1/21/2019 0 Comments Day 9: Rest Day (1/17/19)Today I was planning to meet with Madame Carine, but she couldn’t get to me at our usual location in Perrysburg and the roads were a little snowy so we decided to cancel today’s lesson. I was also feeling under the weather, so I decided to take a rest day and watch a French TV show called “Les Revenants” or The Returned. My goals were to try to pick up as many words as I could and also to do some of the worksheets that Madame Carine had given me over the past few lessons.
“Les Revenants” is actually a terrifying show that tells the story of characters who die and then come back to visit the town they used to live in--not as ghosts but as real people who seem normal except for the fact that they eat a lot, can’t sleep (ever), and have special powers. It’s fairly new and it probably falls into the supernatural / fantasy genre, although it’s definitely an adult show--not childish at all. The actors are mostly European (some are Belgian, many are French) and they speak entirely in French--although the show has great English subtitles. As I’d noticed when I was traveling in Europe, it’s a little hard to distinguish between different words because they all flow together but it was a fun challenge to pick out words and phrases I could understand. The show was also interesting to watch because it was filmed in France (mostly in the countryside or in smaller towns) so I got to see a little of French life outside of Paris through French shops and French restaurants. I also tried to pick out the way that French mannerisms differ from American mannerisms and one big thing I noticed is that the French (at least in this show) are a lot more exuberant in terms of their emotions--embracing one another all the time, getting into arguments easily and then making up within a few minutes. Perhaps these are all just characteristics of this particular show, but I did notice some of these qualities in the French people that I interacted with when I was traveling. Another interesting thing is that I still can’t pick out differences in the French accent. Madame Carine tells me that there are clear differences in the way that French is spoken between, say, Belgium and France, just as there are clear differences in the way English is spoken in the U.S. and Australia, but I still can’t tell the difference the way that I can with English. I think it would be really fun to be able to distinguish between regions; I’m not sure why it’s so hard for me to believe that French varies just as English does but it is! This is definitely something I’d like to take to Madame Carine about more, because she grew up in Paris and probably can tell differences even between French spoken in cities and French spoken in the countryside (just as I can tell the difference between, say, Southern English and Midwestern English in the United States). I also completed a worksheet in the afternoon, which I have attached below. Today was a much quieter day than normal, but I’m glad that I got to take a little bit of a break, while still learning about French language and culture. I’m looking forward to getting back to my lessons tomorrow, though. I think when you first start learning something it’s important to keep practicing as often as you can, so I didn’t love skipping my meeting with Madame Carine today. I’m also worried about losing what I’ve learned these past two weeks when I go back to my regular classes, but perhaps I can work out a way of continuing my French lessons during the semester.
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AuthorKiran Dzur |