Likes & Dislikes (back to basics)

Hello everyone,

For a couple of weeks now, I've been trying to go back to basics, almost, and revising a lot of what I have been looking through for the past few months. Sometimes it feels a bit like I could be wasting time, that I should be doing something other than looking over stuff like the definite article, or telling the time. However, I feel as though I've not done a lot of revision, which is definitely a shortcoming. I've spoken about this before, but while I may have lamented the fact that I spent three years at GCSE doing nothing but the present tense, it's through doing this that stuff sticks in. 

So I'm hoping that I can do more of this sort of thing, and hope that I can balance the progress with consolidating what I've learnt. I've noticed that I'm still relying a lot on the dictionary for vocab, but I'd like to change that quickly! So I want to put more vocab into what I'm doing, mixing it with the grammar stuff to try and get a better balance there. 

I'm focusing my efforts on the DELF A1 exam, as well, and I'm working my way through the syllabus that I've found here. So today, I'm taking a bit of a step back and talking more generally about my likes and dislikes!

J'aime beaucoup de la musique classique, en particulier j'aime l'opéra. Mon compositeur préféré est Giuseppe Verdi, mais l'opéra que j'aime le plus est Tosca, de Puccini. J'aime la musique orchestrale de Tchaikovsky, parce qu'elle est très passionnante, avec des instrumentations spectaculaires. Mozart est un compositeur très heureux, et je lui écoute quand je veux me sentir heureux.

Quand j'étais à l'école, j'ai voulu étudier la musique - de le faire, il fallait que je jouasse un instrument. Donc, je jouais de la clarinette, mais je la jouais mal! 

J'aime lire des romans, et je lit toujours quelque chose. Maintenant, je lit un roman Warhammer 40k, et la science-fiction est le genre que je préfère. Je suis un fan de Star Wars aussi, et j'aime les films, les romans et les romans graphiques. 

L'histoire m'interesse, le Moyen Âge en particulier. J'ai voyagé partout dans l'Angleterre et le Pays de Galles à visiter certaines des châteaux - j'adore les ruines parce qu'elles sont toujours évocatrices. Mon diplôme universitaire est en étudies classiques, et j'adore surtout la Rome antique. Ma femme et moi sommes allés en Rome pour notre lune de miel - c'était fantastique de visiter les bâtiments que j'ai étudié pour le cours. 

Et la cuisine! C'était merveilleux, j'adore la cuisine italienne, et j'aime bien cuisiner, mais maintenant ma femme toujours fait la cuisine chez nous. 

So there we go! Nothing too difficult here, though that's not a bad thing as it was pretty much all done without recourse to a dictionary!

J'aime beaucoup de la musique classique

So, I've always liked classical music, in particular the opera. I think it's probable that I'll try to dive into this in another blog, but for now let's keep things simple! I like Verdi as a composer, though Puccini's Tosca is my favourite opera - here, I was thinking that I would need to use bien que, though in the end decided to go for a simple mais. 

je lui écoute quand je veux me sentir heureux.

Something a bit more tricky here, with an indirect object (je lui écoute) and a reflexive verb (se sentir). I've been doing a bit of work around the various types of pronouns once more, and I was pleased that it's sinking in! I think I'm going to write up a blog sometime soon on reflexive verbs, as it's another area that I need to concentrate on - there is a lot going on with pronominal verbs, so stay tuned for that!

Quand j'étais à l'école

Now then, this little paragraph is very interesting, with a lot of imperfect tense and a splash of the subjunctive, too! 'Il fallait que je jouasse un instrument' is actually the first sentence that I managed to construct using the subjunctive, which was made a bit easier due to the fact it was using the phrase falloir que, which is one of these that is always followed by the subjunctive. Even so, the imperfect subjunctive, guys! I'm still quite pleased with myself for this one!

L'histoire m'interesse

'S'interesser à' is a curious one, to me. It's not something that I would have thought would be pronominal, although it's not like I can argue with l'Académie! It literally means that something interests you, hence why the sentence reads "history interests me" and not "I'm interested in history", which is what I would more naturally have said. 

I think I still have a long way to go before I feel like I'm more idiomatic with what I'm saying. I'm still in that mindset where I want to translate things too literally, often resulting in very awkward phrases that just don't feel right. I've been using resources like linguee that translate sentences via a kind of context search, which I'm hoping will help me getting that sort of understanding how the language works. 

Well, that's the theory!