Comments for The French Journey

Comment on Poetry, la poésie, “Le mal” d’Arthur Rimbaud by Serena

Serena — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 15:13:50 +0000

Whilst the red spittle of the machine gun
Whistles all day, through the infinite blue sky
Scarlet or green, close to the King who jeers them
Crumbles the battalions into flames

Whilst the dreadful madness crushes
and makes a smoking heap of a hundred thousand men
– Pitiful dead! in the summer, in the grass, in their joy
Nature! O, you who have made saints of these men!

– It is a God, who laughs from the altar cloths
From the altars, the incense, the great golden chalices
Who sleeps rocked by hosannas

Yet awakes, when the mothers, brought together
in anguish, crying under their old black bonnets,
Give Him a large coin knotted into their kerchiefs!

Comment on The 5 hardest sounds in the French accent: part 5 by Freddy

Freddy — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 15:33:05 +0000

Hey, thanks! This really helped me with the ɥ/w contrast, one of the few things in French phonology I’d always struggled with (and this as a trained linguist).

I’m going to have to start memorising where the two sounds are found though. I’d memorised most of those words as though they contained a simple /w/, so now I’m left to hope the error hasn’t become too fossilised.

Merci beaucoup!

Comment on Modern French learning: how do you say LOL in French? by Bill Gates

Bill Gates — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 21:58:58 +0000

This will probably spread, but after all my experience with the internet and texting, I never knew this… Thanks!

Comment on Discuss your French problems here by tfj

tfj — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 11:18:05 +0000

Thanks Alaa, I know what you mean about getting stuck with a word you can’t translate to French! You’ll have to start out by translating your thoughts to French until you have replacement sentences for the things you’d normally say in English.

The main thing it sounds like you’re missing at this point it having that range of things to say in the right situations – you can get that from French books or movies, but best is living and working (immersion) in a French speaking country.

I’ll hopefully have some more to help you with that soon! In the meantime, keep trying

Comment on Discuss your French problems here by Alaa

Alaa — Tue, 31 May 2011 16:31:08 +0000

helloo
first of all i’d like 2 thank u 4 helping all of us out there struggling with french..
well, i do have a problem understanding the spoken language.. and i dunno wut 2 do about it.. i do speak well and itz kinda embarrassing 2 stand before a french person trying 2 decipher wutever he or she is saying..
another thing, i can’t seem 2 get my head 2 think in french, so wut i do is i think in english and then translate my thoughts 2 french.. i know itz wrong and my phrases do sound funny at times.. not 2 mention the struggle i face when i get stuck with a word that i can’t translate 2 french..

thank u again Mr. Luke! dieu te benisse!

Comment on French punctuation guide by tfj

tfj — Mon, 23 May 2011 12:47:27 +0000

Well spotted! Bien vu !

Apologies for the confusion – I have added an EDIT to highlight the difference. Was the post of any help to you otherwise?

Comment on French punctuation guide by Gary

Gary — Tue, 10 May 2011 13:10:54 +0000

I’d just like to point out that you contradict yourself in this.

You say that brackets necessitate a space before and after them, then you go on to say that there is no space before a paranthèse fermante.

Clearly both of these cannot be true…

Comment on Learning another language like a child does: myth by misan

misan — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 19:22:38 +0000

i like very much

Comment on The 5 hardest sounds in the French accent: part 5 by Jumana

Jumana — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 21:32:29 +0000

Thank you. This is really great. The audio file is super cool. Very fun to practice, and really interesting to listen to both American and British French accents.
I’m sorry if you already posted about this before, but I’m a relatively new reader. It would be really awesome to listen to a ‘French foreign accents’ comparison, in addition to the British and American one here, if it’s possible.

Merci !

Comment on 7 modern ways to learn French by Kathryn Martyn Smith

Kathryn Martyn Smith — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 15:34:22 +0000

Great list! Wanted to add Genius, a free Mac app to your Flashcard suggestions. There are tons of free word and phrase lists at Flashcard Exchange: http://www.flashcardexchange.com/tag/french and ready-to-go Genius lists here: http://mysite.verizon.net/geniusfiles/page1/page1.html

Merci pour cette magnifique ressource. J’adore votre site et je travaille mon chemin à travers tous les postes.