waiting for LePod

In French you (may) start a sentence with 'Le', whereas in Chinese you (may) end it with '了'.

As far as French cops, I once was in a taxi with my (American) boss in Paris and asked the taxi driver whether he could speak English, his answer was that he wouldn't be a taxi driver if he could - a bit OTT if you ask me, but I guess the same applies to traffic cops!

@Henning and Rich -- when I was studying French I'd always switch into Chinese whenever I hit a "le". And vice versa with 了. Looking forward to FrenchPod myself.

joual, as far as I can figure out, is a way of speaking in French Canada. I'm not sure if it refers to certain words, a certain accent...hah, I still mentally blame that prof's lack of explanation for my uncertainty! Very funny in hindsight.

.....OK, here is the wikepedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joual

Ha...the "d" is still pronounced in french in the case of Le Pod, because Pod is not a french word.

my english bad too

I started rapidly speaking Chinese to a French cop in Paris last week, without realizing a) I was speaking Chinese and b) there was no way to communicate with him anyway (didn't seem to know English, or pretended not to).... I meant to be talking to my Chinese friend who as talking French to the police officer (asking directions) but from the little I got out of it, she didn't ask everything we needed to know, police was driving off, and so instead of remember my friend needed to translate my Chinese to French, I just spoke Chinese write in the cops face... that much have been pretty funny to him.

Anyway, how does one say "Le Pod" in French, as I know the often don't pronounce the last letter of a word (the little I got of my 8 days of French learning)... something like "lay poo"? Hmmm...

I am used to see french speaking peolpe beeing confused when i use french...no big difference so ;-)!

"Oui, 你 peux, pas de problem..."

this, i think it must be amazed for whom asked you,呵呵

"..probleme...".. see, how mixed up I am ;-)!

I don't speak french or german , but as a native englishman, when i go to germany I find i can understand quite a bit, and not so much but similar in france, as they , to me , sound very similar, obviously coming from the same box of languages. German sounds english to me, and radio in belgium is like listening to english., . so i hope that if you guys have a decent handle on the english language french and german will be a little more simple for you :) well heres hoping ... hehe

wei1xiao4, thats weird, I have the same problem. I've never been really good at french, but now when someone asks me something in the train or in the supermarket...(many french speaking people in Bern) I tend to say something like "Oui, 你 peux, pas de problem..." or something similar... :-)!

...and i think i am on my way to sacrifice the poor relicts of my french to chinese completely....:-)!

uh, prey what is a 'joual'?

For Canadian French:

http://www.tetesaclaques.tv/

I remember being floored when my French prof (from France) had no idea what 'joual' was...

I am also looking forward to Frenchpod. Now my French and my Chinese are getting mixed up somewhat. I know they are nothing a like, but you can't tell my mind that!

I'm sure they will highlight things, as did SpanishPOD with Mexican dialects, as has ChinesePOD with Shanghai and Cantonese dialects.. just that it is an exception rather than the rule. It may only be a dialect but it is different enough to devote an entire learning section to it. Cantonese is a great example of that.. it's very different. The great thing about mandarin is that many people from Asian countries learn it.. so you can even speak mandarin in Vietnam and be understood to some degree. ChinesePOD.com has, in my opinion, such a large appeal for this very reason. It's such a common language.. and so is French.

To be clear, I meant that French from Canada, while generally understood on the French side is substantially different. Not as different as Swiss German from high German but quite different nonetheless, something like an automatic google translation from American English ;-)

light487, French may be generic but with due respect I hope they don't err too much on the Canadian French or African French side.

Both sound nice to my ears though I can't help laughing when I hear my sister's / nephews Montreal accent and expressions.

Much as CPod goes for standard Mandarin and 'received pronunciation', anyone learning French will expect 国语 (Swiss or Belgian French being very close seconds, no issue if you carefully spot the few differences).

I tried SpanishPOD for a little while and it is roughly the same format as ChinesePOD but I didn't find the time to study two languages so I didn't really learn a lot. Also I come into contact with a lot more Chinese people than I do Spanish speakers.. and also the Spanish they seem to be teaching, though I might be wrong, on SpanishPOD is the true Spanish from Spain and when I tried a few words on the one person I do know who speaks Spanish, they could not understand me because they speak Argentinean.

Fortunately French is fairly generic and I also noticed that JapanesePOD.com is showing a similar message to FrenchPOD.com.. Not sure how much appeal JapanesePOD.com will have.. I don't meet many Japanese people, in my experience they tend to keep to themselves a lot.. but this may be just my perception.

goulnik,

impressive!

I hope you do not charge Praxis too much...

(looking forward to the ads: "We are looking for a Klingon Jenny")

changye: Some more inspiration.

Germanpod wäre eine sehr gute Sache. Dann müsste ich nicht Japanisch lernen, um mit changye zu sprechen. Ok, vielleicht könnten wir vorher auf Englisch oder Chinesisch kommunizieren.

:-)

klingonpod.com is registered now ;-)

Hi henning,

I must say “that” was a great website. I was amazed, in particular, by the lessons about Klingon cuisine, which really stimulated my appetite. Btw, I’m now planning to get some secondhand German textbooks and dictionaries on Amazon.

To tell you the truth, I’m still not sure if I will really relearn the language, but anyway seeing some German-related books sitting on my shelves is not so bad. Actually, German words I sometimes find in your comments inspired me.

hi henning

when i learn English i have the same feeling with you haha

and i always heard that the french is more difficult than English.so i think learning french is the big challenge for me.

But frenchpod is very interesting. I had French 3 years in school, but never managed to gain a foothold because of my incredible language talent. An endless nightmare of mixed up grammar details, forgotten vocab, and bad pronounciation.

I will definately listen to those podcasts - totally relaxed and without any pressures whatsoever.

And by the way:

www.klingonpod.com

is not yet taken. Changye and me would already make 2 paying customers.

Just a friendly hint

:P