I broke my arm

On Thursday I was riding my mountain bike too fast and fell off and fractured my arm in two places and dislocated my elbow. That's why I haven't done much in the way of posting or setup.

On the plus side, I get to lie in bed all day and read Proust.

Should have blamed it on fending off Ninjas. Would have been a better story.

Sorry about your arm. Heal up!

Thanks cap'n

jamalrob wrote:On Thursday I was riding my mountain bike too fast and fell off and fractured my arm in two places and dislocated my elbow. That's why I haven't done much in the way of posting or setup.

On the plus side, I get to lie in bed all day and read Proust.

Well, sorry about that. A happy ride can change to misery so quickly. The standard cast time is 2 months, but a dislocated elbow -- I'd rather have the broken bones.

Did they have to pin the bones? Sounds bad. I've been in a few bike accidents -- skin scraped off, severe bruises, broken collar bones, broken wrist, a concussion, and such. Fortunately NOT all at once. Or, maybe it would have been better that way -- get it all over with at one time.

In a somewhat unrelated matter, I bought a copy of Le Monde today (while on a bicycle ride). I've wanted to learn French for a long time and I thought a French newspaper would be good practice material.

I've not had a day of French, but just looking at the headlines...

Résister a l'uberization du monde -- Resist the Uberization of the world
La primaire des billiardaires -- the election of billionaires
En 2012, MM Barack Obama et Willard Mitt Romney avaient consacré environ 1 milliard de dollars chacun au financement de leur campagne présidentielle.--
In 2012, Mr. Barack Obama and Willard [Who knew he was named 'Willard'? If that had gotten out, he'd have gotten fewer votes than he did. People would have thought of 'Millard' as in President Millard Filmore, one of the less successful presidents, so they say.] Mitt Romney together? each? committed/spent about 1 billion [milliard = billion? Odd.] each to finance their presidential campaigns.

The way sentences are put together, and the many words English borrowed from French makes it a bit decipherable. (The pronunciation of French as a function of spelling is another matter altogether. )

Any suggestions on learning French? I have three objectives:

1. Stimulate my aging brain.
2. Learn phrases to drop into my conversations in order to 'mettre sur le chien' (google translate)
3. Be able to read, with some comprehension, a French Newspaper like Liberation or Le Monde.

Now, there are language programs on line, and in boxes (like Rosetta stone and cheaper ones). There is a branch of L'Académie française in Minneapolis that offers limited classes, and so on.

What would you suggest?

My goals are really quite limited. Hey, nobody I know speaks French (well, there is one, but she has Alzheimers, so...) so this is mostly a private thing.

If we're going over bicycle accidents, then I once impaled myself with the handle-bar. A reason why you really should have those rubber grips on them... impaled myself in the lower abdomen, left side. Lost consciousness in the ditch. I was pretty young though, so I don't remember it all. Unfortunately there were no ninjas.

Bitter Crank wrote:
What would you suggest?  
 

Take a trip to France, find a French boyfriend, get him back to the states. Or stay there, whatever. Worked with Turkish, even though I didn't bring him in Greece!

Code:

y o u t u b e . c o m /watch?v=5QXxozXsDZY

Jamal, get well soon! Not too soon, though, read Proust first. Which volume are you reading now? Are you reading the original or the English translation? I've read the first three and the last one. In Greek though - I have to find a French boyfriend too.

Bitter Crank wrote:

jamalrob wrote:On Thursday I was riding my mountain bike too fast and fell off and fractured my arm in two places and dislocated my elbow. That's why I haven't done much in the way of posting or setup.

On the plus side, I get to lie in bed all day and read Proust.

Well, sorry about that.  A happy ride can change to misery so quickly.  The standard cast time is 2 months, but a dislocated elbow -- I'd rather have the broken bones.  

Did they have to pin the bones?  Sounds bad.  I've been in a few bike accidents -- skin scraped off, severe bruises, broken collar bones, broken wrist, a concussion, and such.  Fortunately NOT all at once.  Or, maybe it would have been better that way -- get it all over with at one time.

