Staz learns french

Oh là là!! Très bon! (source: TheJonyMyster)

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. Elles sont les filles de Monsieur Duclos = "They 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)

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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.

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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 you this present?")
Toutes les personnes se sont assis autour de la table.
  (Everyone has sat around the table.)

2024/11/23 (le samedi 23 novembre 2024)

Current lesson: Chapitre treiz: "Un Martin" (13/50)

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So apparently I had a few misconceptions.

I was wondering why sometimes they use "est <past tense verb>" and other times they use "a <past tense verb>".

Turns out that that is not in fact the past tense. Like, "donné" is not the past tense of "donner." And furthermore, in the exercise from yesterday I translated all of those constructions as "has <verb>" which is probably definitely not correct. I think I just assumed that because "a" means "to have (3rd person)" that it works like the English "have eaten" construction.

But I watched a video that explained the difference, and from what I could understand (the video is in French and I didn't turn on the English subs) it's just essentially used like we would use the past tense in English. The other kind of past tense (l'imparfait) is used when referring to past actions in general as opposed to specific actions occupying a specific moment in time. An example she gave in the video was: Hier, je mangeais des pâtes quand ma mère a téléphoné. Which, I think means "Yesterday, I was eating pasta when my mom called." Just for the sake of not having this gnaw at me I'm gonna check if that translation is right. (20 seconds later) Yep, that's exactly right.

I'm still not sure about my theory that "est <verb>" is used for intransitive things and "a <verb>" is used for transitive things, but it definitely feels like that's what the exercise was implying so I'm just going to assume that's what it is.

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Chapitre 13 introduced this weird thing (edit: Actually they were introduced already in Chapitre 12) with what I think are called reflexive verbs. For example: laver (to wash). Just on its own it looks like this verb only means "to wash something else (not yourself)," for example: "Yvonne et Nicole sont allées dans la salle de bains, où Nicole a lavé les petites mains noires d'Yvonne." (Yvonne and Nicole went to the bathroom, where Nicole washed Yvonne's little black hands.) Note: I'm not sure if "noir" can actually mean "dirty" or if they're really just saying "black."

In contrast, if you want to say that someone washes themself you have to use a reflexive verb: "Nicole se lave." That "se" is the reflexive part, and the tricky thing is that it changes depending on if you're talking in the 3rd person or 1st person or whatever. So if you wanted to say "I washed myself," you have to say "Je me lave." "Je" and "me" are kind of like "I" and "me" in English, where one is the subject and one is the object. There are also times when you use the same word for both subject and object, like "you" in English; "you" is the same in "I wash you" and "you wash me." In French, "we" (nous) and "them" (vous) behave like this. The funny thing is, even though they're the same word, you still have to say "both" of them, so you end up with "Nous nous lavons," or "Vous vous lavez," which sounds wonderfully silly and I love it.

The other wacky thing that took me a bit to wrap my head around (assuming I understand it) is that lave is transitive, so it becomes a lavé, but se lave is intransitive, so it becomes s'est lavé and has all those annoying conjugations (like vous vous êtes levés... yuck).

Also a new discovery: Apparently French has "Si" like Spanish does but it works differently. As far as I can tell, the way it works is if someone asks you a rhetorical question (e.g. "Haven't you washed yourself yet?") you respond "Si" if you want to be like "No, yeah I have." Like... "si" means "yes," but you only use it if you're responding "yes" to the thing the person means to say, not what they literally say. The example given in the book is this:

"Où sont Jean et Henri? Est-ce qu'ils ne se sont pas encore lavés?"

C'est Jean lui-même (il entre dans la cuisine à ce moment) qui rêpond:

"Si, maman, je me suis levé, lavé et habillé."

Note the extremely convoluted word order of "Est-ce qui'ils ne se sont pas encore lavés?" "Ils se sont lavés" is a set, and "ne [verb] pas encore" is a set meaning "not [verb] yet." But the verb that goes into the "ne [verb] pas encore" construction is not "lavés" in this case, it's "sont" ("to be"). So what this means is that for le passé composé with a reflexive verb you have to sandwich the two verbs when you want to negate them, like so: "Ils se <verb1> <verb2>" --> "Ils ne se <verb1> pas <verb2>."

With that logic, I should be able to predict how you would negate a verb that uses "avoir" instead of "être" like so: "Ils n'ont pas encore mangé" ("They haven't eaten yet"). Checking with a translation tool, that appears to be correct.

2024/11/26 (le mardi 26 novembre 2024)

Current lesson: Chapitre quinze: "Les Duclos Vont A Saint-Gil" (15/50)

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This sentence threw me for a loop: "Tu m'as dit une fois que vous aviez de la famille à la campagne, vous aussi, non?" I couldn't for the life of me figure out what "m'as" was supposed to mean. I knew it was a contraction of some kind, but I couldn't think of a word that started with the letter "m." Then I suddenly remembered that SOV constructions are a thing (e.g. "Je me lave") and realised that it must be "Tu me as dit." The whole sentence would mean: "Didn't you tell me one time that you have family that live in the country, like we do?" Interestingly the "like we do" part renders in French as "you as well." Just two languages saying the same thing in two different ways.

