that horrible accent!
Thursday, May 4, 2006, 09:33 PM - General, Language, English, French
Today, I had a lesson at Decathlon with two of the accounting team.
One had just been to New Zealand, and as it was the first lesson, I like to get them to talk about a variety of things, no matter what their level, so I can hear all their mistakes.
So this man says:
student
I went to New Zealand for my holidays, it was very beautiful, we went to the South isand by plane and all over the North Island, but the New Zealanders have this horrible accent, they turn the vowels so they are like "aieeeeiiiii" (this was his impression of a NZ accent).
myself
Yes, they say thing like fush and chups (meaning fish and chips)
student
Yes, it is really ugly
myself
...kind of like the Australian accent...
student
YES!
myself
I am an Australian! (Laugh out loud)
He went so red, and after three seconds was laughing along with me. But then we had accent jokes for the rest of the lesson. Good start. I didn't have the heart to tell him that my father is a NZer. Nor that I spent most of the summers of my childhood in NZ.
Proves to me I don't really have an accent, as such, for the French.
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laughing!
Tuesday, January 3, 2006, 08:04 PM - General, Work (The Man), Vegan/Vegetarian, Art/Design, Illustration Friday, English, French
I feel the need to write, how's that!
I haven't felt the need to impart any information for days.
Had one of the most revolting NYEs ever. Man was sick, he lay in bed all weekend, I watched The Young Ones (Series 1), in its entirety... went to bed at about 10:30pm, perhaps not that early, but pretty close.
Didn't do an illustration for Illustration friday until now : Not finished, but here is the basic, non-coloured version. The topic was "Flavour".
Damn students didn't turn up for their lessons again today: really boring sometimes... I listened to a few worthwhile podcasts, so it wasn't time completely wasted. Had The Vegan Freaks to listen to today after a good week and a half, I was laughing out loud on the tramway here, which was pretty embarassing, but I don't really care. Better to laugh than not to at the moment.
They had an interview with the guy who runs Herbivore Magazine, and they were talking about a "lime green thong" which reminded me of when I was 21, we bought (as the joke "now your 21 present") a lime green, fluorescent, polyester thong, that was given to everyone of my friends... then it disappeared, perhaps someone gave it to him? Actually I know who kept it, and it didn't really surprise me.
The othe podcast was from The Creative Cow. It was podcast #11, and the main interview was with KINO, he was a really interesting person to listen to and he had some new interesting ideas about keeping your mind creative: the one I liked the most was a simple mind game (he referenced Kipling's "Kym" as where he got the idea from):
You ask someone to set out some objects on a table, at least 10, and you look at them and try to remember everything about them. (I can understand the idea that you don't remember much the first time, as this has been proven to me whilst playing Chinese Whispers in French, I honestly am really bad at it), but if you try really hard you get really good at it. After looking out of the window all afternoon at said "where students don't come to lessons" company, I would expect every detail of the scene outside would be burnt into my memory, but I could bet that is not true.
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parcels!
Wednesday, December 28, 2005, 07:27 PM - Relationships, English, French
Yesterday I received the best things!
I received a card from a very good friend, a present from another and a very large box of stuff from my mama. She is too nice! She sent me books, and vegemite, and bits of japanese fabric, perhaps to temp me to be creative with them again (haven't sewn anything for ages), but one of the best things she sent me was the first "The Young Ones" DVD. My man looked at it puzzled, they never showed the French the mayhem of that show obviously. Maybe they thought they wouldn't understand? Perhaps scratch their heads in bewilderment? Wonder what in fact, they watched at the end of the program? Haven't tested it out on him yet.
Subscribed to a new podcast today : The French Podclass (which I found while listening to The Word Nerds. I have half listened to the first podcast, can tell you my French is much better than basic greetings, but I am happy I found it, he has done alot of work on it. I am impressed! Take a look if you are trying to learn French, I think it is a good resource so far...
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howiezine
Tuesday, November 22, 2005, 05:09 PM - Art/Design, French
Seems I got myself into the howiezine which is linked to howdesign.com, which of course, is a magazine as well. The topic is "Superheroes". I had a pretty "useless" afternoon at work (that means,
no one turned up to the lessons...), but it was a sucessful brainstorming session and French word cramming time.
I really need to force myself to do exercises in French because it is really frustrating.
That is my Tuesday resolution.
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translations
Thursday, November 10, 2005, 07:44 PM - General, French
Well, well.
How much does it annoy me to be put on the spot to translate something from French into English?
If you happened to be a fly on the wall in my house at the moment, you would hear a very common conversation (usually one-sided), where I beat myself up for not being able to retain words, but, being able to understand most conversations, or able to sit through French movies and come out understanding (mostly) : but! Not actually having the ability to construct the words / phrases together all the time.
I seem to be able to ask the student what they think the word is, they say it, I say yes or no. I look in the dictionary, and kick myself for not remembering the word that I knew what it was when I saw it.
So today: I had a student present me with a document to describe fashion trends, for the next season, using almost like a brain-storming style of set-up (words that don't always link up, strange combinations of words, French sayings etc...) She wanted me to help her translate it. It is a particular vocaulary, like most of the students I teach, so I am probably being unjustly hard on myself.
Bref, (as the French say):
I was driving to my most unfavourite job this morning (only because I drive a three hour round trip to teach people for four hours; starting from 6:30am), it was beautiful this morning. Most of the trees have lost their leaves now, and as the sun was coming up, the bare trees were sillouetted against the reddening sky.
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