Gibberish or not?

Here's an interesting experiment: try listening to this video and see if you can make out anything.




Then, try watching the one below while reading the lyrics. Do you hear words now?



Are you SURE you heard them? Yes? Me too. But guess what - they weren't real. The entire song is just nonsensical syllables. Seeing the words is what prompted us to hear them.

Weird French idiom of the day

"Devenir chêvre"
Literal translation: Become a goat
Meaning: To become very angry.

I've never seen an angry goat, but in Russia to call someone a goat (Kozel) is an insult too. It means something along the lines of "rude asshole."
We also have a proverb that all men are goats! (It's true.)

If you can read this, consider yourself lucky.

From an article on illiterate Canadians found here: http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/education/canada-shame.html

"When you think of literacy in Canada now, at the beginning of the 21st century, you probably expect to see a rate of close to 100 per cent. That would be wrong. The actual numbers are nowhere near that and should embarrass us all.

• Nearly 15 per cent of Canadians can't understand the writing on simple medicine labels such as on an Aspirin bottle, a failing that could seriously limit the ability of a parent, for example, to determine the dangers for a child.
• An additional 27 per cent can't figure out simple information like the warnings on a hazardous materials sheet, the kinds of warning that set out workplace dangers such as risks to the eyes and skin.

In total, 42 per cent of Canadians are semi-illiterate."

42%??? That's insane. I can't imagine not being able to read. Being semi-literate might be even worse than being fully illiterate - what if you saw a bottle that said "POISON! DO NOT EAT!" and all you could read was "EAT"? If you live in Canada and you'd like to help others learn to read, here are some organizations that are looking for volunteers:

Toronto:

http://www.mtml.ca

http://parkdaleprojectread.org/

http://www.worldlit.ca/

Literacy through Hip Hop - http://www.lthh.org/

Montreal:

http://tleliteracy.com/

http://bluemetropolis.org/index.php?id=66

http://cabm.net/en/node/717693

http://www.frontiercollege.ca/english_literacy.html

http://cabm.net/en/node/717866

Vancouver:

http://www.literacybc.ca/

http://www2.vpl.vancouver.bc.ca/DBs/Redbook/orgPgs/1/11961.html

http://www.vpl.vancouver.bc.ca/find/details/adult_learning_centre

http://www.vpl.vancouver.bc.ca/find/details/literacy_resources

Ottawa:

http://www.occl.ca/

http://www.frontiercollege.ca/english/literacy/ottawa.html

Edmonton:

http://www.famlit.ca/

http://www.literacyday.ca/

http://www.cent4lit.com/

http://www.informedmonton.com/public/agency/0988.htm

Exhausted.

Today's Spanish class was nothing but worksheets for three hours. My hand still hurts from filling out all those useless papers. I'm angry and I feel ripped off - is that kind of "teaching" worth hundreds of dollars in tuition? I don't think so! Also, the prof didn't bother to explain anything and the grammar rules in the worksheets were disjointed and confusing. I'll have to work with my own books over the weekend in order to figure things out.

Although my prof neglected to mention it, today is Cinco de Mayo! Way to go Mexico for beating the French!

French pronouns

French has 5 types of pronouns, all of which are annoying to learn.

Subject pronouns

Je (I)
Tu (You)
Vous (Polite "you")
Il/Elle (He/she)
Nous (We)
Vous (You plural)
Ills/Elles (They. Elles is used for many girls together, and ils is used for a combination of girls and boys.)

Direct object pronouns

First of all, what's a direct object? Direct objects are nouns that are affected by the action (verb) directly. For example: The rabbit ate a carrot."Carrot" is a direct object here, because it's the thing being eaten.

Direct object pronouns are words that replace direct object nouns. Here's how you do it in French:

"Tu prends l'avion." (You take the airplane) becomes "Tu le prends" (You it take.) The D.O.P. is moved to the front of the verb.

Me/m' (me)
Te/t' (you)
Vous (polite you)
Le, la, l' (him, her)
Nous (us)
Vous (you plural)
Les (them)

Je le mange. (I'm eating it.)
Il la voit. (He sees her.)
Je t'aime. (I love you.)
Tu m'aimes. (You love me.)

Indirect object pronouns

Indirect object pronouns receive the verb action indirectly. They are usually preceded by a preposition. (To, for, by...) "I gave the carrot to the rabbit." Carrot is a direct object here and rabbit is an indirect object.

Me/m' (me)
Te/t' (you)
Vous (polite you)
Lui (him, her)
Nous (us)
Vous (you pl.)
Leur (them)

Je lui parle. I'm talking to him.
Il leur achète des livres. He buys books for them.
Je vous donne le pain. I'm giving the bread to you.
Elle m'a écrit. She wrote to me.
Je le lui donne. I give it to him.

Reflexive pronouns

See this page for help with those beasts:
http://www.learn-french-help.com/french-reflexive-pronouns.html

Disjunctive (Stressed) pronouns:

Stressed pronouns emphasize that it's you, he, she, etc. that's doing something.
They're also used after c'est and ce sont to answer questions.

moi
toi
vous
lui, soi, elle
nous
vous
eux, elles

Check out some examples here:
http://www.orbilat.com/Languages/French/Grammar/Syntax/Pronouns/French-Syntax-Pronouns_Determiners-Disjunctive_Pronouns.html

French articles, plurals and gender

Most languages which incorporate gender also have word endings that designate a word as masculine or feminine. But not French! French likes being complicated. There are no clear cut rules* about what word gets what gender, so your options are:

1) Learn the gender along with the word (i.e. learn "pomme" as "lapomme")
2) (Slacker option) Use only "le" or only "la" all the time. You'll get it right 50% of the time.