I've completely given up trying to keep track of the conjugations at this point. I can tell (or at least I think I can tell) what verb means what given the context, but I would be absolutely hopeless if I had to construct a sentence myself. At some point when I have the time I think it would be worthwhile to go through all the conjugations and try to more or less get them down, but for now I'm happy as long as I know what's being said.

I should also point out that I would be hopeless at trying to figure out what's being said if I wasn't looking at the script while listening. I should go back a few lessons and just listen to the audio to test myself. Using the text as a crutch probably isn't a great idea, but then again my main goal with French is to be able to read, so perhaps it's not that much of an issue. Nevertheless, doing the same exact routine all the time gets stale, so it would be good to challenge myself every now and then. So far I think my personal difficulty rating would look something like this:

Reading (Easiest) --> Listening --> Typing --> Speaking

Incidentally I feel the same way about Japanese. I've heard people say that they find speaking easier than listening, for example, but I think it's just a personality thing. I kind of have the prejudicial view that people who think speaking is easier than listening speak in a careless (or carefree) way, and aren't paying attention to the little details that natives include in their utterances that make them actually "correct," which is why listening would feel harder to them; there's a whole bunch of extra sounds that they're not accustomed to, because they don't say them when they speak.

I say this is a "prejudicial" view, but that probably says more about my own shortcomings than anything else. There's no objective reason, I don't think, why the type of person above should be considered any worse at the language. In fact, it's probably exactly the opposite. Such a person would have a "low affective filter," in Stephen Krashen's terminology, which in theory should enable them to acquire the language more quickly. Such people also probably enjoy talking and being sociable, which would lead to more opportunities to get comprehensible input. (Having people talk to you is probably the best kind of comprehensible input there is, assuming you can actually hold a conversation.)

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The book is telling me that friends often call each other "mon vieux," which literally means "my old." Considering that this is a textbook from the 1950s I'm really not sure if people still use that phrase or not.

I learned that "si" not only means "yes," as I explained in my last progress report, it also means "if" just like it does in Spanish.

I'm curious about how the author decided which words should be explained, and which words could just be picked up naturally through context. For example, the word "amis" I believe hasn't been explained in any notes so far, they just started using it in the dialogues. There are many other words like that in the book. "Toujours" I think is one of them. When I first saw it I thought it meant "every day," as in "tous jours." Actually let me check wiktionary to see if that's the origin... YES THAT'S THE ORIGIN I'm a genius.

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I'm a bit confused about how the word "on" is used. I've been glossing it a few different ways: "one," "people," "we," "they." And in this lesson they introduced a new usage: "On part!" (= "We're leaving!") and left a note saying that "on ↄ: nous." To be honest, I have no idea what this little "ↄ:" symbol means, I've never seen it outside of this book. But obviously it means that two words are roughly equivalent, at least in the given context.

2024/12/17 (le mardi 17 decembre 2024)

Current lesson: Chapitre dix-sept: "Les Verbes Français" (17/50)

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Frenchception.

This book is so fucking genius. We've spent the whole book getting little snippets of information about les Duclos and their relatives, and just learning vocabulary and grammar in context with no overt explanations. I was wondering how they were going to keep that up; after all, French verbs are complicated as fuck and it would be really daunting to try to explain indirectly. So what do they do? They conveniently introduce this English teenager who's visiting his aunt (the sister in-law of M. Duclos) in Saint-Gil, who starts complaining about how hard French is. Then M. Duclos is like "Let's talk a walk and I'll teach you about verbs." So they've come up with a completely natural way to insert some traditional grammar instruction right into the flow of all the previous chapters. Very very smart.

So far all of M. Duclos' explanation has pretty much been limited to verbs that end in -er, which I guess are the easy ones. He also introduced some useful grammar terminology:

le présent = the present tense
l'imparfait = the past tense
le futur = the futur tense
première personne du singulier = first-person singular
deuxième personne du pluriel du futur = future second-person plural
et cætera

We also learned (or reviewed I guess) the various conjugations for verbs that end in -er:

Le Présent

"Jouer"
je joue
tu joues
il joue
nous jouons
vous jouez
ils jouent

L'Imparfait

"Jouer"
je jouais
tu jouais
il jouait
nous jouions
vous jouiez
ils jouaient

M. Duclos then explains that l'imparfait is easy, because if you know just one of the forms, you can figure out all the rest. I suppose you could rephrase that to say that the root of the past tense stays the same, and the ending conjugates regularly.

Then M. Duclos explains that le futur for all -er verbs ends in the same pattern: -rai, -ras, -ra, -rons, -rez, -ront.

Le Futur

"Jouer"
je jouerai
tu joueras
il jouera
nous jouerons
vous jouerez
ils joueront

Furthermore, just like with l'imparfait, if you know the root of une des formes du futur you can figure out the rest.

Lastly M. Duclos talks about le passé composé for -er verbs, which always end with -é.

Le Passé Composé

"Jouer"
j'ai joué
tu as joué
il a joué
nous avons joué
vous avez joué
ils ont joué

It is interesting to note that while in this chapitre M. Duclos only explained -er verbs, the book has so far not bothered to restrict the texts to just -er verbs. This is a refreshing approach, and it lets you get a taste of the actual language in all its complexity before the grammar is formally explained.