{"id":1539,"date":"2013-11-11T07:45:22","date_gmt":"2013-11-11T12:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/?p=1539"},"modified":"2020-10-02T13:37:10","modified_gmt":"2020-10-02T17:37:10","slug":"my-late-life-language-learning-part-5-why-i-enjoyed-reading-in-french-when-i-couldnt-read-french","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/2013\/11\/11\/my-late-life-language-learning-part-5-why-i-enjoyed-reading-in-french-when-i-couldnt-read-french\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Enjoy Reading In A Foreign Language, Even When You Can’t Read That Language!"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my \u201cLate Life Language Learning\u201d series<\/a> I was thinking mostly of older folks \u2013 like me \u2013 who might have been intimidated \u2013 as I was \u2013 at the thought of learning a language.\u00a0 But starting here I\u2019m shifting gears.\u00a0I\u2019ll begin to cover ideas, thoughts, and experiences that are relevant to any language learner, regardless of age, language, and experience level.<\/p>\n

<\/b>This time around, I want to talk about trying to have always some kind of French-language reading going on in the background of whatever was happening along my learning time line.\u00a0 <\/b>I started this early, because to my surprise, I discovered that even early beginner-level ability offers a glimpse behind doors that had previously been closed when I knew no French at all.<\/p>\n

What is behind those doors?\u00a0 It\u2019s a little hard to express, but \u2013 without, I hope, getting too esoteric \u2013 for me it has to do with the extent to which the beginnings of a picture of the French culture became slowly, but increasingly, visible to me through the ways in which thoughts, ideas, stories \u2013 even the signs on the highways and in the parks \u2013 are expressed in French.\u00a0 I\u2019ll leave it there for now, but I think you\u2019ll see what I mean in what I\u2019m about to tell you.<\/p>\n

I think it was in the sixth grade that, on rainy no-outside-recess days, my teacher began reading to the class a translation of Jules Verne\u2019s \u201cTwenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.\u201d\u00a0 We eventually got through the whole book (it must have been a rainy winter!), and I had really enjoyed the story.\u00a0 <\/span>So when I saw in a Paris bookstore Verne\u2019s name on a book with the title \u201dVingt Mille Lieues sous les Mers<\/i>,\u201d I thought, \u201cAha!\u201d, and I bought it.\u00a0 <\/b>And I started \u201creading\u201d it \u2013 sort of.\u00a0 I can\u2019t even guess my comprehension level, but it was pretty low.
\n<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

But \u2013 and this is my point \u2013 it didn\u2019t matter<\/b>!\u00a0 Particularly since I had known the story since sixth grade, I could identify in the French version the stretches of text where the things I knew were going to happen, actually did happen.\u00a0 Besides that, I took full advantage of the wonderful fact that there are so many<\/b> cognates<\/b> \u2013 words in the two languages that both mean (pretty much) the same thing and<\/span> that look alike.<\/p>\n

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Helpful Hint:\u00a0 But to trip you up there are also the \u201cfaux amis\u201d \u2013 \u201cfalse friends\u201d \u2013 \u00a0\u00a0words that look alike but that might mean quite different things.\u00a0 \u201cBanc\u201d means \u201cbench,\u201d for example, not \u201cbank.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But back to my story:\u00a0 Separately from all that, for me it was just hugely fun to become re-acquainted, in Verne\u2019s very own French, with this great work of early science fiction<\/b>, which I had first met so many years ago.\u00a0 And I \u2013 monolingual since birth \u2013 was actually reading in another language!\u00a0 Granted, it took me over a month to get through it, and I nearly wore out my dictionary.\u00a0 (Full disclosure \u2013 I also skipped some of the long descriptions.)\u00a0 But it got me started, and now I am never without having at least a couple of French-language books going as background to whatever French learning activities in which I might be involved<\/b> \u2013 and in the \u2018tween times, too, when, I have nothing formal under way.<\/p>\n

