Salut mon amis
Much to my nerdy delight I discovered that all of my original Star Wars DVDs come with a French audio option. How did I not know this until now? I have been re-watching the original films in anticipation of the new Star Wars movie coming in December anyway, and so now with this new discovery I am watching them again in French.
Let's be honest, dubbed movies usually aren't very good. I tried watching the French dubbed Disney channel online once and it was terrible. Much to my surprise though the French dubbed versions of the original Star Wars movies are actually pretty good. They kept the very important character voices and intonations in tact. Although there were more typical French vocal fluctuations, the characters still sounded like themselves. For example, Han Solo still sounds sarcastic and cheeky. I was really surprised by the dubbing quality. I grew up watching dubbed Jackie Chan movies and the English in them is just awful. In most Asian dubbed movies the voices sound like non-native English speakers who have zero acting experience and oddly cartoon-y voices. This was not the case in the French Star Wars. Although maybe I am just being biased because I think French is such a beautiful language in general.
Besides the decent quality of dubbing, the French versions are a good watch for beginner French students because of the dialog. The original Star Wars have lots of action and slower 70's style dialog which means the French versions are the same way. The dialog was much slower than a typical French movie which made it easier to understand as a novice learner. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the 3 original movies in French! I am a huge nerd and Star Wars fan though so that probably helped. This was a fun way to do a little French studying!
In an unrelated story I learned the hard way on this week's French exam to never forget your prepositions. Leaving a preposition out can completely change the meaning of a sentence. I accidentally forgot avec (with) in a sentence on my exam and my teacher will not let me live it down. It's hard as a new learner because we tend to translate directly which doesn't always work and we're limited on what vocabulary we know which means sometimes you use a word that you wouldn't have used if you knew how to say the one you actually wanted to use. This is basically what happened to me in addition to forgetting the preposition.
I was trying to write a sentence about liking to spend time with my twin brother on the weekends, but didn't know how to say spend time so I went with manger (to eat). I figured saying I love to eat (meals) with my twin brother sort of conveys the same idea.
Here's what I actually wrote though: J'adore manger mon jumeax.
That literally means I like/love to eat my brother. Yikes. My teacher keeps teasing me now about being a cannibal. Oops! At least that's where her mind went because when I got my exam back and saw the mistake I thought OMG I made an incest sentence. My mind went to the sexual meaning of "to eat someone". Either way they're both bad sentences.
What I should have wrote is: J'adore manger avec mon jumeax.
Always remember your prepositions amis.
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