Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Language learning support/community thread

Please would someone francophone help me with this : there is a French slang word prounounced "barra-kay" which translates roughly
as stockily built in the sense of physical strength rather than overweight. How is this word spelt?
 
3. Baraque
The wordbaraqueliterally means shanty, or small house made of planks. However, recently the term has been adapted to refer to a house, or, as an adjective, baraqué, someone who is really muscular. For example: On habite dans une grosse baraque avec 10 colocs. We live in a large house with 10 other people. En règle générale, les joueurs de rugby sont plus baraqués que les joueurs de foot. Generally speaking, rugby players are more muscular than football players.

http://www.fluentu.com/french/blog/french-slang-argot/

So "built like a brick shithouse" :)

I may use that one one day :)
 
I have a new French speaker via francaisfacile - very precise she is - Friday evenings - one hour.
She studied materials science and is now a patent lawyer - currently "writing a patent application to protect a brassiere." - I had to check twice to confirm she wasn't referring to an eating establishment - but both are appropriately French :D
 
I'm currently trying to learn French, my Spanish is pretty good and in some ways French is proving both easier and more difficult than I expected as a result. It is annoying because while I can read it OK I find it very difficult to construct a sentence, let alone a correct one. I haven't actually been through the process of learning a language for ages and I'm finding it quite fun so far.

Anyway, one thing that language learners might appreciate is a brower application that I've come across called hola. It uses a VPN which makes websites think that you are browsing from another country, if you use it with Netflix and set it to USA, Brazil or Mexico then it gives you access to a lot of foreign language films and TV programmes that you don't have access to otherwise. Some of the more popular Netflix originals are dubbed and subtitled in other languages as well. House of Cards is subtitled and dubbed in Spanish, for example.
 
A lot of people suggest using a paid VPN instead of free ones if you'r concerned about privacy and whatnot. But I suppose hola is good for the purpose you mention. Netflix is available in Japan now apparently, so I've been meaning to check it out.
 
Ever since I used a VPN on my PC last month, Google is defaulting to US websites - even for Aldi. :(
Which is odd considering that except for when I had the settings wrong, I should have appeared to be in France...
 
Can I ask for some opinions and help please?

I've completed 2 beginners Japanese courses at a local uni (they only do these 2 courses), which I absolutely loved. So much so that the only thing I really want to do with my life is go to university to study Japanese full-time. Unfortunately for me, the local uni doesn't have a full-time course, and the nearest university offering such a course is several hundred miles away. I have two children, so moving or commuting is not an option, and I don't know of any distance-learning options.

So I'm trying to formulate a self-study plan. Any advice with this??? The only problem is that I have a job and two children....there never seems to be any time. How do you organise your life so that you can study often? I'm struggling with this, as I'm often just too mentally tired to pick up a book when I get home.

One more thing, my current plan involves working through the text book we followed in the course, and using various other techniques too. We skipped around the textbook, so I want to follow it in the right order, and do all the exercises in my own time. I'm still listening and watching a lot of Japanese tv etc, and I plan to go to my local library tomorrow to get some work done. Umm, rambling post was longer than I planned. :D
 
Meanwhile, the people who I've paired with recently are nowhere to be seen.
A couple of them connected with me on skype, but then must have found other people to chat to.
I've added a few things to my profile on françaisfacile now with a view to getting people who are actually interested in similar things ...

"Athée, végétarien, environnementaliste, libre d'esprit. "

I suspect it may be the second item that will arouse the most curiosity in the French :D

I already have one "taker" - though he's only 30 yrs old.... we'll see how that goes....
 
mwgdrwg said:
Can I ask for some opinions and help please?

I've completed 2 beginners Japanese courses at a local uni (they only do these 2 courses), which I absolutely loved. So much so that the only thing I really want to do with my life is go to university to study Japanese full-time. Unfortunately for me, the local uni doesn't have a full-time course, and the nearest university offering such a course is several hundred miles away. I have two children, so moving or commuting is not an option, and I don't know of any distance-learning options.

