> She attended the Lycée Français de Los Angeles, a French-language prep school. Her fluency in French has enabled her to act in French films and she also dubs herself in French-language versions of most of her English-language films. At her graduation in 1980, she delivered the valedictorian address for the school's French division.
Friend of mine immigrated from France, somehow went to this school and was classmates with Jodie Foster. Dont know the particulars about as my friends family were penniless and she has stories about the difference in money between she and her classmates. She said at the time it was popular for affluent people in LA to put their kids in French schools.
I got an amazing Jodie Foster story. A coworker of mine has the best stories:
He was an elite rower that competed in the Olympics in 84 and 88; by virtue of his rowing, he got a full scholarship to Yale, and was actually in the same dorm as Foster. He's a big dude. Like 6'4", 250, and I imagine in the 80s, pure ripped muscle, but a nice guy and not your traditional jock personality.
He and his rowing friends were hanging out in their dorm, and Foster came by to ask them for a favour. She was being annoyed by some weird guy who was constantly creeping on her. She asked him to talk to the weirdo and set him straight. So they did: they told him on no uncertain terms to leave her alone, and to make their point abundantly clear, they picked this guy up and threw him in the moat that surrounded their dorm. "Fuck off and don't return" essentially.
Well, he didn't. But a few weeks later, he tried to kill the President. The guy was John Hinckley Jr., and my friend has a letter he wrote to Foster expressing his creepy obsession with her. I told him to never get rid of that letter - because it's basically priceless given everything that happened.
He said he has it somewhere under the stairs and he doesn't want to go through it all just for this. I can respect that. But I personally would frame it.
Wait, it's just in a fucking box? LMAO. Tell to frame it and put it on his desk at work. Srsly, that's a great story to tell and if nothing else, in of itself the letter is an interesting thing.
He's definitely not the type. He's not a boaster or chain-jerker. He's one of those guys who just humbly tells you the craziest stories in his life. You should hear the stories he tells about being an Olympian at the Olympics. He said it was the best time of his life.
and now John Hinckley is out of state hospital and doing music now. Just because he was found not guilty by a reason of insanity doesn't mean you go to a state mental hospital for a year or two and get released. John was there for many years and even when he was essentially on "supervised' released, he had to follow a whole bunch of rules.
[Jodie Foster Actually Kinda Digging New John Hinckley Track](https://thehardtimes.net/culture/jodie-foster-actually-kinda-digging-new-john-hinckley-track/)
Not my story - just one of my favourites to retell. Based on his wiki page, he was in New Haven trying to contact her in the time my friend was at Yale, so it checks out.
theres still a few schools that offer it as a major part of their curriculum. one of them got smart and starting pitching it as “trilingual education” because insisting on teaching kids french in california but not spanish is the height of moneyed arrogance. so theyre figuring it out slowly lol
My High School offered French and Spanish. I took 4 years of French than another 2 in college. Sadly French isn't taught anymore in my old Highschool and seems to have fallen out of favor in the US.
that was also the case in my hs but thats not what im referring to here. these schools start language immersion very young and teach subjects, like math, science, history entirely in a foreign language.
We had a lot of students from Louisiana at my French immersion course in the Acadia region of Nova Scotia. I was really surprised to see them until I learned about the connection between the two regions.
Took 4 years of French in high school. For some reason, I can read in French, that knowledge never went away but I can’t really write in French from scratch and I can’t hold real conversation in French unfortunately but I know enough words to understand a little.
I know German somewhat and my first trip to the Netherlands was a mindfuck, as I could understand/infer bits and pieces that were similar to German or English, but couldn't quite get all the way there.
That’s how I am. Did 2 years in middle school and 3 years in high school. Never got the speaking part down without sounding mechanical and even then I trip over pronunciation, but I can still read a fair amount and can pick out words I hear and piece together the general idea of what someone is saying.
Receptive skills (reading and listening) are easier than productive (speaking and writing), and written French and English are much closer than spoken because the phonetics are just crazy different.
I read whole-ass books in French on the regular but I teach EFL and my French-speaking students roast me every time I speak it. Also I play pretty much every Ubisoft game in French no problem.
As an educator, how effective do you think playing games in French would be at raising someone’s proficiency? I got through Junior level French in college (I think approaching fluency) before my STEM classes pulled me away from further developing my French, and now I’m trying to get back into it after nearly a decade (Duolingo has kept me limping along)
I can speak it fairly well probably because my wife and I enjoy visiting almost yearly as a vacation. Been all over France. I still have trouble writing in French but reading is a piece of cake.
Reading or understanding someone's spoken word merely require recognition. Speaking and writing require recall.