*-e and -ion are usually feminine endings, but there are exceptions.

So let's look at the articles:

The:
Le (masculine singular)
La (feminine sing.)
L' (contraction of la or le)
Les (plural of masculine or feminine.)

A:
Un (m. sing.)
Une (f. sing)

Some/any:

Du (m. sing)
de la (f. sing.)
de l' (contraction)
des (m. and f. plural)

If you have "de" and "le" together, replace it with "du". "De" and "les" together becomes "des."

Plurals:

You could form plurals by...

-adding s (valise ---> valises)
-adding x to words that end in "au" or "eu" (neveu ---> neveux)
-changing the ending "al" to "aux" (journal ---> journaux)

Note: words ending in s and x don't change. (autobus---> autobus) (prix ---->prix)

The perils of introducing yourself in Spanish.

Let's say your name is Fred and you want to introduce yourself to your new Spanish friend Pedro. Here's what you should say:

Hola Pedro! Me llamo Fred. (Hi Pedro! I call myself Fred.)
Tengo 23 años. (I am 23 years old.)

Pay attention to the sounds! A small change could be disastrous:

Me lamo Fred. (I lick myself Fred.)
Tengo 23 anos. (I have 23 anuses.)

I made the llamo/lamo mistake in class today. Now I know that the difference between ll and l is very important. The same thing goes for n and ñ...the accent is not just there for decoration!

Stuff that helps

I'll be adding more to this post later, as I sift through my bookmarks and weed out all the broken links. (Note for poor students: All of the stuff below is either free or it can be found by asking your friendly neighbourhood pirate. They usually hang out in a Bay of some sort. Don't tell anyone I sent you.)

Software:
Rosetta Stone - A flashcard program with voice recognition, it's pretty good at teaching pronunciation but not much else. It's fun to use though and I like playing around with it.

TellMeMore - I hated this one. It was buggy and confusing to use. In the amount of time I spent swearing at it because of the constant crashes, I could've learnt 8 irregular verbs!

Books:

Hugo's Learn French in 3 Months/Hugo's Learn Spanish in 3 Months

These language teaching series are awesome. If you work through the weekly assignments, you will have a solid understanding of grammar in...well..about 3 months! The explanations are simple and the book comes with CDs where every exercise is read out loud. They even explain the harder aspects of grammar, for example the subjunctive in French.

Children's storybooks with audio

You can find these in your local library. Get a ton of them! You can also read and listen to stories online. For French, try http://www.iletaitunehistoire.com/ (you will need to make a free account.) Another great website for multilingual story-telling is http://www.banq.qc.ca/portail_jeunes/raconte_moi/

Free podcasts on iTunes:

These vary in quality, so be sure to listen to samples before downloading a whole series.
Here are a few good ones that I tried:

Coffeebreak French- a fun and easy language podcast for complete beginners. The teacher speaks with a heavy Scottish accent in English, which is kind of funny, but his French accent sounds authentic. Also check out Coffeebreak Spanish by the same people.

Walk, talk, and learn French - videos starring an overly enthusiastic French guy who'll take you on a tour of Paris while teaching you some basic phrases.

Where it all begins...

Learning English was a real pain in the butt. The pain, the tears, the recurring nightmares about showing up to my E.S.L. exam without any pants. Fortunately, that's all a distant memory to me now. I no longer confuse word order: "Good today grammar I learn!", or forget that English is genderless: "The orange fruit, he is so nice, yes?", or mispronounce things with embarrassing results: "Can I have a shit of paper? No. Vait. Two shits of paper, please." In short, I am fluent.
It was difficult to get to that point, but I miss the challenge of figuring out all the puzzles of a new language. That's why I have a new goal: learning French and Spanish at the same time.
Am I crazy for attempting to study both simultaneously? Probably. It will be much harder than just focusing all my effort on just one language, but I've got some advantages too:

-After learning a brand new alphabet, I feel like I already conquered a small part of all languages that use it.(My first language is Russian and Cyrillic doesn't mash well with Latin. In Russian, H is pronounced N, P is R, backwards R is the Ya sound...you get the idea.)

-I already have a good grasp on basic French grammar and have a decent enough vocabulary to understand 70-90% of most conversations. Or at least 70-90% of most Bob L'Eponge episodes.

-French and Spanish are similar because they come from the same language family. Some people might find the similarities confusing, but I enjoy finding them while keeping track of the differences.

-Taking classes in both languages at university will provide structure and help organize my study times. I'll even have access to a fancy language lab! Whatever that is. I haven't tried it yet.

-Spanish is a damn sexy language. I especially like the rrrrolling RRRRRs since I can already rrrroll them in Rrrrrrussian!

Tomorrow is my first class. Spanish days are Mondays and Wednesdays and French days are Tuesdays and Thursdays. Fridays shall be nap days. I'll update this blog as often as I can (which is probably not that often because I'm lazy.)

Adieu/Adios!