French TV

Bonjour, etes vous aux USA ou en France? si aux states abonnez vous a la chaine Francaise.

Hi, are you based in the States or in France, if leaving in the States get channel 5 (cable French chanel)
if in France Sticky mail senior member Leosghost, he might help you out (He speaks both FR and English too)

i'm in england!

ideally i'm looking for something available on dvd.

Salut H ;-)
Been posting less due to torn shoulder ..on bad days makes typing more than a little painful..however the recent warmer weather here is helping..but still slow as I make many more errors than usual :) and typing long texts is painful ..( this latter restriction will please certain ;)..but if you don't mind a reply in multiple parts, I might have some suggestions..

So topr8..I would advise not to bother with the subtitles..but to watch in English and then ( possibly the following day ) in French..

That way you know what they are saying..repeat 4 or 5 times with the same movie..do this with many different movies..mix and rotate to avoid boredom..

IMO this is the best way to learn any language if you can't be in the country..begin with simple stuff..no complex vocabulary or grammar ..( cartoons ) works for any language ..even if you are in the country ..this method still helps enormously..

</break for late dinner..and "medicalised" tequila desert ;-)>

Very few French made TV series in cop, thriller or SciFi/Futuristic are available on DVD with English alternative soundtracks or subtitles..even fewer French made comedy series are available with other languages..

There are movies however..the Taxi series by Luc Besson comes to mind..as do many others..the problem being that the translations of French Films to English are are not accurate ( neither are the translations of English language movies to French )..but that said they would do to get you into practice ..the general run of vocabulary is fairly idiomatic..and much might pass you by initially ..but you would be entertained :)

I would also recommend "ratatouille" ..and later Jamel, Dany Boon, Devos ( sadly Raymond is no longer around, who played with the French language like no other ).. de Funes ( from whom the "Pythons" especially John Cleese stole shamelessly ). de Funes made over 50 movies ( I have them all :-) ..

Tati ( silent but golden )..Fernandel ..

And "la grande vadrouille" ..which is a classic French comedy war movie..it's shown at least once every year..never gets old..and even has parts in English..

"The visitors" ( the first one )..demonstrates my point about translations..I've seen it in English ( the translation is crap ..not funny at all ) whereas the French original version is a side splitter..

The list could be huge..
Depends a great deal upon what you have access to ..what retail outlets for DVD..I don't know if French Amazon ships to the UK ..or if the choice you get on the English language version of the site is the same as on the French language version of the site ( I should ..but I've never looked for French movies on the English site )..you may also be able to access our TV stations via satellite or the web ?

I'll try and put together a movie list by "genre" if that would be of use ?

The reason that I would advise against subtitles is that the problem of bad translation 99% of the time ..is made even worse by the usual situation of any subtitled movie, where 10 lines of spoken dialogue gets reduced to 1 or 2 lines of subtitling..

the problem being that the translations of French Films to English are are not accurate ( neither are the translations of English language movies to French )

You mean "#*$! alors" doesn't really mean "Gosh darn it" ?!

Oh, dear...

:: and double "oh dear" as I see the Forums word censors are multi- or at least bilingual ::

Aghrhhh!
Leo, Raymond Devos!
Sorry got to post in FR
As tu entendus:
L'oie de Louis ouie t'elle ce que toute oie doit ouir?
Ah oui?
Raymond Devos, Le poete des mots.

Et Brassens, don't remember if one "s" or two.
ca aussi c'est du grand Francais
recememnt vu sur chanel 5 un film sur lui.
and thanks to jump in

Henry

As tu entendus:
L'oie de Louis ouie t'elle ce que toute oie doit ouir?

Ben oui..:-))
et en plus ..I have right here "en DVD.."les 100 plus grandes sketches" et encore d'autres ..it is worth learning French just to be able to appreciate him..
Devos===Dieu

la porte ( the door )
la paupiere qui fait du bruit ( the eyelid which makes a noise )
j'ai des doutes ( I have doubts )

Brassens ..yes! ( Jake Thackery was but a poor imitation )..