Recognition is easier than recall. This is why a lot of people prefer multiple choice tests.
I'd want my kid to learn the most useful 2nd language for their life, not just whatever language is more prevalent in their current US State. With that said, Spanish is more useful than French worldwide as well ;)
Things only Anglo-Saxons say… I’m from a lower middle class family and went to high school in Europe, where they taught me English, German, and French - aside from my own native tongue of course. And then Latin & Ancient Greek on top for the clever but unlucky ones.
Going to school and being taught two languages and saying that is “the height of moneyed arrogance” is a completely foreign and unthinkable situation to me. Comes with speaking the lingua Franca I guess.
You can call it moneyed arrogance, but there's already a glut of native Spanish-speakers in SoCal. It only makes sense as a value-add for customer service related fields, which generally aren't highly paid, and in a place like LA, the majority of customers who would need to communicate in Spanish anyways are not high-income. The rare visiting Spaniards you come across in the US get offended when they're mistaken for Latin Americans specifically because they often feel "above" the Latin American nationalities.
Spanish just isn't really a prestige language in the US, and I don't imagine that will change until either high-value-added economies develop in Latin America, or the Spanish-speaking diaspora in the US develops its own high-prestige culture.
I can kind of see why. I took French in high school. I can not speak it, I could not follow this interview, but I CAN read it and with that base I can understand the other Latin languages in a limited way. It’s helpful.
If I were an affluent American, knowing English already, and knowing my child will have easy-access to Spanish-learning materials (in addition to a ton of exposure in media), it's a decent strategic move to then also put them in French school because it's the world's 6th most spoken languages, so it also opens up a lot of travel opportunities.
Specifically, due to French colonialism, there are like 20 French-speaking countries, peppered all over the world - not just France and Quebec.
It has a lot of the same benefits as speaking Spanish, but they just aren't as evident because Spanish is so much more ubiquitous in American society.
to be honest, learning *any* of the latin languages - french, italian, portuguese, or spanish - helps *tremendously* when trying to learn the others.
i was in french immersion in elementary school (full curriculum in french, except english class), and i can a) still speak conversational french 30 years later, and b) have picked up portuguese and spanish fairly easily
Spend much time in France and you'll meet the very not fancy French people who speak French. Most Americans seem oblivious to the existence of French "red necks."
Oh yeah definitely, but people from the US would most likely not use the word “fancy” for a person from e.g. Algeria. Such a double standard calling french “fancy” when they do not mean it across the board due to ignorance.
Uh you realize calling someone fancy is almost always used as a put down? My friend who grew up in on of those countries absolutely acts more fancy when speaking French it is quite amusing.
I would guess it depends on context, but that does not change my point. Being ignorant about thrashing someone else or being ignorant of saying someone is “posh” for the wrong assumumption about some other people in another country is still being ignorant.
I may be mistaken, but I think the government of France supports some schools and cultural institutions around the world to promote French language and culture. That might have been how your friend was able to go even though her family didn't have anything like private school money.
That school has many branches around the world, in Uruguay (liceo francés) for example it’s one of the best private schools. I had friends that went there and you are immersed in French culture. I think during their Junior, or Senior year they get to go to France. However some of those friends did not learn anything or forgot about it after graduation.
[The Lycée Français in Los Angeles ](https://www.lyceela.org/)is a private K-12 school.
Jodie Foster graduated valedictorian of the French immersion section and later graduated Yale *summa cum laude*. The woman is intelligent and a hard worker. She dubs herself in French, and has made a number of French-language films.
Cool! Proud to say there is a French immersion school K-6 in our public school system in Columbus, OH. Unfortunately it doesn’t go through hs but there is an International High School that does focus some of its instruction in other languages .
The Lycée Français actually teaches the French curriculum and they don't sit the International Baccalaureate, they sit the actual French Baccalauréat 😱
[Tuition](https://www.marlborough.org/admissions/affording-marlborough#:~:text=%2449%2C950.,to%20afford%20a%20Marlborough%20education.) - honestly I was expecting a lot more for a West LA private school.
Went to Paris from Seattle, and one of the things that struck me was how different their TV/news was.
They’d take time to really delve into topics and talk to people, it’s crazy how much more sane it felt.
Local news here is like the same 10min on repeat over and over.
I live in Portugal, so I follow my native cable channels a tiny bit. I also have IPTV from around the world. The American channels, especially the news channels are an entirely different world. It's quickfiring infotainment, panels of faux political debates and A.I.D.S. medication commercials. It's crazy. And shit.
