Saturday, August 14, 2010

scary video

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I had some French in elementary school, and then took all the spoken French classes I was offered, right into college.

I can dredge up things I mean to say, and, sometimes, I can understand French speakers.

I walked by some guy on campus, the other day, speaking French to someone on his phone, and I could understand him quite clearly.

These people, on the other hand! Mon Dieu!

A good part of the time I can barely make out a word..................

I hope I could do better if they were speaking a good deal moins vite (less quickly)!




Found at Paris Breakfasts.

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5 comments:

morningbrayfarm said...

I took French for four years in high school and was able to speak it fluently. Not so much anymore.

August 14, 2010 at 12:37:00 PM EDT
morningbrayfarm said...

It does seem that they're speaking a bazillion miles a minute, doesn't it? :)

August 14, 2010 at 12:39:00 PM EDT
I need orange said...

It does seem like they are speaking really quickly.......

It was really interesting, when my daughter was taking French in middle school and high school -- she would ask me questions (my grammar was better than hers, at that point), and ... it was as though the info was deep down in the second basement, or something.

The info was there. It was retrievable. But it sure took a while to bring it to the surface............

An interesting experience in how one's memory/brain work........

Before watching this video, I'd been thinking I would pretty much be able to make myself understood when asking a question, and would be able to understand an answer, but having watched the video........

Not so much.

<:-(

And .. next week it's gonna matter...... :-/

August 14, 2010 at 4:19:00 PM EDT
jennifer black said...

It's funny, though--I don't speak or understand French at all, but the meaning of the video comes through.

A number of years ago, I taught in an exchange program between my college and Masaryk University in Brno, in the Czech Republic. I asked the students, who were relatively new to speaking English (just a few years after the fall of communism), if people speaking English had once sounded fast to them.

"Yes!" they all said. "It was crazy--such a fast language." But as soon as they became fluent, their ability to understand made the native speakers sound normal.

I've often wondered why people speaking languages we don't understand sound so fast.

Jennifer

August 15, 2010 at 7:27:00 AM EDT
I need orange said...

I agree, the sense of the video came through very well, even without understanding the words.

I did understand enough of the one bit to know she told him she hadn't taken sugar in her coffee for eight years, and he didn't know her AT ALL, and then he told her a lot of things he *did* know about her (one was about her mascara, I think), and that was when they both went down to the floor together. :-)

I think we think others are very fast in large part because we are very slow. :-)

Thinking about how it was for me to retrieve what I knew, when my daughter would ask me questions....

The things she knew, she knew instantly. I knew more, but it took a noticeable while to do the retrieval.

When there is a lot to process and processing/retrieval is slow.....

:-)

I do find, coming across various French speakers on youtube or where ever, that some people are MUCH easier to understand than others.

So I don't think it's alllllll me.

:-) :-)

August 15, 2010 at 8:03:00 AM EDT

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