Don't be sorry, I'm quite enjoying the whole experience. You know, the lack of responsibility, the lying around doing nothing, the being fussed over. The excruciating pain I can do without, but that's non-existent now that I'm in a drugged-up haze.

The wonderful French health service put two titanium plates in my arm, one at the elbow and one near the wrist. I don't have a cast, but it's going to be several weeks before I can use it in anything like a normal way.

In a somewhat unrelated matter, I bought a copy of Le Monde today (while on a bicycle ride).  I've wanted to learn French for a long time and I thought a French newspaper would be good practice material.  

I've not had a day of French, but just looking at the headlines...

Résister a l'uberization du monde -- Resist the Uberization of the world
La primaire des billiardaires -- the election of billionaires
En 2012, MM Barack Obama et Willard Mitt Romney avaient consacré environ 1 milliard de dollars chacun au financement de leur campagne présidentielle.--
In 2012, Mr. Barack Obama and Willard [Who knew he was named 'Willard'?  If that had gotten out, he'd have gotten fewer votes than he did.  People would have thought of 'Millard' as in President Millard Filmore, one of the less successful presidents, so they say.] Mitt Romney together? each? committed/spent about 1 billion [milliard = billion?  Odd.] each to finance their presidential campaigns.

The way sentences are put together, and the many words English borrowed from French makes it a bit decipherable.  (The pronunciation of French as a function of spelling is another matter altogether. )

Any suggestions on learning French?  I have three objectives:

1.  Stimulate my aging brain.
2.  Learn phrases to drop into my conversations in order to 'mettre sur le chien' (google translate)
3.  Be able to read, with some comprehension, a French Newspaper like Liberation or Le Monde.  

Now, there are language programs on line, and in boxes (like Rosetta stone and cheaper ones).  There is a branch of L'Académie française in Minneapolis that offers limited classes, and so on.  

What would you suggest?  

My goals are really quite limited.  Hey, nobody I know speaks French (well, there is one, but she has Alzheimers, so...) so this is mostly a private thing.  

I wish I could help but I'm also trying to learn. We never thought we'd stay in France and we do the kind of work (on the web) that doesn't plunge us into everyday contact with locals, and we've mostly been isolated in the country, so we never learned. But recently I've been trying to translate Tintin books and children's books, but translating isn't great for beginners wanting to speak the language, so I'm about to start classes and I'm doing a BBC course at home that comes in a box containing several audio CDs and a book.

It was a bit embarrassing and frustrating not being able to speak the language in the hospital, so that has given me new impetus.

--- wrote:
Jamal, get well soon! Not too soon, though, read Proust first. Which volume are you reading now? Are you reading the original or the English translation? I've read the first three and the last one. In Greek though - I have to find a French boyfriend too.

Thanks for the kind wishes ---. I read the first two volumes fifteen years ago and found recently that I'd forgotten many of the characters' names and their relationships, so I've decided to read again from the beginning. I found the opening pages of the third, The Guermantes Way, discouraging and tedious; maybe I need to build up some momentum and read the whole thing without breaks in between.

Cpt_Fantastic wrote:If we're going over bicycle accidents, then I once impaled myself with the handle-bar. A reason why you really should have those rubber grips on them... impaled myself in the lower abdomen, left side. Lost consciousness in the ditch. I was pretty young though, so I don't remember it all. Unfortunately there were no ninjas.    

That sounds nasty. I actually saw that happen to someone when I was a kid. Being kids, most of us pointed and laughed until someone thought it might be a good idea to get help.

I have enough to deal with without ninjas. I mean, I don't find them difficult to deal with at all, they're just kind of annoying, like mosquitoes.

jamalrob wrote:On Thursday I was riding my mountain bike too fast and fell off and fractured my arm in two places and dislocated my elbow. That's why I haven't done much in the way of posting or setup.

On the plus side, I get to lie in bed all day and read Proust.

