FlagOnce

I think it's part of literature since they write books. If we start to discriminate books depending of what's written inside, I think the debate would be endless and even not fair. After all, it's not a qualitative adjective, literature. By the way, would have been easier to find these authors with their First Names, but then. At least I'm happy you know and read few French books that are not old, because sometimes I feel like only old ones exists to learners' eyes. How did you taken the step of reading these books and how did you found these authors?

This is a kind of idiom since it is a very specific (but it's the way it should be written) way to write the meaning of what you said. It could have been written other ways, and fuel made me think at a first glance that fuel powered the fire and got me confused. After, this isn't only traditional to East Asia, I already saw this in the past from local farmers, so maybe it is more widespread at that location, but I think it happens a bit everywhere, or in a lot of places at least. Doesn't look so good, the phenomena, after.

Words borrowed from other languages. Always the same result: they may end up to have not much to do with the original meaning in the language, and that's what's happening with tuning and tuner. Firstly, you may be surprised but tuner isn't the same thing as tuning sometimes, but sometimes is. But let's first explain what's tuning. Tuning is when you enhance the car yourself to make a lot of noise, to make it look like a sports' car while you own a break, all that things to "enhance" supposedly the cars with gadgets anyone can see and hear, because if people doesn't see the change, it doesn't matters. Tuner, however, is more used for radios, because you have to "tune" to find the right frequency to hear.

Why would it certainly take longer than in normal class? I mean, in normal class, what happens is that you can get slices of time with your teacher when you ask questions, but outside of that you don't have many communication: you just hear what the teacher says. And between watching a video, reading his teaching book or having in front of your, the difference for learning isn't sharp. The basis of current teaching is to learn a block, then another block, bundle them together to talk about a third block. If you don't understand the first or the second block, it's just a big problem and that's when it's too much linear, after all.

That's a nice story, but a story I have hard time to understand logically: how can you like French that young? But it's still a nice story and it feels like you're pretty lucky with how it happened. That's the good thing here: you did what you wanted and you feel happy to have done that. So that wasn't a bad choice and that's what matters. Just a question: why would you want to rather learn Spanish rather than French? I don't have nothing against it but the fact you quote this one makes me wonder if it means anything or not. Especially since your profile says you still not try to learn Spanish.

I think blogs are good, but I will try to explain also the technical reasons of why it is good, because learning a language isn't a random thing, a little strategy can help to yield better results. First, blogs tend to have a language close to the familiar, or at least it will use the everyday language. It means that it will help your conversational skills and it would be less complex than to start straight away with literature, which tends to have a formal language. Remember, babies have hard time to read Victor Hugo As well, there's many more blogs than books and you don't buy blogs, so you can just look, see if you like or not, while there's good books you will maybe buy but be unable to understand. Too bad.

Or not doing these jokes. You know, I don't find much it is a problem to have difficulties in a language, and for example, the fact I can't write books in a language I'm not fluent in is not a problem for me, you know. It's something you have to achieve by learning the language, it's a kind of reward. But the fact a language problem (and a culture problem, also) hinders my personality is something I don't like. It's like I don't look the same just because I'm writing it in another language. That doesn't feel fair in my opinion and honestly, I wonder what are the real solutions against that.

Okay, that's not a clear name, but let me describe the idea and you'll get it right straight away. I hope. When we think about a teacher interaction, it's either you read a book with exercises and you're doing it basically alone, or someone is correcting you but is not making the book or writing it, they just give comments to help you, or it's a teacher speaking and trying to make you learn things by hearing what he's saying, in real time. But what about another approach: you read a first chapter of a book the teacher made. You answer exercises, send back to the teacher, but this time, he will write few paragraphs of notes about weaknesses, what should be corrected, he would explains concept to help you, and let continue his "book" but with that in mind. That would allow training with a teacher without especially being tied to it at fixed hours. What do you think?

When we talk about French literature, the most widely known comes from the "Siècle des Lumières", like Voltaire. But there's many books in French, and not only those that came from that period of time. And this is where I want to go: did you ever tried to get into the French contemporary literature? After all, maybe there's good books to read today and you know nice French writers. Or maybe you don't and you have an area to discover. If you didn't tried to get into it, then, why didn't you? What prevented you to have interest on it? After all, reading a book you like may help your learning.

Yes, situational jokes can be translated in another language, to the extent they rely on the short-term context. But many of the jokes are as well related to the culture (popular TV shows, actors, imitations, songs, movies) and to word jokes, where they sometimes doesn't translate at all, or where you don't know how to make another word joke in your target language. You have to be better than fluent to make word jokes, and you have to know about external culture of other countries to make jokes based on culture. And often, you rely on culture/word jokes as a start to after use situational jokes when you talked more with a person.

Really, good work, well-written and I must say I'm impressed. There's only one problematic sentence: First, it is "Mais ce qui est encore pire", you missed the "est". Then, it is "ce sont les gens qui s'autoproclament juges de toutes les personnes" (ce sont is more appropriate because you say before "ce qui est encore pire"). After "Comme si étudier à l'université était réservé une fois pour toutes aux jeunes" is unclear for a French native speaker. We would prefer "Comme si étudier à l'université était réservé aux jeunes et qu'après c'est fini" (Like if studying at University is reserved to young people, and after, it's over). Finally, "et tricoter était selon pour les grand-mères" is not "correct" in French, it could be translated in "et le tricot ça serait uniquement pour les grand-mères".

Okay, it's more a little challenge than something I hardly need since I succeeded to understand the meaning. But, understand the meaning and being able to express it is your own language, or to explain it, is not the same thing. That's why, for those who wants to do the challenge, I would ask you two things: 1. Try to find the appropriate meaning. I'll provide the idiom that bugs me below. 2. Translate it in all languages you're fluent in. And try, if you want, in languages where you learn. As you want. So, the idiom is the "fire-fueled haze" that affects a country. It affects a country because it cause problems to the agriculture.

French is a language that gets often new words. Some of these words just feel like absurd (and are often unused outside of administrations, hopefully), but others are just as usable as old words. But there's some rules affected with them. These new words often enters in the dictionary when dictionaries publishers sell the new dictionary's edition, but some of the words also involve intervention from some official organization, like "l'Académie Française", in charge of the French language in general. Few rules, for example: When new words are really created, even if it is a composite or a merge of two other words, the dash should be omitted. As well, you shouldn't put a dot in the end because if you do that, it is not a new word but only an abbreviation.

Okay so that's not bad, but some parts are really obscure here (meaning I'm not sure what you mean). "Je crois que la nourriture goûtait bien" would be rather told as "Je crois que la nourriture était bonne" (and I would ask to you: why you only "believe" it was good? You tasted it in the 90's?) "et était bien pour votre corps". Okay. So, it would be rather written as "et c'était bon pour ma santé", or, even, "et c'était de la nourriture saine" (and it was healthy food). "Votre"/"vous" doesn't apply here: I didn't ate this food, you did, so it was good for your body, not mine. "parce que je ne crois pas dans prendrant des animaux" needs explanation to get understood and to reword it. "cette mode de vie" is rather "ce mode de vie". "plus mieux" is a incorrect idiom in French, we use "meilleur" instead.

Imagine you're someone who likes to do a lot of jokes or to make people laugh because you just feel fun. The thing is, you probably learnt how to do it in your native language, but when comes another language, there's a lot of jokes that are no longer applicable, either for cultural reasons, or because words are different if you are doing word jokes. So you're like limited. You can't express your personality and that feels sad because additionally with your difficulty to speak and express yourself, parts of your personality are just hidden without you in the ability to do much. So, how to handle that issue?