I think Souchon has great talent too although in a different vein..but he is very observant as was Brassens..

One can slip some of the more obscure "gros mots"* through the filters here, in many languages..but we are ( usually ) too refined to do so..and there are some multi-lingual mods and admins..

* I own some of the best French ones as dotcoms :))

Having mentioned Brassens ..it is mandatory to mention Brel..

... thanks guys, so much for your input! that's so many leads and suggestions

yes i've already seen that the translations are not too accurate, even from know it is quite apparent!

... now i've got some names to work with, amazon uk is actually quite productive, and as i live in central london i'm sure there is a b&m store somewhere here for the expats or frankophiles!

i have a stream of french customers (b&m) that i can practice on a bit too!

although i did post to partly help my french language, also partly as the show i first mentioned, was just very good and very enjoyable too.

i've bought the two taxi movies on ebay ... haven't started them yet!

There are 4 ..which 2 did you get ?

Hey guys, WW policy is English only.

Which is why we translated the names of the movies and the sketches for you..then again ..some left side of the pondians do have seem to have trouble speaking , reading, and writing English ;-)

Mango and banana are not English words....and don't get me started on Reddi-Wip ...<= that isn't English ;-))

i bought taxi 1 and 2.

lawman, i know it's english! this discussion has been in english!

also these movies are available with either subtitles or dubbed into english.

i'm sorry if anyone has been offended by the discussion! for myself WebmasterWorld is virtually the first place i turn to for help on virtually any subject - such is the depth of knowledge i've found to be here.

You got the best two..

Btw..carburettor, or carburetter isn't an English word in origin ..it is derived from a French word "carbure" or "Carburer" and the "carb" was first invented by an Italian..

Lots of car parts are not English words..not to mention all the non English place names in the USA that one can drive to ..;-)) or be a resident of ..:)

Carburetor, hmmm. Seem like I've heard of that before - a long time ago.

What's the etymology of "fuel injector"?

So topr8..I would advise not to bother with the subtitles..but to watch in English and then ( possibly the following day ) in French..

That way you know what they are saying..repeat 4 or 5 times with the same movie..do this with many different movies..mix and rotate to avoid boredom..

This bit of advice is BRILLIANT for those of us who are "sequilingual" (fluent in one and one-half languages)! :)

CarburaTEUR, is a device mixing "essence" and "air"
All the home-made-super-boosted bikes I used to run where retrofitted with a Delorto carburateur, replacing the air filter with a piece of "panty"
Ahhh! those were the days!

Maybe Lawman could figure what I mean.

What's the etymology of "fuel injector"?

"fuel" is from 14c French..foaile
"injector" is from Latin..injectus

In modern French "fuel" is usually used to denote domestic heating fuel..which although it is very close to diesel ( but taxed less heavily ) and can run diesel engines just fine..( but not legally )..diesel is known as "gazole"..

fuel is pronounced fyool ( feeyool) the fee part is short, so in essence just like English :)..and gazole as gazol or gazwal ( depending on the age of the speaker and where they are from in the country )..

Watching movies in this way is how I learned ..canal+ ( French pay TV ) runs movies in French and in VO ( version originale ) / ( original soundtrack ) when I arrived here in the early 90s..DVD was in the future..

I had learned French at school, as many do ..and was totally lost as what one learns and real life use is vastly different..and I was really rubbish at French at school ..so bad that I was actually excused attendance in French classes .. ( I just could not stop trying to literally translate word for word..hated the lessons as i could not understand a word that was being said ) it was agreed that "I would hold the others back" if I continued..so I did not have to..spent my time instead in the art room..led to a career :)

I thought to myself that if I knew what the actors were saying, I would absorb the new language gradually..so I made a point of doing what I suggested above to topr8.. watched many movies multiple times ..and read many books in both languages..beginning with the simple ones like comic books and the easy movies like cartoons ..or Dirty Harry :)

Combine that with doing everyday things like buying food, asking directions, hawking a freelance art/ illustration portfolio around..you learn very very fast..