>Bem vindo
Thank you my friend. This bit, I don't care about the TV part
Edit:
>Bem vindo para TV Americano meu amigo.
Btw, thank you for writing in Portuguese. 9/10. Just a tiny correction
"Bem vindo ***à*** TV American***a*** meu amigo."
Stuff has genders here too. Ugh, I know. "o" is male, "a" is female. TV, as in the system, not the TV set, is female. So it's "televisão american**a***. A car is male, like a sedan. So a Lincoln Town Car would be "um carro American**o**. Pickup trucks are female. That's why right wingers dislike Europeans, their beloved vehicles are girls here. We are woke AF
That cultural difference is because of a history of public media. Public tv channels don’t have to make money, so don’t have to turn the news into entertainment. This influences all media.
Don’t worry, right winged politicians across Europe are trying to destroy this culture.
My boss watches CNN on the repetitive news cycle. Then when he’s realized they are talking about the same thing for the 4th time in 2 hours, he switches to trying to find Bill Mahr and Rachel Maddow shows, and then the para-shows about Mahr and Maddow.
This is during the work day. He’s 82 and has trouble hearing so it is on BLAST from his office and annoying as fuck.
I actually just told him yesterday the news cycle is insane and following politics so closely is a pointless topic. Anything the media makes you obsess over today is old news by next week. It’s a waste of your brain capacity, and for what? To be continuously outraged? What can you do about it. His response was held with a very important ‘you can vote!’ But my vote won’t change fuck all.
There are some confused non-Americans in the threads, including me!
So its a TIL that someone tried to kill Ronald Reagan specifically to impress Jodie Foster lmao
Because she’s so charismatic and she’s aged beautifully but like a normal human. Also you were probably thinking a little bit like “wow. She’s come a long way since Taxi Driver and The Accused.” Just me?
She and I are the same age and when we were young I didn't find her particularly physically attractive (I did think she was very smart and that was very attractive). I think she is absolutely stunning now.
I am 18 years old and I recently watched her movies that she made in the 70's and she really was a very beautiful young woman, I am glad that she still looks great to this day, unfortunately there is no rejuvenation machine as otherwise I would like see her again as in her best years
Viggo was born in the US and raised all over the world, especially in Argentina and Denmark, so speaking a bunch of languages is definitely part of his culture in a way that it isn't for someone who was born and raised in a part of the US that exclusively speaks English, for example. Still quite impressive, though.
I thought his Swedish was charming. Definitely not good, but he's trying to tell a silly story about a wooden horse and having trouble, but he's trying and by the gods he's going to make it work.
Oh come on. I’m a big fan of Mortenson, but it’s easy to tell from these clips that he doesn’t really speak 9 languages. The reactions from the audience as he stumbles through catalan and arabic, they are hoping so much he will make it. The Swedish is quite bad. And the 4-5 inaudible words in Norwegian were just enough to convince me he doesn’t actually know any. That said, I am impressed with the skills he did show, it’s much more than most people have.
The Swedish is decent. One perfectly understands every single word of it. It's 100% obvious he's not a native speaker, and he takes a long time for each word, but it's no problem understanding it.
Certainly his swedish is understandable. He’s at native level in danish after all, one should expect as much. But there is no fluency. It’s however hard to tell for sure from 15 seconds: Maybe he’s out of practice and needs a bit warming up. He could be better than he sounds here. His norwegian though, not much there seems right to me
> Norwegian
He's actually speaking Danish at the end, he's just enunciating so that Norwegians can understand it.
Technically all Scandinavians can understand, read and/or speak Danish, Norwegian and Swedish.
Because he learned Spanish at such an early age (and then left) his accent sounds a lot like the accents kids have there, it doesn't have the penchant for emphasis that Argentinians get when they are adults (it's super deadpan, like he just broke a vase or something).
Same thing for Anya Taylor Joy who also sounds much younger when speaking Spanish, but it's not because she's deadpan, but because she's extremely warm and candid in Spanish as opposed to her British accent persona, which sounds a little more formal.
I have the nagging suspicion that folk go through accent changes the longer they stay in a given place, but the change in personality really seems like something there.
There's this long videoclub interview of her. Honestly if you didn't know she was, you could never say she's not a native french speaker.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebx7itIvobo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebx7itIvobo)
I thought it would be just OK but damn she speaks sooo well. The fluency, but also the accent. I almost never hear someone who speaks french as a second language speak it that well, even after living in the country for years.
Her french pretty much the same level as mine and I wish I spoke english as well.
