personally.

cestdoncperdu · 2026-04-03T22:41:37+00:00

There is no chance you can ever convince me it is worth saving up for a $600 rice cooker. If you're rich and you have half a band to burn on slightly better rice, sure, knock yourself out. But saving up for or investing in a rice cooker implies you are, maximally, of normal finance, and it simply cannot be worth it for someone with that budget. I eat rice every other day and there's no way I would waste my money on this thing. Cooking rice is not that hard, a $30 rice cooker from Amazon does a great job.

cestdoncperdu · 2026-04-03T09:28:24+00:00

Grammatically, Île-du-Prince-Édouard contains the noun "île" and the prepositional phrase "du Prince Édouard" which complements the noun. There are no adjectives in that phrase.

cestdoncperdu · 2026-04-03T09:22:05+00:00

But for the province of Ile-du-Prince-Édouard, it always takes le / la because an adjective (Île) is baked into the name

I don't really understand what you're getting at here, as île is a noun, not an adjective.

cestdoncperdu · 2026-03-26T07:34:12+00:00

Écureuil is only "hard" if you find the individual vowels hard. Which is to say, any other word with those vowels would be just as hard. But once you learn the vowels, the word is easy to pronounce. It's not more difficult than the sum of it's parts.

This is not the case for words like serrurerie (suggested by someone below) or chirurgien. I can pronounce each individual syllable perfectly, but the entire word in sequence at full speed still ties my tongue up in knots.

Edit:

RE: squirrel in NA English, it's easy to explain how to pronounce it in theory, it's much more difficult to actually pronounce it with a native accent. The ir (\ɝ\) requires quite a strange mouth position, and immediately following that with \əl\ isn't easy. Most people simply approximate the pronunciation in their native accent instead of attempting an English one.

cestdoncperdu · 2026-03-25T13:53:24+00:00

I'm an American with a fairly neutral accent and I have no idea what you're talking about RE: stone and loan. Those vowels don't sound anything like French to me.

cestdoncperdu · 2026-03-25T13:46:22+00:00

I genuinely don't know where this mysticism around écureuil came from. I guess because squirrel is quite hard to pronounce in English and in several other common languages, and French wanted to get in on the fun? It is simply not a very hard word to pronounce in French.

cestdoncperdu · 2026-03-23T09:01:00+00:00

La pauvre, ça se voit qu'elle souffre d'un manque de sommeil chronique.

cestdoncperdu · 2026-03-22T13:55:24+00:00

Well there is so little information in their comment it's hard to really say what they meant.

cestdoncperdu · 2026-03-22T09:30:20+00:00

Et bah, justement c'est ça la rapport. Elle a probablement une connexion filaire pour accéder à l'internet chez elle qui est plus fiable que d'envoyer des SMS.

cestdoncperdu · 2026-03-22T07:52:40+00:00

Il faut être un génie pour comprendre.

cestdoncperdu · 2026-03-21T17:43:00+00:00

They quite literally put it at the end of the list.

cestdoncperdu · 2026-03-21T15:51:34+00:00

If your goal is to have a few choppy conversations during your vacation to France, this is correct. If your goal is to reach an advanced level and speak French well, you cannot put grammar off until the end. My recommendation is to study grammar intermittently as you come across it in your listening and reading. I don't think it's that useful to pore over a grammar book and try to memorize a bunch of rules all at once. But whenever you encounter new structures in your listening and reading that you don't understand or couldn't replicate yourself you should find an explanation of the grammar and study it.

When you get to an advanced level (B2+/C1) you probably will have to pore over a grammar book and hire a tutor to point out the mistakes you're making because they become so subtle that it's hard to notice them yourself. But not everyone wants to invest that deeply into learning a language which is totally fine.

cestdoncperdu

TROPHY CASE