An "official" home-made video for " Je pars avant " ....
Remember I got a smashing Richard Scarry book in French ? ... well, today another one arrived .. " Les Surprises " ....... it must be Christmas or something. As before, selected highlights... Well, now for a spot of music after all that silliness. An "official" home-made video for " Je pars avant " .... And to all my loyal readers, have an excellent New Year .... well, we can all hope !
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As all my readers know, I don't like the ugly, pathetic Past Historic. Actually, that's a bit of an understatement ... I hate it. We keep being told that nowadays it is used in novels less and less ... but I don't notice that happening very much .... there's still huge great clumps of it about. It makes me bloody fûme ! See what I did there ? Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. It's always interesting to read what French coursebooks have to say about it. Because, let's face it, it's hard to defend really. One recent book I read tried to make it sound nice by referring to it throughout as " book-style". Well, that's a new one. But as Boris Johnson said about the recent cabinet endorsement of the Brexit deal .. he said that being asked to support it was being asked to " polish a turd !" Anyhow, why am I writing about this all over again ? Well, in the past I've asked you lot out there what you're supposed to do when you're reading a French book to some poor devil and the PH comes along. Because it's not not not not used in speech at all. No. Not. Not Never. Some loosen up a bit and say ... not in conversation So we are always told. That's the mantra. Anyway, who the hell would want to actually speak it ? But ... a bit ago I was reading a grammar book, as you do, and lo and behold, "it" told me...well, here's what it says ... " however, it is used only in formal writing, and therefore is a tense that is quite often seen - in books, newspapers, reports, documents, and so on - but seldom heard. You would in fact only hear it when one of the above examples of reading matter was being read aloud. You would never use it in conversation, however formal: you would use the perfect instead." So there we are then. When reading your child a bedtime story, you can, maybe through gritted teeth at the gruesomeness of it, say it out loud. But any sane person would surely change it into the perfect. I don't want to have to say arrangeâmes and fûmes and remplîmes and donnâtes and voulus and dus and bus and even worse, the deadly tînmes, vîntes etc. Yûck. Câck ! Tînmes indeed !! They must, surely, be joking ! So, the only useful thing about the PH is ..... turning it into the Perfect is good for you ! Wooo ! Let's blast it all away with Un Baiser dans le Cou ! My daughter knows my shallowness very well, so when she saw that book up there she got it for me and rushed it in my direction ( North). At my age, there's not a moment to lose! And you all know my love of silly stuff, especially if you've inspected my 12" French Bookshelf. 673-further-thoughts-about-that-french-12-bookshelf.html So ... now you know all about it. I've been waiting for my dear dear readers to compile their own 12" French bookshelf, but I can only assume it's taking longer than I thought ... the idea was that you would send a picture of yours and then send it to me ( [email protected]) and then I would collect them all together and put them on here so we could all have a laugh, sorry, admire them, and get some ideas about books to read. Yes. Anyway, on with what I'm supposed to be doing ... Here's a few extracts for you to enjoy, as have I .... I like the " Ohé, ohé " thing .... .... I hope you enjoyed those .... now, you might enjoy this ... a real blast of a song from Manu .. "Toi et moi" Toi et moi c'est l'indicible
Tout est là, tout est possible Cet hier que tu aimes tant Mon coeur se serre défit le temps Tout est là simple et charmant Toi et moi tout simplement Talk to me Parle moi Talk to me Let me understand please Make me understand Let me understand Let me understand please Let me understand make me understand please Cet hier que tu aimes tant Mon coeur se serre déchire le temps Tout est là, ne vois-tu rien ? Toi et moi tout simplement Toi et moi on s'aimait tant Mon coeur se serre déchire le temps Tout est là ne vois-tu rien ? Toi et moi tout simplement I've written before ...several times ... about the whole business of having to learn the gender of French nouns. To the English, the whole thing seems barmy ! Think of all the space it uses up in your already overloaded brain. Think of all the stuff you could have put there instead ! ( Hmmm ... maybe not) Well, over the course