You understand, I am sure, that the amount of information actually arriving in my brain from that early reading was pretty slim, but it has been increasing as my vocabulary grows and my grasp of the details of the grammar and structure evolves slowly.\u00a0 I had to accept the certainty that at first I would miss most of the wonderful subtleties and innuendos that good writing offers, <\/b>and that following, crudely, the basic story line would have to do.<\/p>\n

Then, into my life from another direction entirely came \u201cLe Petit Nicolas\u201d!<\/b>\u00a0 Think of a French \u201cDennis the Menace,\u201d though that comparison really fails to do justice to the sparkling prose of Ren\u00e9 Goscinny and the simple but inspired illustrations of Jean-Jacques Semp\u00e9.\u00a0 It was our first French tutor, Pico, who gave it to us, but it is a well-established classic in France.<\/p>\n

Written in the language of the French schoolboy, Nicolas, this collection of first-person narrations of his day-to-day adventures at home, at school, among his friends, and with his parents is a perfect early read for a French learner \u2013 and it is screamingly funny!\u00a0 Because the stories are purportedly being told by an eighth-grader, the formal vocabulary used is not very challenging, and yet it introduces a few words of informal French as well.\u00a0 <\/b>The dictionary says that \u201cchouette\u201d (pronounced \u201csweat\u201d \u2013 almost) means \u201cowl,\u201d but it can also mean \u201ccool!\u201d \u2013 and it\u2019s a favorite word of Nicolas\u2019!<\/p>\n

\n

Helpful Hint:\u00a0 Meanings change with context. When you are in the butcher shop, the word \u201ctranche\u201d is much<\/span> more likely to mean a \u201cslice\u201d of something edible than it is to mean a \u201cpartial loan disbursement\u201d (another translation).\u00a0 So \u2013 knowing the context<\/span> is a huge tip-off as to what that intimidating pile of still-foreign-looking text might be trying to convey.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

At the other end of the vocabulary-difficulty scale is anything by Victor Hugo.\u00a0 I\u2019m ashamed to tell you how long I have been carrying around on my Kindle \u201cNotre Dame de Paris\u201d<\/i> (\u201cThe Hunchback of Notre Dame\u201d), but I am less ashamed to tell you that native French speakers agree that it is a difficult read.<\/p>\n

What else?\u00a0 Well, a daily email of the headlines from \u201cLa Figaro\u201d<\/i> is available, free, and is great practice on current-events-based material.\u00a0 There\u2019s Flaubert\u2019s boring (sorry, but it is) \u201cMadame Bovary\u201d<\/i> \u2013 it\u2019s a classic, of course, but I get impatient with it.<\/p>\n

High on the list for me is \u201cLes Mis\u00e9rables,\u201d<\/i> a rewarding read, though its length makes it a major challenge.<\/b>\u00a0 Read the last chapter, anyway, and if that\u2019s too much, read the last few pages, which contain the short epitaph of Jean Valjean.\u00a0 I have read those four lines a thousand times, and they still bring tears to my eyes \u2013 but only in the original French.\u00a0 The real sense, message, and feeling in this passage are a perfect demonstration that there are passages in French that are untranslatable to English.<\/i><\/p>\n

You might not like my list, so feel free to make your own choices. But read, and keep reading,<\/b> whatever else you might be doing (or not doing) to advance your ability in French.\u00a0 I promise you, you will learn more than the French language.<\/p>\n

So \u2013 what would you<\/span> add to, or use instead of, my list of French background reading materials?<\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

In my \u201cLate Life Language Learning\u201d series I was thinking mostly of older folks \u2013 like me \u2013 who might have been intimidated \u2013 as I was \u2013 at the thought of learning a language.\u00a0 But starting here I\u2019m shifting gears.\u00a0I\u2019ll begin to cover ideas, thoughts, and experiences that are relevant to any language learner…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1543,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[542801],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1539","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archived-posts"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1539"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6276,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539\/revisions\/6276"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}