The watching movies in both languages idea came to me in the same way as did teaching my son to read using home made bi-lingual "flash cards" ..( he later taught himself German by watching kids TV at age 6 ..he already knew some of the shows "Flintstones " etc so applied the same method I had used )..A lot of our TV here is now available in HD with VO..so if you watch CSI or House etc ..you can watch in which ever language you wish English or French..we also have "arte" which is a french /German TV channel arts and documentary based, it can be very very good ..and is available in French and German ( one can choose the soundtrack ) and very occasionally English..

I prefer to watch and read etc things in the language that they were made in..translations are usually badly done..they lose the humor or the rhythm or the poetry or the atmosphere..

Nowadays, apart from writing on here and a few other places or on content for my sites, I use French much more than English, or a mixture of the two, I'm most comfortable in a mixture of the two, even for thinking and dreaming etc..I suspect that for Henry it is the same, or for any one who uses more than one language, I learned many things just do not / will not translate..

I once met someone who spoke, read , wrote 15 languages fluently, ( more even than Peter Ustinov, I think ) ..within a year he had picked up Maltese too and was accent-less, according to Maltese friends..he went to work in Laos, to learn the language..and then onward..he probably speaks a hundred by now..

He said it gets easier after the second one, easier again after the third one, and so on..I agree ,I can follow at least 3 others now, if the speakers go a little slower for me, and when you are reading French legalese as you would Dan Brown ( or Eco which is altogether finer, although I prefer Eco in English To Eco in French, he "flows" better in English, and there is more humor, more to "savour" ;-) the other "romance " languages become easier..

Surprised Lucy24 hasn't been in this thread..yet..

Henry ..you mean "bas" or "collant" ? ..that would be stocking(s) or tights or pantyhose for the "cousins".."panty" would be "slip" en Français :))

I learned all my latin from watching Roadrunner cartoons.

And there was I thinking that was where you learned your driving skills and techniques ;-))

@leo
Indeed, I made some sort of short, it means pantyhose or
"un bas"

Funny you mention it, after so many years (almost 30 in my case)
even in FR I will pick up an English written book,
my brother leaves also in the States but he only does biz with the FR community so he his less "Americanized" than my wife and I are, nevertheless I will rather email him in English than FR.
At home (my wife too was born in France) we many times use the shorter way to say something using a language combo.
We are at the point where we do find that English words helps better in many case to define a thought or a feeling.

I guess, in short our brain starts to make a "mayonnaise" with the different input/output :)

Surprised Lucy24 hasn't been in this thread..yet..

Matter of fact, I was reminded of this thread's existence earlier today... uhm, make that yesterday afternoon... when I noticed that a pair of my pages passed through g### Translate into Italian. (Wimp. Normally they just read it in English. I mean, heck, if they had five years of Greek in high school, what's a few paragraphs of English?) I got curious enough to replicate the act, and have to say:

Come back, translators! All is forgiven. At a certain point one of the pages says "too darn many" and I swear I expected the auto-translator to come out with the Italian for darn, as in socks. Instead it said dannatamente. My goodness. If that's the euphemism, what's the real thing?

On the other hand, I've got a subheading that says Grazie a tutti on account of those selfsame Italian readers. This threw the auto-translator into a tizzy, resulting in Grazie uno tutti. Hm, gotta watch out for those trees. Sometimes they block your view of the forest.

otoh, saying that something isn't English because it's got a 14th c French source is, ahem, cheating. Strip away all the French and there wouldn't be much left of the language. You could still talk to small children, because core vocabulary is pretty much Anglo-Saxon, but that's about it.

Oddly enough you wouldn't even be able to eat breakfast. Can't remember why, but I know I once worked through the list. Toast, bacon, juice, cereal-- everything on your table has a French or Latin name. Makes you wonder what people ate before 1066. Maybe they went hungry until-- nope, they couldn't have had dinner either. Or even supper. Both French. No lunch, no tea. (Duh.) You could talk about breakfast, but there wouldn't be much of anything to eat.