Bad luck about the arm.  Unfortunately my Dad read Proust in his old age, over and over again, because he said by the time he got to the end he'd forgotten the beginning and had to start again - so, once he'd said that, how could I approach M Swann at all?  Except maybe a Squashed Read?

(I don't know if anyone's used 'Squashed Philosopher' (can't post a link as new member) but it's quite handy for a well-thought-out synopsis)

mcdoodle wrote:

jamalrob wrote:On Thursday I was riding my mountain bike too fast and fell off and fractured my arm in two places and dislocated my elbow. That's why I haven't done much in the way of posting or setup.

On the plus side, I get to lie in bed all day and read Proust.

Bad luck about the arm.  Unfortunately my Dad read Proust in his old age, over and over again, because he said by the time he got to the end he'd forgotten the beginning and had to start again - so, once he'd said that, how could I approach M Swann at all?  Except maybe a Squashed Read?

(I don't know if anyone's used 'Squashed Philosopher' (can't post a link as new member) but it's quite handy for a well-thought-out synopsis)

One may forget the details, but reading Proust for me felt like it changed my life. I had never read anything so true to the minutiae of my own experience, and I learned to look at things more carefully.

ps. good to see you here mcdoodle

Since I'm dyslexic, I'm not really qualified to make many comments about Proust other than it's a hell of a lot of words for me to mix up into 'word salads', but I do work a lot in physical rehab and conditioning training.

If you need anything regarding your arm and recovery, feel free to contact me.

Meow!

GREG

mayor of simpleton wrote:Since I'm dyslexic, I'm not really qualified to make many comments about Proust other than it's a hell of a lot of words for me to mix up into 'word salads', but I do work a lot in physical rehab and conditioning training.

If you need anything regarding your arm and recovery, feel free to contact me.

Meow!

GREG

Hi Greg and welcome to the backstage party.

Well, if you can advise me of a way I can drink copious amounts of wine while I'm also taking copious amounts of ketoprofen and paracetamol, without giving myself kidney failure or stripping out my stomach lining, that would be great.

jamalrob wrote:  Hi Greg and welcome to the backstage party.

Well, if you can advise me of a way I can drink copious amounts of wine while I'm also taking copious amounts of ketoprofen and paracetomol, without giving myself kidney failure or stripping out my stomach lining, that would be great.

I'll look into it, but if American wine is like American beer you can probably get away with drinking a lot of that no matter what medicines you're taking.

(Oh... how I've always wanted to recommend American wine to someone in France!    )

Meow!

GREG

btw... If you really drink excessive amounts of wine the ketoprofen and paracetomol might be redundant.  

I don't think I could find American wine here if I tried.

Jamal, I'd say I'm sorry to hear about your arm, only I understand your perspective how it could be kind of enjoyable in a weird way. It's part of the rich tapestry of life, eh?

I feel silly to learn that you don't speak French. I had always assumed you were a native, patiently humouring us monolingual Anglophones, what with your web address always showing somewhere in France. That and your compendious knowledge of Continental Philosophy.

BitterCrank, my recommendation for vocab and sentence structure is to get a Kindle, buy and install the Francais-English dictionary and then you can read French books and touch translate words with the touch of a finger. I started with Le Petit Prince about a year ago (an easy read, and fun) and have never looked back. I've just finished reading Camus's L'Etranger, which is marvellous. I doubt I'll ever get to Proust (I couldn't even manage that in English), but I did finish Le Comte de Monte Cristo - about 1200 pages - a Ripping Yarn.

It doesn't help much with understanding spoken French (It helps some, but there's no substitute for lots of aural exposure), but it makes one's vocab and speaking ability advance in leaps and bounds.

For aural I have my PVR set to record any movie in French that's broadcast on free-to-air TV. I do a quick screen on each and throw out the ones that have too much slang and fast talking. Then I listen carefully, with the rewind button handy, to try to catch key words and figure out what they're saying. The movies are sub-titled in English here but only very loosely and, when I do manage to identify a phrase, it's interesting to compare its literal meaning with the - often very different - subtitle.

Bitter Crank wrote:
Any suggestions on learning French?

