Staz learns french

Staz occasionally tries to learn French when he's bored or procrastinating.

On this page you can kinda follow along with his progress.

What is French? (Qu'est-ce que c'est le français?)

I think these are french

French is a language spoken by an estimated 310 million people, and it is an official language of 27 countries, including France, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Canada.

The French language (or le français as it's called in French) was created by panspiritualist perverts who believe that inanimate objects all come with built-in gender, and that this ought to be one of the main features of their language. They also wanted to make sure that everyone knew how good they are at multiplication and addition, so they decided to call 'ninety-two' "20 x 4 + 12" (quatre-vingt-douze).

French is also characterised by its writing system, in which words often have several letters that are completely silent when pronounced. In fact, the singular and plural forms of many nouns in French (e.g. fille = 'girl', filles = 'girls') have distinct written forms, and yet are pronounced completely identically to one another, and in conversation can only be distinguished via context or other syntactic features present in the same utterance (e.g. Nicole et Yvonne sont les filles de Monsieur Duclos = "Nicole and Yvonne are the daughters of Mr. Duclos" where sont is the 3rd-person plural form of the verb "to be").

French is not only one of the most commonly spoken languages, it is also considered by many to be the most beautiful or romantic language in the world.

Staz's progress (Les progrès de Staz)

Staz studies French exclusively using the following:

• a PDF copy of Le Français par la Méthode Nature (1958) by Arthur M. Jensen
• a YouTube playlist of a native French speaker reading each of the main texts from Le Français par la Méthode Nature
• the French/English dictionary that comes bundled with macOS
• occasional web searches

2024/11/22 (le vendredi 22 novembre 2024)

Current lesson: Chapitre douze: "Le dîner" (12/50)

Things really ramped up after chapitre 9. Not only did the length of the text increase, but a bunch of new vocabulary and grammar was introduced. It's honestly a bit overwhelming, but everything is still understandable, even if I'm unsure of some specific grammar points. For example, it's really unclear to me when you use des instead of de. You would think it would just be when the following noun is plural, but that doesn't seem to be the case. A note from chapitre 2 says "des = de les," and chapitre 6 has the example:

"M. Charles Leroux, c'est l'oncle des quatre enfants de M. et Mme Duclos,"

...which makes sense. However, later on in the same chapter we get this:

"Combien de langues votre père parle-t-il?"

...where langues is plural, and yet we have de. My guess is that "combien de" is acting as a set phrase, and is never "combien des." I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually. (I could just look it up, but since I'm not really outputting at this point I don't really care too much; whether it's de or des, it's comprehensible either way, and that's all that matters to me.)

Also there's the thing where all of the seasons use "en" like en été, en automne, en hiver, EXCEPT spring which for whatever reason is au printemps. (There's a note in chapitre 7 that says "au = à + le," kinda like how "du = de + le")

At this point the hardest part is definitely verb conjugation. Verbs can turn into something unrecognisable depending on whether it's 1st-person singular, or 3rd-person plural or whatever. Like va is 3rd-person singular for "to go," but 1st-person plural is allons which if you look carefully is completely fucking different. Really jarring coming from Japanese where every verb is the same and there's no concept of "1st person" or "singular" or whatever.

---

I had a bit of a breakthrough on chapitre 12, although I'm not sure if it's correct.

I was wondering why sometimes they use "est <past tense verb>" and other times they use "a <past tense verb>". But after reading the résumé at the end of chapitre 12 about le passé composé, I think it's trying to tell me that you use "est" for non-transitive verbs and "a" for transitive verbs. Furthermore, for "est" you have to conjugate the second part of the passive construction according to gender/plurality, but for "a" you don't.

Assuming this is correct, I'm going to write down the answer to the exercise here, along with my translation, and if it's wrong I'll laugh at myself from the future.

Jean s'est assis entre Nicole et Yvonne. 
  (Jean is sat between Nicole and Yvonne.)
Maman s'est assise entre Ginette et l'oncle André. 
  (Mom is sat between Ginette and uncle André.)
L'oncle a versé du vin à grand-mère. 
  (Uncle has poured the wine for grandmother.)
La bonne a mis une bouteille de vin blanc sur la table. 
  (The maid has placed a bottle of white wine on the table.)
Les grands-parents sont venus un peu avant six heures. 
  (The grandparents have come a little before six o'clock.)
Grand-mère et tante Claire sont restées dans le jardin. 
  (Grandma and aunt Claire have remained in the yard.)
Papa est venu avant M. Leroux.
  (Dad has come before Mr. Leroux.) 
Yvonne n'a pas mangé de haricots au déjeuner. 
  (Yvonne hasn't eaten her beans at lunch.)
Les trois enfants ont donné des cadeaux à Yvonne.
  (The three children have given the presents to Yvonne.) 
Maman est allée dans le jardin. 
  (Mom has gone to the yard.)
Marcel et Monique ne sont pas venus à l'anniversaire d'Yvonne.
  (Marcel and Monique have not come to Yvonne's birthday.) 
Maman a appelé: "A table!" 
  (Mom has said: "To the table!")
Toutes les personnes sont allés dans la salle à manger. 
  (Everyone has gone to the dining room.)
Les grands-parents se sont assis en face de papa. 
  (The grandparents are sat facing dad.)
Papa n'est pas resté dans le jardin.
  (Dad has not remained in the yard.)
Tante Claire est restée avec Yvonne et les deux autres fillettes.
  (Aunt Claire has remained with Yvonne and the two other little girls.)
M. et Mme Duclos sont restés à Nice. 
  (Mr. and Mrs. Duclos have remained in Nice.)
Yvonne a montré ses cadeaux à Ginette. 
  (Yvonne has shown her presents to Ginette.)
Tante Mireille n'est pas venue aujourd'hui.
  (Aunt Mireille has not come today.)
Les trois hommes sont allés dans la maison. 
  (The three men have gone inside the house.)
Ginette et sa maman sont venues à trois heures. 
  (Ginette and her mom have come at three o'clock.)
Les deux garçons sont restés dans le jardin avec les fillettes.
  (The two boys have remained in the yard with the little girls.)
Ginette a demandé: "Qui t'a donné ce cadeau?"
  (Ginette has asked: "Who gave this present?")
Toutes les personnes se sont assis autour de la table.
  (Everyone has sat around the table.)