I'm hungry. How do you suggest to a French cat that it might want to remove itself from your lap?

"Bouge toi*" <= move you* "booj twah" ( the "j" in Booj is like the "g" in dungeon ) ..the forum doesn't work with the symbols ( what are they called ? my mind is temporarily blank .. that are used for pronunciation ..turns them and most other things into html entities..Lucy and I know this very restricting fact well )..so I have to approximate pronunciation, for the average "non francophone"..
or "Dégage**" <= get outta here "day gaj" ( last syllable rhymes with "Madge" )..

* "toi" is the familiar form of you..for those people or animals you know well..or children ..

The French can get quite offended if you use "toi" if you don't know them..and "Bouge" and "Dégage"..are also normally reserved for those you know well .."Dégage" is a sort of "imperative" verging upon insult ..** you can look up the other meanings ( they depend on context, as does much French usage )..the filters here would remove most of them.. ;-)

"Léve toi" <= get up ( lev twah ) lev rhymes with Kev, short for Kevin..

Mmmmmm lunch, :-) ( déjeuner ) ( day juhn ay )..just going to have some 13.00 o'clock here ..:-)

Before the French influence the Celts amongst us ate a great deal of oats ( Irish = coirce ) (Scots = aran-coirce )..usually pre-fermented..and then boiled etc..

You can do a lot of interesting things with coirce..

I can add a few slang ones
"casse toi"
"casse tes ruines"
"barre toi"
"fout moi le camp"
"tire toi de la"
"du vent"

the above is real slang, and street speaking.

A more gentle approach would be:
"allez ouste" where the hand applies a little push.

Need slang help, just ask I am quite good at it.
I had 6 years of classical Greek and Latin (unrelated)
and for the fun when I was a kid made a point to memorize most of a slang dictionary, plus I was born in Paris from a many generations Parisian family, my grand dad wrote for a French well-known newspaper and slang was part of natural working environment.

slang was part of natural working environment.

It still is :))

"casse tes ruines"

Been a while since I heard this one..:) ..can guess you have couple of years on me from that..

Idem, Greek and Latin ( although for less time ) was compulsory in some UK schools too..

A part Breton "calf's head" ? ;-)) then H..tiens :)

All this argot ..we will be leading topr8 down paths which foreigners rarely tread...

The French can get quite offended if you use "toi" if you don't know them

Meanwhile in Scandinavia, "De" (equivalent to and rhymes with German "Sie") is practically defunct. Last time I was there-- which was some few decades back-- everyone under 50 said "du" (rhymes more-or-less with French "tu") all the time.

Oh, right. French. Always did wonder about that stereotypical line, Voulez-vous coucher avec moi. I mean, if you don't know them well enough to address them as tu, what are the odds that they're prepared to coucher with you?

To me odds are much more simpler, I do not believe in 1 out of a zillion chances, it's much more simpler:
50/50, either you win or not :)

Now on a serious note, I have been raised, way back when, to not speak while having dinner unless you are asked a direct question or asked to participate.

If I do not know someone I will never say "tu" and will be offended if I am addressed by using the "tu" "prononm".
However I have been frequently traveling to FR and was really surprised by the number of persons using "tu" right away, if I was (which I probably am) some sort of old "F..t" I will say that traditional education goes down to the drain.

Hmmm, kind of strange, where is this conversation going?

<edit> Reason: Typo, one I have seen among many I don't</edit>

All this argot ..we will be leading topr8 down paths which foreigners rarely tread...

indeed, although i hardly understand half the london slang that the kids around me use!

thanks to a love of ancient history i struggled through with latin until 'O' levels (age 16) it was never my strong point though!

"Voulez-vous coucher avec moi"

.... well, never underestimate the power of alcohol, it's the ideal lubricant for strangers, although, i admit i don't remember ever waking up with a frenchie!