For those of you who have had the plaisir of learning French (or perhaps any foreign language), All Things Nice has posted some funny videos. They're all pretty good (OK I'll be honest: I'm not the biggest fan of Friends and its style of humour so of the four videos here the scene from Friends was my least favourite), but I particularly enjoyed the following from Kiwi comedy duo Flight of the Conchords:
This video captures the mood of so many people's high school language learning experience incredibly well: Reciting stock text book words and phrases (particularly good is the opening scene in the café and the the trip to the supermarché at 0:45 - 1:05 with a particularly nice comedic touch at 1:02); engaging in contrived set-piece conversations (the "conversation" in the parc at 1:03 - 1:25 is pure gold!!!), incredibly dated impressions of local life -- whether in text books or slide shows from the teacher's personal collection (the text books were always out of date in this respect and, moreover, although I went to high school in the 1990s my French teacher had spent a year working in a French lycée in the early 1970s so our impression of French life was based on his slide shows set in 1972!) -- the choice of a late 60s/early 70s motif for this video captures this aspect of the typical high school language learning experience oh so well; and last but not least the experience of discovering that your rudimentary knowledge of text book French doesn't "work" in the "real world" -- you can't understand the locals and they can't understand you (see 1:47 - 2:07).
Magnifique!
This video captures the mood of so many people's high school language learning experience incredibly well: Reciting stock text book words and phrases (particularly good is the opening scene in the café and the the trip to the supermarché at 0:45 - 1:05 with a particularly nice comedic touch at 1:02); engaging in contrived set-piece conversations (the "conversation" in the parc at 1:03 - 1:25 is pure gold!!!), incredibly dated impressions of local life -- whether in text books or slide shows from the teacher's personal collection (the text books were always out of date in this respect and, moreover, although I went to high school in the 1990s my French teacher had spent a year working in a French lycée in the early 1970s so our impression of French life was based on his slide shows set in 1972!) -- the choice of a late 60s/early 70s motif for this video captures this aspect of the typical high school language learning experience oh so well; and last but not least the experience of discovering that your rudimentary knowledge of text book French doesn't "work" in the "real world" -- you can't understand the locals and they can't understand you (see 1:47 - 2:07).
Magnifique!
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