Hier soir, juste avant de me coucher, quelqu’un a posé une question sur r/French: Pourquoi les non-Francophones choisissent-ils d’apprendre le français ?

J’ai vu la question peu après qu’elle a été posée, et j’ai dit la vérité : On m’avait offert le choix entre les cours de français et les cours d’espagnol. Il y avait plus de monde qui voulaient étudier l’espagnol, et j’avais envie de contrarier. J’ai donc choisi le français comme acte de rébellion.

This week and last, I’ve been reading up on Mormons’ commitment to both the language of the King James Version (Philip Barlow’s Mormons and the Bible is a fantastic read) and what is seen as the authoritative text of the Book of Mormon. In Paul Gutjahr’s The Book of Mormon: A Biography, he quotes the official Latter-day Saint Scripture Translation Manual as including the following guidelines for translators of the Book of Mormon:

Grâce à une épisode de Culture BD sur France Culture, j’ai décidé de lire (enfin) Corto Maltese. Content de trouver des traductions chez ma bibliothèque locale, mais il faut que je trouve plus de moyens pour lire la BD en français, quoi.

Je sais que nous, les Américains, nous avone une longue tradition de massacrer les mots empruntés du français, mais je ne comprendrai jamais pourquoi on dit « crêpe » comme « crépe ». C’est insupportable.

Ça fait quelques années que mon frère regarde la chaîne YouTube Not Just Bikes, qui parle des vélos, des transports publics, et de l’infrastructure qui les soutient (où pas). Il m’en parle assez souvent, mais ce n’est que récemment que j’ai enfin décidé de regarder quelques vidéos. Vu mon amour pour les sujets abordés dans les vidéos (les vélos, les transports publics, l’Europe), ça m’étonne que je n’ai pas découvert cette chaîne avant. J’ai surtout apprécié ces vidéos sur le vélo en Suisse, les pistes cyclables à Paris, et les trains de grande vitesse en Italie (surtout parce que j’avais déjà regardé cette vidéo sur la service Frecciarossa entre Paris et Lyon).

Je suis deçu de ne jamais avoir réussi à enseigner le français à ma fille, mais je suis quand-même content que cette langue reste un moyen de communication secrète entre mon épouse et moi.

The biggest upside to my failed efforts to teach kiddo French is that I can still use it to communicate secretly with my spouse.

Comme je reprends la course à pied, j’augmente aussi le nombre de podcasts que j’écoute; il y a des podcasts francophones à ne pas rater ?

Francophones, quelle est votre traduction préférée du mot « tag » dans un contexte technologique ? J’ai des applis qui disent « étiquette » et d’autres qui disent « mot-clé ».

A few months ago, during a weekend where my family was out of town, I binge watched both seasons of « Au service de la France », a hilarious spy comedy available on Netflix. One of the running gags of the series is the (fictional) French secret service’s obsession with bureaucracy. So, for example, when the service suspects a mole in its midst, one of the responses is to make sure that every piece of paperwork is signed multiple times before being stamped twice. Thus, the main secretary of the service begins singing « tamponné, double tamponné » (“stamped, double stamped”) as she signs off on each form passed to her. This leads to some tension, as seen in the scene below:

J’ai découvert un podcast sur le jeu de rôle en mileu Star Wars (que j’aime beaucoup) qui est en français canadien (dont j’essaie d’améliorer ma compréhension). Ça tombe bien !

It’s a bit of a truism to say that the Book of Mormon is dependent on Biblical language, but one thing that’s been on my mind for the past few years (especially since reading Thomas Wayment’s excellent The New Testament: A Translation for Latter-day Saints) is how specifically dependent it is on the particular language of the King James Version of the Bible.

Over the past year or so, as a personal project, I’ve been toying around with what a modern-language version of the Book of Mormon would look like. In short, I found a document complaining the complete text of the Book of Mormon, and chapter by chapter, I’ve been tweaking the language. I’m currently working on Mosiah 8 (as measured by the original chapter breaks; also, I should specify that I started with Mosiah 1—a story for another time).

Je suis impressionné par le nombre de BD francophones disponible aux bibliothèques du Kentucky, mais c’est quand-même hyper decevant de lire une BD francophone en traduction.

I’ve been a big fan of audio-only media for a big chunk of my life. I grew up listening to NPR radio shows like Car Talk and Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me on Saturdays while my dad drove us around to do errands. TV wasn’t allowed in my family on Sundays, but the NPR Sunday Puzzle was—depending on what time church was that year, we’d listen to it on our way to Sunday meetings. I discovered podcasts in their infancy, during my final years of high school, and started really getting into them near the end of college.

Today’s writing music is Manu Chao, whom I was surprised to discover in the 2010s was a real musician, not someone my 1990s-era high school French textbooks had made up for sample dialogues.

Would like to give teaching the kiddo French another try this summer and would be happy to receive advice. Have an app and some videos in mind—may also add some light TTRPG elements to efforts.

Very relieved to learn that the singer on French radio that I can’t tell apart from Johnny Hallyday started his career as a Hallyday impressionist.

This has been around long enough that I used to show it to my FREN 102 students, but very glad to see it cross my radar again via Boing Boing. The whole show is fantastic, but this bet might be the best. Great, nerdy deployment of mostly-right French.

One of my favorite differences between European and Canadian French is the subtly different way they each pronounce words and names in English.

Going through old files and throwing out notes from a French phonetics class from over a decade ago. I recognize that I don’t need them anymore, but there’s still something hard about it!

I wish Nintendo would translate the French release of Mario Kart as « chariot de Mario » because it’s very fun to say.

Grâce à YouTube, j’ai appris au sujet des « speakerines » aujourd’hui. J’étudie le français depuis vingt ans, et il reste des tas de choses à apprendre.

It has been a long week, and tomorrow is looking just as long, but it’s been a beautiful Sunday that I plan to cap off with the new videos from the French train nerd YouTube channels I subscribe to and maybe even some Stardew Valley.

Thanks largely to traveling, I powered through my first Franco-Ontarian novel over the past few days, and it was delightful. Some of the best Francophone books I’ve read have been purchased used for about $5, so hooray for used bookstores.

Adding this to my to-read list.