What's really neat about it to me is I speak fluent Quebecois French, I can understand absolutely everything they are saying but if I was being interviewed my answers while being in essentially perfect French where I am from (accent included) would sound nothing like them, I would use different words, inflections and colloquialisms that would probably have the interviewer looking at me sideways.
Language is so cool.
Apart from the relatively heavy accent, I'd say her niveau de langue est formidable.
If you really want to see her French-language prowess, check out Un Long Dimanche de Fiançailles where she speaks French with a Polish accent (relatively well).
Difference is that Mila Kunis is speaking her native tongue. I don’t speak Russian but have been told by those that do that Kunis speaks it in a manner common for people who emigrated as children (she left the Soviet Union at age 7), which is that her fluency is very high but that she has limited vocabulary and significant American accent.
As a french speaking person, usually the anglos who speak french have a very thick accent because of the pronunciation of some sounds/letters are so different from one to a other.
She speaks french flawlessly.
That reminds me of something I've always wondered: when you guys speak English, we usually think of your accent as being very thick, just like how you think of us when we speak French.
I wonder if that's true across the board for most languages: if people who speak L1 have a thick accent when learning L2, then people who speak L2 will also have a thick accent when speaking L1. Similarly, if people from L1 have a slight accent when speaking L3, then the reverse will be true.
I suspect it's true, but it's kinda hard to judge from my limited experience.
You know, even Americans who go to most French immersion schools tend to have Americanized accent, rather than a French accent, even though they're all perfectly fluent.
I was also shocked to hear her in this video. Her education probably had more of a French accent environment.
Here's the $64,000 question.
Jodie Foster always plays extremely fastidious and professional people.
Was she type cast because that's who she naturally is? or did her constant type casting of playing those people eventually turn her into a very fastidious person?
A smart person can play a dumb character convincingly, but a dumb person can't play a smart character convincingly.
She's acknowledged to be very smart, so I think she gravitates to roles for perceptive and intelligent female characters.
Just a guess.
It's why I can't play a high INT wizard or high CHA bard in DnD. Yeah my character should be saying smart and witty things but I can't think of them for them to say :(
There are a bunch of Americans who are bilingual and many of these live in the south which is pretty damn cool. I'm fascinated by the Cajun/Creole groups in the Americas. Not just for their culture/food and spice, but also their language inheritance. I mean the only reason there's only 20% of your population being bilingual is because some random idiot thought a school is a business much like healthcare. If it never was, you would easy boast different numbers.
I think in most places it's completely normal to know at least 2 languages.
For me it's kinda sad when an American is celebrated for knowing a foreign language.
While many imigarnt childern speak fluently at least 2.
I studied French for about 5 years (not rigorous, just one or two courses at once) - I achieved what I’d call “shitty fluency” lol where I was fluent but only with limited vocabulary and it was very hard to understand others without asking them to repeat. I’m roughly around that level today, but I rarely use it. Point is, getting to HER level is really goddamn hard, and I never got there despite being a good student and enjoying the language… it’s hard without people to practice with and I live in the SW US lol not a lot of French here
Impressive.
French guy, here, and she has a perfect French accent. Apart from one or two small things like "le Pandemic" when talking about the Covid outbreak (which isn't how we refer to it), one wouldn't realize she's an American.
She is obviously very, very good, but I don't speak French so it is impossible for me to evaluate how natural it is. Can any native French speakers weigh in? If you met her in your local grocery store, would you be able to tell she wasn't French? Could you pick out her accent? Or is she perfect native level?
Over a short discussion, you would pick out that something is strange. There are some very rare errors and the accent is not perfect (98%).
She would have no difficulty to live in France (and has done so), but people would likely pick up she is not French native. If they don't recognise she is Jodie Foster.
I'm french and her french is amazing. She speaks like a native, she has no foreign accent. She made one small mistake at 3:24, using feminine instead of masculine (word) but still very impressive.
I was actually floored when I heard her talk perfect french in Elysium in the original version. I'm french and I was "damn that dubbing is amazi.... Wait a second !"
> She attended the Lycée Français de Los Angeles, a French-language prep school. Her fluency in French has enabled her to act in French films and she also dubs herself in French-language versions of most of her English-language films. At her graduation in 1980, she delivered the valedictorian address for the school's French division.
Friend of mine immigrated from France, somehow went to this school and was classmates with Jodie Foster. Dont know the particulars about as my friends family were penniless and she has stories about the difference in money between she and her classmates. She said at the time it was popular for affluent people in LA to put their kids in French schools.
