Leçion vingt-huit 28

Mar 07 2010 Sundaz

I can’t sleep at night...aww… This sounds a little bit crazy, but I am getting up at 3 am to study French.

Today, I learned nothing new; I spent my time revising my past lessons. I found something that may cause problem in the future when I am writing the date of today’s session. That’s the number of 31, trente et un. Originally, 21 (vingt-un) is read as ‘twenty one’ (this is kind of obvious ). But why the 31 is pronounced as ‘thirty and one’. Is it a difference between different sources or it’s just the truth? I will find it out later.

Leçion vingt-sept 27

Mar 06 2010 Saturday

The medicines make me dizzy. I need better ones.

J’ai très mal à la gorge.

I’ve got a really sore throat.

Il faut de les comprimés.

I need tablets (lozenges).

Key words:

J’ai mal à... – My ... hurts

La gorge – throat

La capsule - capsule

Le désinfectant – disinfectant

Vous avez…? – Do you have ... ?

La t^ete – head

Le ventre – stomach

If I am also having a trouble with my stomach, then I should ask the chemist:

J’ai mal à le ventre. Vous avez quelque chose pour ça ?

My stomach hurts. Do you have anything for that?

Despite I spent more (1.5 hours) on today’s session, I am content with what I’ve learned. It’s always fun to discover and learn.

Leçion vingt-six 26

Mar 05 2010 Friday

As Alice is feeling better, I felt sick. I can’t stop blaming the weather for constantly changing. Well, at least I have to know some basic vocabs before I start murmuring at the weather.

Sun – un soleil

Wind – un vent

Rain – une pluie

Snow – une neige

Hail – une grèle

Ice – une glace

Thunderstorm, - un orage

Fog – un brouillard

Cloud – un nuage

Sky – un ciel

Time to get some rest. On est mieux lit alors! ( we’re better off in bed)

Leçion vingt-cinq 25

Mar 04 2010 Thursday

Today I learned how to order food… Finally, I learned something that I can actually depend on it. Although the wording is simple and the sentence is not complicated at all, I find today’s session very important. My life depends on it if I ever set food in France. Here is a list of new and essential new vocabs or phrases:

Le plat du jour – the dish of the day

L’addition, s’il vous pla – the bill, please

Vous avez choisi ?(asked by the waiter) - Are you ready to order?

Pour une personne - For one

Une carafe d’eau - a jug of water

Un pot de vin - a small bottle of vine

I am very sleepy when I am go through this session. I don’t think I can remember all the new phrases today, but at least I can recognize the words or word sequences and tell the meaning. One step at a time, I will finish them all in time.

Leçion vingt-quatre 24

Mar 03 2010 Wednesday

Today I continued to follow French steps on starting a conversation. Today’s session is very ‘practical’ as the host demonstrated how to start a conversation with a total stranger. He starts with

1. asked for something

2. flattering

3. Ask some more questions

4. To be friendly, offer s/he a drink

This sequence gave me a pretty good introduction to what the French are talking in pubs and coffee shops. If such conversation happens in Hong Kong, people would probably go away. Are the French generally nicer or they are just being polite? Hmm…I will find it out.

Leçion vingt-trois 23

Mar 02 2010 Tuesday

Today I learned how to say what I do. The sentences are a bit long and more difficult to read. Since the recording was going so fast, I repeated the following sentence 8 times to get a clear pronunciation:

Oui, je suis réceptionniste dans cet hôtel.

Yes, I'm a receptionist in this hotel.

Besides, I’ve learned a very useful question:

Vous parlez anglais ?
Do you speak English?

Today’s study is still unproductive but not tiresome. I will do some revision in the coming days.

Apprendre le Français est intéressant!

Learning French is interesting!

Leçion vingt-deux 22

Mar 01 2010 Monday

I followed the French Steps on the topic of family. It involves some basic salutations and also talks about age.

Tu as quel âge ? - How old are you?

J'ai trente ans - I'm thirty years old

When doing introduction :

Voici Jean. - This is Jean.

Je te présente John ? - May I introduce John ?

New phrases :

Bon anniversaire – Happy Birthday

Elle est mignonne. – She is cute

Today’s learning is not hard at all, except my sleepy condition. The vocabs about family learned today is not enough, I learned more in here:

Les members de la famille

I was not able to finish the whole chart, as it is too complicated therefore difficult for me to finish under such an unproductive condition of mine.

