Which French should you learn?
The Earful Tower: Paris
Oliver Gee
4.8 • 749 Ratings
🗓️ 29 April 2019
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Hello everyone,
It's an episode with Camille, the voice behind French Today, and we're talking about the different registers people use when speaking French.
A register is a level of formality - you don't speak the same way in a job interview and a barbecue with friends, do you?
In English, the register you use is reflected in the vocabulary. But in French, sure, the vocab changes, but it also affects the sentence structure and pronunciation. Camille explains it all in this episode.
We also talk about the importance of leaving your comfort zone, how to efficiently expand your long-term vocabulary, and how learning French in France can actually be trickier than learning it abroad.
Also, Camille has written in great detail about two of the things we talked about in this episode.
Learning French While Living In France Is Easy. Wrong!
French Language Registers – Street, Slang, Modern, Literary…
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello everyone, it's another Monday and that means another episode of the Earful Tower. |
| 0:04.0 | This week we're going to be talking with Camille from French Today audiobooks |
| 0:08.0 | about the different kinds of, well the different kind of ways that you can speak French. |
| 0:12.0 | She calls them registers. |
| 0:14.0 | It's a pretty interesting concept that we don't really have in English. |
| 0:18.0 | It's, you know, I'll let her explain it to you, but essentially it's the different formalities |
| 0:22.1 | that you have when you're speaking French. |
| 0:24.1 | Well, basically, they're different, there are a bunch of different ways that you can actually |
| 0:27.1 | speak this language and Camille is here to walk us through it. |
| 0:31.3 | Now, before we get started, there's two things that you need to listen out for. |
| 0:35.0 | One is I make a rather atrocious effort at using some French slang |
| 0:39.3 | when I start the conversation with Camille. So you've been warned not to do the same thing as me |
| 0:44.2 | if you don't want to look like a fool. The second thing is about 20 minutes into the conversation. |
| 0:49.2 | You'll hear the F word. The F word. So if you are wildly offended by language, even though we're using it in an |
| 0:55.6 | sort of educational purpose to exemplify something, it comes up a few times. I even warn you right |
| 1:03.3 | before it happens, but if that's not your thing, beware 20 minutes in. But yes, so it's Camille |
| 1:09.7 | from French today. Let's get on with it. She, if you want |
| 1:12.5 | to buy her audiobooks and you're listening to this podcast on the day it comes out, which is in |
| 1:17.1 | April, go to www.com slash earful 4. Earful as in the Airful Tower. Four is in the number, |
| 1:25.8 | the fourth month of the year. If you listen to this a little bit later, maybe in May, go Earful 5, and you'll get a further |
| 1:31.7 | 10% discount off all their audio books, and if you're quick, you'll see they're already |
| 1:36.4 | having a sale. |
... |
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