So I'm trying to formulate a self-study plan. Any advice with this??? The only problem is that I have a job and two children....there never seems to be any time. How do you organise your life so that you can study often? I'm struggling with this, as I'm often just too mentally tired to pick up a book when I get home.

One more thing, my current plan involves working through the text book we followed in the course, and using various other techniques too. We skipped around the textbook, so I want to follow it in the right order, and do all the exercises in my own time. I'm still listening and watching a lot of Japanese tv etc, and I plan to go to my local library tomorrow to get some work done. Umm, rambling post was longer than I planned. :D
Click to expand...
Maybe try get an online tutor to help?

I got one for Chinese through italki.com
 
Another no-show on Skype ...

I think I will add this to my profile :-

"Pourquoi pas être le premier à apparaître réellement !"
 
Just managed a whole hour with a Corsican. :)

And the "bra lawyer" contacted me to apologise for not chatting - but she has young kids ... but will try to be online at some point
 
I keep buggering about with Duolingo for my French and actually I surprise myself with how much I know, but I'm not brave enough for lots of conversation. And by surprised I mean I can read and write bits and pieces but of course my grammar, tenses etc need some work. I do turn over to French news sometimes and ear can pick out some words. I'm still not confident enough to chuff off to France alone.

My Japanese is still very rough and primitive but a conversation about Japanese with some English non native speakers was interesting as I could understand more there than anticipated.
 
Crumbs have a go at Memrise. I've been trying Japanese and French on it for the last couple of days and it absolutely nails my way of thinking. Making up silly patterns to remember stuff. Totally works. Je suis content :)
 
Françaisfacile dried right up as a source of spoken French practice - even the Erasmus student coming to Bristol never read my reply - I thought at least there would be things to talk about. Presumably they found enough to contend with in real life.

Finding online language partners seems as contrived as online dating and I have had a grand total of two one hour chats.
 
I've found a nice website for learning Mandarin: LearnYu - learn Chinese the intelligent way

It's basically a rip-off of duolingo and it's pretty well done on a clearly much smaller budget. The method for entering the pinying characters is simple and the lessons seems at the right pace so far. There's a few minor bugs but nothing too bad. Well worth checking out for the absolute beginning, IMO.

I'm moving to China in June so will be using this as my starting point and I also enrolled in a Coursera thing earlier in the year which I didn't actually start. I might do that as well for a more formal/structured learning plan.

Any other resources out there?
 
Fez909 said:
I'm moving to China in June so will be using this as my starting point
Click to expand...
Wow. You must like her. Whereabouts in China?

What are you aiming for? Spoken fluency? Full literacy? Getting by?

Chinese is a syntactically and morphologically very simple language. If you're aiming for full fluency and literacy I would bone up on vocab and characters at this point. I did a year of intensive language learning before I went to China but when I got there and tried to speak it I couldn't get far. However once I got a hang of the rhythm and tones of everyday speech the fact that I had a largish vocab to draw on meant I progressed very fast.

As far as materials I'd recommend the original Colloquial Chinese (T'ung and Pollard, not the Kan Qian one) and the Pimsleur tapes which are great for any language.
 
maomao said:
Wow. You must like her. Whereabouts in China?

What are you aiming for? Spoken fluency? Full literacy? Getting by?

Chinese is a syntactically and morphologically very simple language. If you're aiming for full fluency and literacy I would bone up on vocab and characters at this point. I did a year of intensive language learning before I went to China but when I got there and tried to speak it I couldn't get far. However once I got a hang of the rhythm and tones of everyday speech the fact that I had a largish vocab to draw on meant I progressed very fast.

As far as materials I'd recommend the original Colloquial Chinese (T'ung and Pollard, not the Kan Qian one) and the Pimsleur tapes which are great for any language.
Click to expand...
Thanks, some good stuff there.

