Found help from a French language reader

nickbulka · Post by **nickbulka** » May 22nd, 2013, 7:09 am

Hi all,

I'm recording the book "Bizarre" by Lawton Mackall, and one of the chapters contains about 30 lines in French. Interestingly, it is a play-by-play of a baseball game!

I'm not good with French pronunciation, and I'm hoping to get someone to help by recording these lines.

Here's a link to the chapter:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42710/42710-h/42710-h.htm#JOUEZ_BALLE

thanks in advance.
nick

francesb · Post by **francesb** » May 24th, 2013, 2:43 pm

nickbulka wrote:Hi all,

I'm recording the book "Bizarre" by Lawton Mackall, and one of the chapters contains about 30 lines in French. Interestingly, it is a play-by-play of a baseball game!

I'm not good with French pronunciation, and I'm hoping to get someone to help by recording these lines.

Here's a link to the chapter:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42710/42710-h/42710-h.htm#JOUEZ_BALLE

thanks in advance.
nick

I know how to pronounce most of it, having just finished my first French course, but I'm afraid I can do some somewhat accurate guessing as to a few phrases.

nickbulka · Post by **nickbulka** » May 25th, 2013, 7:05 am

francesb wrote:
I know how to pronounce most of it, having just finished my first French course, but I'm afraid I can do some somewhat accurate guessing as to a few phrases.

Hi Frances,

Thanks for your kind offer to help.

The pronounciation certainly is the key here, but there is also the "context", for lack of a better word. Do you feel confident that you can read this with the proper inflections, cadence, or whatever you want to call it, for a baseball game, considering your 'newness' to the French language?

regards
nick

francesb · Post by **francesb** » May 25th, 2013, 8:59 am

Sure! Also if I can't pronounce something, I will ask my French teacher. Would it work if I read some of the English part too just to make sure I don't miss anything? Just for the parts where it is french-english-french-english back and forth.

moniaqua · Post by **moniaqua** » May 25th, 2013, 9:12 am

francesb wrote:Sure!

You're brave!

I lived in France for five months and I didn't offer a reading because I am not convinced enough of my pronunciation in French. At least, as long as I don't sing

francesb · Post by **francesb** » May 25th, 2013, 9:15 am

moniaqua wrote:
francesb wrote:Sure!
You're brave! I lived in France for five months and I didn't offer a reading because I am not convinced enough of my pronunciation in French. At least, as long as I don't sing

We lived in England for a while and visited France (of course then I had no clue what anyone was saying

) But it was a really fun language to learn and our teacher wanted to make sure we didn't forget everything over the summer, so this is good practice!

francesb · Post by **francesb** » May 25th, 2013, 9:59 am

Here is a quick draft: there are some mistakes in it,

http://upload.librivox.org/share/uploads/xx/frenchpartbaseball_fb_.mp3

moniaqua · Post by **moniaqua** » May 25th, 2013, 10:25 am

Good practice it is for sure, and fun

Some "a"s would be important, for example on "ramassa", "marcha" and so on because it tells us that all happened in the past (c'est passé simple). Et ce n'est pas la douzième mais la deuxième base (its only a difference of ten...)

I think it might be better to stay with the french part. I always feel it is kind of hard to pronounce languages properly when I switch, even if I do it every so often only because it simply happens when talking because the other word came faster into mind.

If you want to do that reading, I think you'll definitely need to ask your teacher to go through the text with you in order to make it understandable. For only one course you're doing well, though. You seem to have an ear for other languages.

RuthieG · Post by **RuthieG** » May 26th, 2013, 4:42 am

Let's wait a little while to see if a native French speaker comes along

.

Ruth

Tlaloc · Post by **Tlaloc** » May 26th, 2013, 6:12 am

I could either read this for you Nick, or read it to help(brave and admirable

) Frances with a correct pronunciation, intonation etc.
Effectively, this text from the book Bizarre is a bit.. bizarre and rather difficult to start with.
Anyway, I will post a reading here as an example and then you can choose what to do with it: use it as it is, or let Frances gain an early experience with this.
If Frances reads it

, I could PL and help with polishing the reading if necessary.
Herman

francesb · Post by **francesb** » May 26th, 2013, 6:32 am

RuthieG wrote:Let's wait a little while to see if a native French speaker comes along .

Ruth

Totally fine!

moniaqua · Post by **moniaqua** » May 26th, 2013, 9:57 am

Tlaloc wrote: Effectively, this text from the book Bizarre is a bit.. bizarre and rather difficult to start with.

Definitely!
For sure a lot more than what I learned in my first year of French at school

And some nice tongue twisters.

nickbulka · Post by **nickbulka** » May 26th, 2013, 11:19 am

Tlaloc wrote:I could either read this for you Nick, or read it to help(brave and admirable ) Frances with a correct pronunciation, intonation etc.
Effectively, this text from the book Bizarre is a bit.. bizarre and rather difficult to start with.
Anyway, I will post a reading here as an example and then you can choose what to do with it: use it as it is, or let Frances gain an early experience with this.
If Frances reads it , I could PL and help with polishing the reading if necessary.
Herman

Thanks Herman.
I think we all admire Frances for volunteering for such a challenging task.

Considering the complexity of the text, and her inexperience, however, I think she will understand when I say that I believe it's probably best for you to do the reading. And as long as you're taking on the French portion, you might as well include the title as well.

A big thank you to Frances, Monika, Ruth and Herman.

nick

francesb · Post by **francesb** » May 26th, 2013, 1:23 pm

nickbulka wrote:
Thanks Herman.
I think we all admire Frances for volunteering for such a challenging task. Considering the complexity of the text, and her inexperience, however, I think she will understand when I say that I believe it's probably best for you to do the reading. And as long as you're taking on the French portion, you might as well include the title as well.

A big thank you to Frances, Monika, Ruth and Herman.

nick

I fully understand! It does seem like hard text and in a couple years, I probably could, but I agree that now, I am a a bit inexperienced.

Tlaloc · Post by **Tlaloc** » June 1st, 2013, 2:32 am

Hello Nick
I uploaded the french reading to Kilted Dragon, your MC for this bizarre project.
I read it three times. First french with pauses between each line, then french without pauses and finally the whole text, french and english mixed. It is not far from being pure nonsense!

Enjoy reading the rest of the bizarreries.
Herman