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A change of pace...
Apr. 8th, 2010 08:28 pmI decided to take an advance on a weekend day today, and spent most of the day cleaning and moving stuff around. A happy side-effect of all this was finding several items that have eluded me for some time.
One of the things I found was an interesting CD called SmartFRENCH, which intelligently used multimedia to highlight the little shortcuts that native French-speakers use in normal conversation. (For example, "eeya" or even just "ya" for "il y a" ["there is" or "there are"], in much the same way an American - at least one from New York - might say "jeetyet" instead of asking "did you eat yet?")
Unfortunately, the silly thing doesn't seem to work under Vista, so it looks like I'll have to try it with the virtual Windows 2000 machine I've got set up on my work netbook, which has already successfully allowed me to install a piece of software to familiarize me with basic phrases in Egyptian Arabic.
I also ran across a volume of collected poems by Robert W. Service, and read the text of the poems included in an album of Service readings by Jean Shepherd. Read the first line of The Ballad of Blasphernous Bill and hear the rhythm of the language:
My bride calls from upstairs. It's time to relax.
Cheers...
One of the things I found was an interesting CD called SmartFRENCH, which intelligently used multimedia to highlight the little shortcuts that native French-speakers use in normal conversation. (For example, "eeya" or even just "ya" for "il y a" ["there is" or "there are"], in much the same way an American - at least one from New York - might say "jeetyet" instead of asking "did you eat yet?")
Unfortunately, the silly thing doesn't seem to work under Vista, so it looks like I'll have to try it with the virtual Windows 2000 machine I've got set up on my work netbook, which has already successfully allowed me to install a piece of software to familiarize me with basic phrases in Egyptian Arabic.
I also ran across a volume of collected poems by Robert W. Service, and read the text of the poems included in an album of Service readings by Jean Shepherd. Read the first line of The Ballad of Blasphernous Bill and hear the rhythm of the language:
I took a contract to bury the body of blasphemous Bill McKie...It's not Byron or Macaulay, but it does sing.
My bride calls from upstairs. It's time to relax.
Cheers...