And yeah, I really like her...some days :D

We're going to Shanghai. She's being kicked out of the UK in Jan so she'll find a place for us, so there's not much for me to do in the meantime except save/pay off debts/learn Chinese.

I'm hoping to get a 'real' job there if it's possible, rather than just being an English teacher bum which is what I'll do initially. I don't know what level of Chinese I'll need for that, but I imagine pretty advanced unless it's with a Western/international company.
 
Never been to Shanghai. But whatever happens you'll get to eat authentic xiaolongbao, so there's that.

The Pimsleur tapes are on Pirate Bay as is the T'ung and Pollard book. There's tonnes of good books on writing on myanonymouse and other ebook sites.

Shanghai accent (mandarin accent, not Shanghainese which is a totally different language) tends to ignore the difference between words that end in 'n' and 'ng', also confuses n and l, so be ready for that.

Any advice you need on China or cultural problems just ask.
 
Fez909 said:
Thanks, some good stuff there.

And yeah, I really like her...some days :D

We're going to Shanghai. She's being kicked out of the UK in Jan so she'll find a place for us, so there's not much for me to do in the meantime except save/pay off debts/learn Chinese.

I'm hoping to get a 'real' job there if it's possible, rather than just being an English teacher bum which is what I'll do initially. I don't know what level of Chinese I'll need for that, but I imagine pretty advanced unless it's with a Western/international company.
Click to expand...
If you're wanting to get a job legally, make sure you get something sorted before you go because you would have to return home to sort out a working visa anyway...

Advice for learning Chinese would be really practice tones and pronunciation first, then get an anki app on your phone and do flashcards. Get a basic vocab deck downloaded first then download the Spoonfed Chinese deck, which has thousands of sentences with audio that you can replicate. Brilliant resource and totally free. I'd also download the Chinesepod stuff, which can be torrented. Just listen to it as a way to study when you don't feel like studying any more or when you've just got 10-15 mins to spare.
 
Does anyone have any experience of learning a third language through your second language?
 
J Ed said:
Does anyone have any experience of learning a third language through your second language?
Click to expand...

When I was living in Spain, I found that many Spanish words were similar to French words that I knew, just pronounced differently, so that helped me a bit. I also understand some Czech, Polish and Russian after living in Slovakia for a couple of years. Not really the same as learning them though.
 
Fez, I wish you luck. I have a few friends living in China but not in Shanghai. I have to say though that as someone who teaches English as their career, it can be a real job and not only bums do it. Not for everyone though.
 
goldenecitrone said:
When I was living in Spain, I found that many Spanish words were similar to French words that I knew, just pronounced differently, so that helped me a bit. I also understand some Czech, Polish and Russian after living in Slovakia for a couple of years. Not really the same as learning them though.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I am thinking about trying to learn French through Spanish but I'm not sure.
 
I briefly made myself available for correspondents again on français facile and once again I got someone who promptly started to instruct me just how we were going to proceed and it involved grammar exercises - my gut told me this was not going to work so I blocked him on Skype.
French men can be so humourless - I've struggled to find French nutrition experts (for example) I can bear to listen to ..

A second person - a woman - exchanged details, so we will see how it goes.
Not sure how whether there will be any Skype conversation with the Breton teacher / B&B owner I bumped into elsewhere ...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

N
Stuck between learning languages and never getting anywhere
2
Replies
35
Views
1K
Idaho
Idaho
SpookyFrank
Teachers' Staff Room Thread
2 3 4 5
Replies
133
Views
4K
zedr
zedr
N
Advice on supporting someone through disciplinary
Replies
23
Views
914
nagapie
N
A
Best language learning apps?
Replies
20
Views
985
ATOMIC SUPLEX
ATOMIC SUPLEX
Lord Camomile
UNISON/UCU* Joint HE Thread
2
Replies
32
Views
1K
redsquirrel
R
Back
Top Bottom