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rheanna27 just sent me a kick-ass SGA comic script so I'll be over here, happily pencilling. I'm so excited! :O)

SGA linkage:

springwoof has a very pretty, very image-heavy post: Things I Liked Best About SGA, Part 3: The Spaceships!. So beautiful. So cool! Not to be missed.

I signed up for a French refresher course (gulp). I'm really more interested in working on my Japanese, but I plan to go to the annual comic festival in Angoulême next January, and I found a blog post by an artist who was there, which confirmed a) it's totally awesome and b) you totally need at least rudimentary French.

I've started to read through all my French bandes dessinées (well, I'm halfway through the first) so I won't make a fool of myself in class next month - I signed up for the one that said "had at least two years of French" which I have, only that was over 20 years ago. I can only hope everybody else's will be just as rusty. Right now I could order a baguette, that's pretty much it. All I can do is read French comics, I assume because the pictures carry half the story.

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I picked French in school as third language in the hopes to be able to read comics (because I wanted to read some by my favorite artists that hadn't been translated), but it turned out that at least for me it's hard to read comics with so little text for context, even with the pictures to help. So after the three years (actually I did take courses for a year after school even, so actually I had four years of French) I still couldn't read comics properly, which did nothing for my motivation. I then wished that I hadn't let my parents convince me to take Latin as second language, because that turned out utterly useless, no matter what anyone claimed.

ETA: Which was supposed to express that I don't think you are that badly off if you can still follow French comics, because I never really got there even with four years of fresh language knowledge. Though admittedly I'm not really good at languages.

It's strange, because I was always convinced that nothing stuck from my two-and-a-half years of French until I bought part IV in Derib's 'Red Road' in French because it wasn't available in German and it was DERIB. My favorite artist at the time! I never expected to be able to understand it but I started reading and found I could follow the plot with no problem. It helped that I already knew the series and the characters.

But I have the same problem you describe when it comes to Manga. People always recommend Manga as an easy and fun way to practise Japanese, and I just can't follow them at all. They're full of colloquial language which we didn't cover in class and the visual language confuses me as well.

Heh. Latin. I had six years of Latin and I'm still not sure it wasn't time wasted. Probably would've been more efficient to learn a living language instead. But it wasn't a choice anyway, Latin was our mandatory second language, French was voluntary third. And I confess Latin was my favorite subject for years. I loved the structure and logic. It made so much more sense than French. I think it was useful for better understanding grammar and the general structure of European languages if nothing else.

Yeah, the colloquial language and puns and such make some French comics harder too. In my school you could pick between French and Latin in grade 7, and then in ninth grade the crazy overachieving people who liked languages (i.e. not me) could pick Italian or Spanish (I think) in cooperation with another school, and then in 11th grade you could pick French or Latin up again if you had the other before, and then there were some optional offerings starting in 11th grade too, like you could learn Arabic, which I think was rather popular because a bunch of people already knew it from their Koran classes so they had a headstart (even with the classic vs modern spoken issues and such), and hoped for an easy good grade.

Though admittedly I'm not really good at languages.

LOL. Your English puts mine to shame!

BOTH of you put my German to shame. (I can say "How do I get to the station?" and that's it.)

I enjoyed French a lot at school -- took it right up to A Level -- but unfortunately my university choice meant I either did an entire degree in languages or none at all, and I didn't have a second language to go with French. I would love to brush up on French a bit, though: oddly enough, a lot of the grammar I was taught has stayed with me, or at least I think it'd come back fairly quickly if I started studying. Oh, for more time...

BOTH of you put my German to shame. (I can say "How do I get to the station?" and that's it.)

I think it's generally easier for the German-speaker to learn English than vice versa... simply because English gets you pretty far almost everywhere (except France, apparently). I was a Trekkie in my teens, and starved for all things Star Trek, which was when I discovered the licensed fanfic by Pocket Books and found that there were dozens of tie-ins that hadn't been translated into German yet and wow, did English suddenly become fun, and so useful!

I would love to brush up on French a bit, though: oddly enough, a lot of the grammar I was taught has stayed with me, or at least I think it'd come back fairly quickly if I started studying.

I bet it's just dormant and waiting to be reactivated with the right motivation. If you could speak at such an advanced level, it probably won't even take studying, just reading or watching tv in French.

I found that the prospect of being able to read with more ease so many great comics really motivates me. I can't understand why that hadn't occurred to me sooner. French, for me, always was 'that subject that wasn't so much fun at school', instead of the portal into the wide world or Franco-Belgian comics. All the stuff that gets translated into German and the select few that get translated into English... they're just the tip of the iceberg!

Hooray, new comic!

Well, baby!comic. :) Still gonna be a few months until there'll be comic. Though I have some free time at my hands which I intend to make good use of, so I hope I'll have a page or two to post soon. (I thought about waiting until it's complete and not posting as WIP but I just don't think I have the willpower...)

I'm so excited! eeee! I can't wait!

And *sigh* rusty french, I know that one. It's so hard to keep it up (though bandes dessinées would be a good way :).

Yes, that approach works pretty well. I finished the first one and moved on to the sequel. And I actually *want* to read it because I want to find out how the story ends. It's fun, not work, that's the most important aspect for me if I'm to teach myself... I don't have the willpower to beat my inner schweinehund all by my lonesome; I know that from experience.

eeee! I can't wait!

Me either. :O) *back to sketching*