French Things
 

Hey everyone,
I am trying to learn French, with some books, and I figure being a bit immersed in the language would help. Therefore, I am trying to find good French music and movies. Maybe even books written or translated into French.

Any tips?
Does anyone have bands or movies to recommend?

Thanks in advance!
-Andy

if you have an iphone or ipod touch you can get this cool app that we made at work
children's book called milly molly and the tree hut which you can read in french english spanish and maori
you touch the sentence and it read the sentence for you, and if you touch the word it says the word and if you hold the word then it spells the word
and it highlights the words and letters accordingly

tbh (and i'm not being arrogant or whatever) it's the only decent implementation of a book on the iphone/touch
all the other books are just voice overs and a picture with static text.
strangly enough books that are just pictures with a voice over are actually really popular and everyone loves them
but no one has seen ours yet since it just got released a few days ago

Darn, I don't have an iPhone. If I did, that would be pretty awesome.

The only French I do is a poor pepe le pew!

Hi Andy,

The french have a long tradition for graphic novels and in the country you'll find huge shops dedicated only to this. A good friend of mine goes there once a year to do a bit of shopping and expand on his library (which is already huge...). So if you're into graphic novels, France is a dream for this. Franco-Belgian comics go under the name bande-dessinee, and there's some really great things out there that never got translated to English. You can google it and you'll find a lot of places that sell on-line, I know amazon has some things as well but if you look at the publisher's sites instead they'll have things that are less main stream and a lot of the time more interesting (depending on what you like of course). As well, it will enhance your language skills to do some site navigation in French;)

Learning a language using children's books and graphic novels can be a bit tricky, as one of my teachers once said to me the language used in these things can differ quite a lot from how people normally speak as it's sometimes specialized and adjusted to a certain niche. But I find that it's always helped me a fair bit and if nothing else it gives you some inspiration.

Depending on where you live it's also possible to find a French Institute. Here in Europe we have them in a lot of the larger cities, but I don't know about the US. They're really good places to go to meet like-minded people and the actual french man;) Usually they'll have a cafe, a library with books, magazines and newspapers in French and also they'll arrange cultural events like movie nights etc. I think the most important thing to do when you're trying to learn the language is to put it to practical use as much as you can, which can be difficult if you're not in the country so if you're serious about learning French you should try to find someone who you can practice with. They do love their language, so if you're lucky enough to find a french person he'll probably be more than willing to help you out:D

Another thing you can do is to try and find a radio station or a TV channel to surround yourself with the language. Again, this is easy to find in Europe, but might not be possible in the US. When I was learning French I'd listen to the radio all the time, wherever I went... it's a bit like when you're learning Maya, you start to dream in French...

For a good movie I liked the original "Nikita", it was remade as "The Assassin" in English and I didn't think that one was any good at all. There's also a book for children called "The Little Prince" or "Le Petit Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. I love this book, and the illustrations are really quit! It's one of the classics that they'll give you when you study French, so it should be easy to find. I think it's more of a children's book written for adults because I've tried to read it with kids and they've never been as into it as I have;)

I hope this will help you a bit on the francophil path.

Bonne chance!
Nilla

Thanks!
I will be sure to check out "Nikita", along with "Le Petit Prince".

Unfortunately, French isn't so big here in the USA, so we have Spanish channels instead :-\
Same with Radio, too, at least near Boston.

And as far as the French University thing goes, I don't think they have those here, but I really have no idea. I will look around and stuff.
Again, thanks
-Andy

Try the movie Blueberry or its other name Renegade starring Vincent Cassel. Its a supernatural western. Michael Madsen is also in it. Its a french movie, but spoken in English with french subtitles - go figure that one LOL

Just for the record Cassel is married to the rather lovely Monica Bellucci - lucky bugger


Jay

...A supernatural western? haha

You need to move to Michigan close to the Canadian border so you can go speak to the Frenchies over there. I had a chance to teach a class over at Laval University some years ago. It is in near Quebec. I remember all the signage in the McDonalds there being in French. lol.

Note to others and myself:
When using windows and an english keyboard. If you set the keyboard layout to work like a french keyboard, the alt key is set to something else. Therefore only the left-alt will work for navigation in Maya. You need to switch back to english to use the right alt.

I sat there for 10 minutes wondering what hotkey I pressed, haha.