Leçion vingt-un 21

Feb 28 2010 Sunday

My day officially ends at 1am, Monday. I have been sane and working for over 12 hours. I am not complaining but my brain is shutting down. My logical functioning is deactivating. I am starving and I want to take a bath. Normally I would like to do the French Steps, but I am totally not in the mood.

But anyway, I tried the French Steps Introduction part. I thought it would be easier if I’ve done the part in radio archive. But no, the wording French steps is actually harder! I guess it’s because I’ve skipped the job and family parts. This discouraged me further. Since I don’t want to start over, so I tried my best to read after the French Steps, hoping to finish everything so I could finally sleep.

Leçion vingt 20

Feb 27 2010 Saturday

Today I spent my session on doing introduction (when meeting people) and exercise on turning nouns to adjectives. In unit 11 of the radio archive, it talked about turning a male noun into a female noun, or into an adjective.

For example:

Étudiant (male student) -> étudiante (female student)

étudiant (adj.)

Français (male French) -> Française (French lady)

Français (adj.)

Special case :

Canadien (male Canadian) – Canadienne (Canadian lady)

Canadien (adj.)

Belge (Beigian male or lady)

belge (adj.)

The hateful truth

After following the radio archive for 11 sessions, I find myself harder to concentrate on the content. Sometimes, it becomes my background noise, merged with the roaring bus engine. The frequency of rewinding has increased since the completion of the vowels; this has something to do with the increasingly boring reading and repeating content, instead of those lovely songs : (

Inadequate sleep and busy homework have drained most of my energy, I cannot withstand monotonous lesson after a day’s work. More interactive material like the French steps or the LanguageGuide.org is preferred.

Leçion dix-neuf 19

Feb 26 2010 Friday

Today’s French Steps taught me how to get a snack.

a sandwich – un sandwich

A sandwich is fine, but a sausage sandwich is better. May be I will have a beer. Don’t forget to be polite !

Je voudrais un sandwich au saucission et une bie, si vous pla.

Today’s lesson is harder in terms of new sentence pattern. Still, I can’t eat sandwich au saucission for the rest of my life. At least I have more choices now.

La nourriture (food)

TGIF

I know I will enjoy more about this one day.

Leçion dix-huit 18

Feb 25 2010 Thursday

Today I learned more about money in next part of French Steps. It involves more sentence patterns in buying things. Since it’s not hard, I have decided to learn more vocabs related to money.

l’argent (m.) (money)

I found something interesting today. The French language tends to put the adjectives at the back of an object. For example, le véhicule blindé, in English, it’s an armoured vehicle; le guichet automatique (automatic ticketing machine).

The headache is killing me, hope I can sleep well tonight.

Leçion dix-sept 17

Feb 24 2010 Wednesday

Today I learned how to get tickets and maps for tourist spots. The sentence format is in requesting something from someone.

The format is simple:

A XX and two AA, etc, please.

Un XX et un deux, s'il vous plaît.

The lesson puts numbers I learned into a practical level: paying for stuff, and describing which floor it is (e.g. second floor).

I found it difficult to understand sentences although I know the meaning of the words. In spoken French, when certain combinations of words are run together, the ending sound and beginning sound are always combined, it’s called a liaison. But in many cases, the ending sound is omitted. It’s too fast for me to hear a conversation without a subtitle. I need to read and listen more!

Leçion seize 16

Feb 23 2010 Tuesday

I continued with directions in French steps today. The expression is simple and words are not so hard. My day started at 9:30 and ended at 9:30pm, I don’t have much time to sit in front of a computer to learn. Also, I doubt if I would have enough energy left to learn. I want to try out a new mode of learning. Instead of doing it at night, I try to do earlier.

Here’s what I prepared:

1. Memorized the pronunciation of the vocabs before I left home

2. Transferred screen captures to my phone (my nokia only supports English)

My memory served me well on the vocab part, but not on the script in the previous conversation. May be I can download the audio file into phone as well. But I cannot do this every day as I do have other reading materials or revision notes to complete on bus.

Followed unit 9 of the radio archive, it’s a revision on French numbers. I realized that I sometimes mixed up the sound of deux(2) and douze(12).

Notice that the hand sign of French 2, 3, 6 7 and 8 are different from Chinese ones. It will surely create big confusion if I use the Chinese ones to a Frenchman！！