Read books which you are familiar with in English, in a French translation. Children's books at first, if you like. Have the original English by you, if necessary. I got a lot out of reading Lord of the Rings in German, before I started a university course.

Read children's books in French. I particularly enjoyed "Le Petit Nicolas":

Le petit Nicolas (Little Nicholas) is a series of French children's books. It was created by René Goscinny and illustrated by Jean-Jacques Sempé and it was first published on March 29, 1959. The books depict an idealized version of childhood in 1950s France.

The books are told from the point of view of Nicolas himself, which gives the book a distinct and personal sense of humor. The narration is a pastiche of childish storytelling, with run-on sentences and schoolyard slang used in abundance, and much of the humor derives from Nicolas' misunderstanding of adults' behavior. At the same time, adults are as much a target of the book's satire as children, as the straightforward and uncomplicated worldview of the child narrator exposes the flaws of adult perception. This subversive element in Le petit Nicolas made it an early example of modern children's literature that is centered on the experience of the child's interpretation of the world, rather than an adult's.

   Nicolas (the main character): He is sensitive and attached to true values like friendship, love of one's parents, and has some sense of justice. He is not good at arithmetic and smallest in his class.
   Clotaire: "He's bottom of the class."
   Alceste: Nicolas' best friend, "he's fat and he eats all the time."
   Eudes: "He's very strong and likes to punch our friends on the nose."
   Geoffroy: "His dad is very rich and buys him everything he wants."
   Agnan: "He is ranked first in the class and is the teacher's pet and therefore nobody likes him, but you can't hit him as often as you'd like, because he wears glasses."
   Joachim: He has a little brother.
   Maixent: He runs very fast because of his long legs.
   Rufus: "His father is a policeman, and he's got a cop's whistle."
   Marie-Edwige: "She's the very nice girl."
   Louisette: The daughter of a friend of the mother of Nicolas; Nicolas decides he wants to marry her because she plays soccer well.
   Rex: A stray dog that Nicolas found; his real name is Kiki.

Blueswing wrote:

Bitter Crank wrote:Any suggestions on learning French?

Read books which you are familiar with in English, in a French translation. Children's books at first, if you like. Have the original English by you, if necessary. I got a lot out of reading Lord of the Rings in German, before I started a university course.

Read children's books in French. I particularly enjoyed "Le Petit Nicolas":

Excellent suggestions. I've read Lord of the Rings in English maybe...10 times? So reading it in French would be a good idea. Also, children's books... hadn't thought of that.

Merci!

Crank wrote:
En 2012, MM Barack Obama et Willard Mitt Romney avaient consacré environ 1 milliard de dollars chacun au financement de leur campagne présidentielle.--
together? each?

You are doing exactly the right thing here, and very successfully if I may say so!

Chacun = chaque + un

chaque = each, every
un = one

chacun = each one, every one.

Useful phrase to drop pour mettre le chien: chacun a son gout. Everyone to his taste.

Chaque is pronounced "shack", chacun is pronounced "shakuh",where the "uh" is a nasal sound, you'd have to hear it.

"a" is the sound in "apple", "son" is pronounced like the word "song" without the "g" sound at the end, and "gout" is pronounced "gu", with a short "u" or "oo" sound. Again you need to hear it.

Gout should really have an accent over the "u", the circumflex accent, but I don't know how to do it. Maybe somebody else does. It looks like this: ^

The accent doesn't actually change the pronunciation, which seems daft, but it can be helpful in understanding. It actually marks a place where an "s" has been dropped from the spelling. So gout used to be spelled "goust", and that helps you see that it is related to English words like "gustation" and "disgust". Similarly, foret has a circumflex over the "e", it used to be spelled "forest". It's pronounced "foray".

Blueswing wrote:Agnan: "He is ranked first in the class and is the teacher's pet and therefore nobody likes him, but you can't hit him as often as you'd like, because he wears glasses."

The French quote above says nothing about hitting Agnan. You haven't made a Freudian slip have you, revealing that you secretly want to punch teachers' pets?