of this rambling blog, I've covered all sorts of methods, some of them, perhaps, invented by ME. I might even be able to actually find some of them and put the links on here ... maybe. Here's two of them, briefly ... get ready to admire them ... Brilliant Scheme A French textbooks could have the masc words in, say, orange, and the feminine words in, for example, green. Or maybe, in all books aimed at learners .. like dual-language books, dictionaries ... Brilliant scheme B A volume of short stories should be commissioned from a variety of authors, and they would have only masculine nouns in all the stories ! Then a second volume, again full of short stories, and by a variety of authors, would only have feminine nouns throughout ! That way, you would remember that ,say, someone was attacked with une carotte in the feminine book, which was stolen from une église , which left une cicatrice on la tête ! How about that ? Sounds like a brilliant idea to me. Mind you, it is my idea. But right now, I'm going to tell you about something I've been trying, testing it if you like, which is easy to do, require no special equipment, and, hey, it might even work. Here we go then .... What I've been doing is ... whenever I need to look up a French noun, I write the masculine nouns on the left of the page, and the feminine ones on the right of the page. I'm hoping my mind, such as it is, will perhaps keep a little memory of which side the words are on. Time will, perhaps, tell. Then I'll tell you. But that's enough for now ... I've sowed a seed .... but will it grow ? I hope it will ............... I love it so ! And after all that idea-stuffed stuff, here's some music stuff ..... Manu ... "Que fais-tu " live ...... I wonder if she's going to sing the masculine nouns in a deep voice, and the feminine nouns in a falsetto voice .... maybe not. Oh que fais tu quand tu sors ?
Oh que de nuits et encore Oh juste un mot cher et tendre Combien de nuits vais-je prendre ? J'attends le retour de mon homme J'attends mon amour, pauvre conne Arriver jusqu'ici et refaire les mêmes, les mêmes conneries Arriver jusqu'ici Oh dans mon lit je me tors Oh que de nuits et encore Attendre comme au premier jour Le bruit de tes pas dans la cour Arriver jusqu'ici et redire les mêmes, les mêmes conneries Arriver jusqu'ici Oh dans mon lit je me tors Oh que fais tu quand tu sors ? Links later .... I need a bit of time to track them down .. .. and why not ? It's Terrific For your French . Here's one you might have a go at .... here's Marina performing it live, and below it I've put the "words" video on too. And the "paroles" ... the complete learn-a-song kit. There's even a bit of advice. .... here are those words .... Of course, repeatedly listening to a song, or watching words videos many times, isn't the only way to learn them. Listening, reading, they're a bit passive. You should sing along to them . And if you carry the words around with you on a bit of paper, you can sing it as you stroll around the park. Fold the paper so that it only shows the first line .... and memorise it ... say it, sing it back to yourself. Then you can fold it so you can see the 2nd line as well .. and you learn that one in the same way .... and eventually, you'll have learned all of it. Another big help is the mp3 player.... you can listen to the song over and over again with that, actively of course whenever possible. Here's the words written out .... Au début, on ose à peine
A la fin, on s'en fout Entre temps, on ne dit rien On s'enlace puis on s'emmerde, Comme le temps repasse les sentiments Je filme le reste de toi Et déjà tu es loin Je marche pieds nus Dans des vallées inconnues Mon Dieu, que je suis bien! Quand le vent tourne Tout Me Revient Mais... {Refrain:} Comme le temps Repassent les sentiments, Comme le vent te ramène devant Allongée dans l'herbe J'oublie les jours, les semaines Sans toi, sans un mur autour de moi Je regarde le ciel Trouble Je m'éclipse de plus belle Une étoile m'appelle {au Refrain} Comme le temps Repassent les sentiments, Comme le vent te ramène devant Au début, on ose à peine A la fin, on s'en fout Entre temps, on ne dit rien On s'enlace puis on se lasse de tout {au Refrain} Comme le temps Repassent les sentiments, Comme le vent te ramène devant There you go ! Bob's your uncle ! |
AuthorLearn French in 88 years .. well, it's a long time, so you might as well enjoy yourself on the way. I hope you are enjoying all the sensible bits as well as the music, the games, challenges, odd diversions, rants, the roads less travelled and so on. I'm on the same road as well. Good luck to all of us. Archives ... monthly listing
September 2021
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