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French for Bloggers

by AltHippo @ 11:46 am. Filed under Uncategorized, french

One of my projects for the year is to learn enough French to read Le Monde without cheating (no dictionary, no babbelfish). Like many of you shrill middle-aged youngsters, I took French 7-10 grade, and know how to conjugate the basic verbs, and have an okay vocabulary, as long as I limit my conversations to:

Me: Show me an object.
You: Here is an object.
Me: What is it?
You: It is a pencil.
Me: Where are you going for vacation this winter?
You: I am going to the mountains this winter.
Me: Are you going to the beach this winter?
You: No, I am going to the mountains this winter.

This, of course, is very far off from reading Le Monde.

What I’ve been doing is listening to RFI, a French radio program out of Paris specifically designed for folks like me (basic French that they speak slowly and distinctly). They conveniently provide the script, which again, is perfect for folks like me. That way I can look up the words I don’t know, and create my own vocabulary sheet. And, yes, I find many of the same phrases repeated from one day to the next, and am slowly getting to that goal of reading Le Monde.

It occurred to me today that there might be other folks who are interested in learning French with less an emphasis on conversation, and more on being able to follow the news from a European perspective. Bloggers, journalists, etc would fall into this category.

With that, here’s a vocabulary sheet that I drew up a couple of days ago: (pdf)

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August 2006
M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Jul		Sep »
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31

95. Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.)
— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

HippoWire

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Interior Department Probe Reveals Oil-Related Corruption, "Culture Of Substance Abuse And Promiscuity"

WASHINGTON — Government officials handling billions of dollars in oil royalties improperly engaged in sex with employees of energy companies they were dealing with and received numerous gifts from them, federal investigators said Wednesday. [Link]

'You're Not Accountable, Jack' - washingtonpost.com

We are going to have a new administration. Do we want these policies continued or not? [Link]

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In sum, we concluded that the evidence showed that Goodling violated both federal law and Department policy, and therefore committed misconduct... [Link]

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A 22-year-old bicyclist was struck by a garbage truck and killed just north of Dupont Circle today, authorities said. Police and fire vehicles converged on the scene at 20th and R streets NW, snarling Connecticut Avenue traffic during the morning rush. [Link]

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August 18, 2006

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