Below are posts associated with the “French” tag.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ pour Le français va très bien, merci, par Les linguistes atterré(e)s
Ce n’est pas tous les jours qu’on trouve un bouquin en librairie dont on a entendu parler sur Mastodon—surtout quand il s’agit d’un bouquin francophone et qu’on habite aux États-Unis. C’est pour ça que j’ai su que je devais absolument m’offrir ce petit « tract » quand je l’ai vu en visite à Colmar. Et je suis bien content de me l’être offert ! Bien que je ne travaille plus avec les langues, la sociolinguistique a beaucoup influencé ma perspective sur le monde, et ça fait du bien d’en apprendre un peu plus.
James vs. the Trump-Vance ticket: An orphaned, remixed sermon
After being ordained earlier this summer, I was added to my home congregation’s preaching rotation. Today was supposed to be the day that I gave my first sermon there, but once I started to make plans to attend a family funeral, I reached out to ask if someone could sub for me. Before getting the bad news, though, I’d already written most of the sermon, and so I figured I should post the text here so that I get some use out of it.
how to translate 'restoration' and different views on religion
There are a couple of other things that I’d wanted to write about today, but a memory suddenly popped into my head just now, and I wanted to get it written down while it was still fresh. About a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, I was working with a Mormon studies organization to collect stories from members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Community of Christ, and other denominations descended from Joseph Smith Jr.
Stack Exchange and digital labor
Today, Stack Overflow announced that it was entering into a partnership with OpenAI to provide data from the former to the latter for the purposes of training ChatGPT, etc. I’ve used Stack Overflow a fair amount over the years, and there have also been times where I tried to get into some of the other Stack Exchange sites, contributing both questions and answers. I haven’t really been active on any of these sites in recent times, but I still decided to take a couple of minutes this afternoon and follow the advice of one outraged Mastodon post: delete my contributions and shut down my accounts.
un helvétisme que je ne savais pas connaître
Mon beau-frère s’intéresse beaucoup aux langues. Moi aussi, d’une manière générale, mais lui, il se fonce dans une langue quelconque quand l’envie lui prend. C’est donc comme ça qu’il sait lire un peu en français, en espagnol, en turc, en néerlandais, et ainsi de suite. Si je n’ai pas la largeur de ses compétences linguistiques, j’ai quand-même une meilleure connaissance du français que lui, et il lui arrive donc de me poser des questions sur le français.
on Scrabble, French, and what it means to learn
In the summer of 2015, New Zealander Nigel Richards won the French-language world Scrabble championships despite not speaking a word of French. I heard this story on a Radio Télévision Suisse news show repackaged as a podcast (probably Le 12h30, but I can’t remember exactly) and wrote myself a note that if I ever got a chance to teach a class on games and learning, I would use this story in it.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'How Africans Are Changing French — One Joke, Rap and Book at a Time - The New York Times'
Joli article ! I mostly learned Parisian French from my school classes, and I’ve always been interested in the alternatives out there, though I’ll admit I’ve never fully appreciated African French. Time for that to change. link to gift article link to “How Africans Are Changing French — One Joke, Rap and Book at a Time - The New York Times”
frustration with institutional research analytics
Over the summer, I blogged about some concern that I had about a new research portal that my employer had just rolled out. Based on the gentle nudges to update our profiles we’ve been receiving since the platform’s launch, I’m guessing that faculty have not been as keen on the platform as the university is. One of those nudges came this week, and in the spirit of good faith cooperation, I spent some time going through the platform and updating my profile.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Louisville francophones connect and explore with French-language podcast'
How have I missed this??? A French-language podcast here in Kentucky sounds right up my alley. Bonus, the latest episode is an homage to Karl Tremblay. link to “Louisville francophones connect and explore with French-language podcast”
Two-Face, DezNat, and Lavina Fielding Anderson—mission compatriots
When I took a job at the University of Kentucky, a former professor (and boss) of mine at BYU told me to look up a specific French professor on campus, whom she’d also taught (and supervised) some time earlier. I ran into him several months later at a stake conference (this was, obviously, when I was still attending Latter-day Saint meetings), and we bonded over what it was like to work under our boss.
🔗 linkblog: mes pensées sur 'Stockholm fait campagne contre la confusion entre la Suisse et la Suède - rts.ch - Suisse'
Trop marrant. Je me souviens du moment après mon séjour en Suisse où une Américaine m’a demandé si j’y avais appris le suédois. Quelques mois plus tôt, aprés m’avoir vu bavarder avec un Sénégalais, une autre Américaine a répondu avec « tiens, je savais pas que tu parlais l’africain ! ». Oh là là, les Américains. lien pour “Stockholm fait campagne contre la confusion entre la Suisse et la Suède - rts.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Littérature québécoise, anatomie d’un succès programmé - rts.ch - Livres'
J’ai un grand amour pour la littérature franco-canadienne depuis avoir suivi un cours à ce sujet à l’université. link to “Littérature québécoise, anatomie d’un succès programmé - rts.ch - Livres”
a favorite Community of Christ hymn
As I’ve written before, one of my favorite things about the Day One journaling app is the “On this Day” feature that lets me remember moments from my past—often moments I might have forgotten if I hadn’t journaled about them. This morning, Day One reminded me of a hymn service my local Community of Christ congregation held a couple of years ago. I had been invited to share a memory of a favorite hymn.
some more on Abraham
Almost immediately after finishing yesterday’s post, an idea occurred to me that I wanted to chase a little further. I’ve mentioned before my admiration for Thomas Römer, a Germano-Swiss Bible scholar who teaches at the Collège de France and whose lectures are freely available in podcast form. I’ve listened to a lot of those lectures, and I remembered that Römer had made some comments about the rhetorical purposes of the Abraham story that seemed relevant to my wrestling with the story of the Binding of Isaac.
langue, ponctuation, et logiciel
Il y a quelques années, dans les premiers mois de la pandémie du COVID-19, j’ai décidé de mettre mes ordinateurs (y compris mon smartphone) en français pour m’entrainer un peu. C’était une belle expérience, mais il y a quelques mois, pour une raison dont je ne me souviens plus, j’ai décidé de tout remettre en anglais. L’anglais, c’est ma langue maternelle, mais entre quelques années d’expérience de tout faire en français et ma passion pour cette langue, je trouve qu’il est parfois difficile de m’habituer à ce changement.