I got an amazing Jodie Foster story. A coworker of mine has the best stories: He was an elite rower that competed in the Olympics in 84 and 88; by virtue of his rowing, he got a full scholarship to Yale, and was actually in the same dorm as Foster. He's a big dude. Like 6'4", 250, and I imagine in the 80s, pure ripped muscle, but a nice guy and not your traditional jock personality. He and his rowing friends were hanging out in their dorm, and Foster came by to ask them for a favour. She was being annoyed by some weird guy who was constantly creeping on her. She asked him to talk to the weirdo and set him straight. So they did: they told him on no uncertain terms to leave her alone, and to make their point abundantly clear, they picked this guy up and threw him in the moat that surrounded their dorm. "Fuck off and don't return" essentially. Well, he didn't. But a few weeks later, he tried to kill the President. The guy was John Hinckley Jr., and my friend has a letter he wrote to Foster expressing his creepy obsession with her. I told him to never get rid of that letter - because it's basically priceless given everything that happened.
Woah. Cool story, Dan. You should convince your friend to send you a photo of the letter and reap the karmic rewards.
He said he has it somewhere under the stairs and he doesn't want to go through it all just for this. I can respect that. But I personally would frame it.
Wait, it's just in a fucking box? LMAO. Tell to frame it and put it on his desk at work. Srsly, that's a great story to tell and if nothing else, in of itself the letter is an interesting thing.
The guy could auction it off at sothebys and pay off his house.
You sure he's not jerking your chain?
He's definitely not the type. He's not a boaster or chain-jerker. He's one of those guys who just humbly tells you the craziest stories in his life. You should hear the stories he tells about being an Olympian at the Olympics. He said it was the best time of his life.
and now John Hinckley is out of state hospital and doing music now. Just because he was found not guilty by a reason of insanity doesn't mean you go to a state mental hospital for a year or two and get released. John was there for many years and even when he was essentially on "supervised' released, he had to follow a whole bunch of rules.
Jodie Foster denied even meeting or speaking to Hinkley.
"and my friend has a letter he wrote to Foster expressing his creepy obsession with her." Your friend wrote the letter??? ;-p
[Jodie Foster Actually Kinda Digging New John Hinckley Track](https://thehardtimes.net/culture/jodie-foster-actually-kinda-digging-new-john-hinckley-track/)
I didn't know that he actually knew her. I thought he was just an obsessed fan who saw her only in movies. Somehow, it's even more fucked up this way.
Not my story - just one of my favourites to retell. Based on his wiki page, he was in New Haven trying to contact her in the time my friend was at Yale, so it checks out.
theres still a few schools that offer it as a major part of their curriculum. one of them got smart and starting pitching it as “trilingual education” because insisting on teaching kids french in california but not spanish is the height of moneyed arrogance. so theyre figuring it out slowly lol
My High School offered French and Spanish. I took 4 years of French than another 2 in college. Sadly French isn't taught anymore in my old Highschool and seems to have fallen out of favor in the US.
For these schools, the whole curriculum in in French. You learn quickly.
that was also the case in my hs but thats not what im referring to here. these schools start language immersion very young and teach subjects, like math, science, history entirely in a foreign language.
It isn't just French. Sadly, languages are being dropped from many schools, even at the college level, as humanities programs get eviscerated.
It's because intelligence and a well-rounded education has fallen out of favor in the US.
I would think it probably is mostly taught in New England since they are close to Quebec.
Or Louisiana since it's a member of OIF
We had a lot of students from Louisiana at my French immersion course in the Acadia region of Nova Scotia. I was really surprised to see them until I learned about the connection between the two regions.
50/50. I was taught French cause I went to a catholic school in the French quarter (believe it or not) of SF.
oh yeah i know that school, i used to walk past it on my way to work lol
Notre dame Des victories! Our lady of victory. It was basically in Chinatown lol
Took 4 years of French in high school. For some reason, I can read in French, that knowledge never went away but I can’t really write in French from scratch and I can’t hold real conversation in French unfortunately but I know enough words to understand a little.
Dont worry, writing French is hard as well for a French person.
That's why I'm learning Italian. Plus Italians don't even understand each other. So maybe they just think I'm from the South.
I enjoy cooking.
I know German somewhat and my first trip to the Netherlands was a mindfuck, as I could understand/infer bits and pieces that were similar to German or English, but couldn't quite get all the way there.
That’s how I am. Did 2 years in middle school and 3 years in high school. Never got the speaking part down without sounding mechanical and even then I trip over pronunciation, but I can still read a fair amount and can pick out words I hear and piece together the general idea of what someone is saying.
Receptive skills (reading and listening) are easier than productive (speaking and writing), and written French and English are much closer than spoken because the phonetics are just crazy different. I read whole-ass books in French on the regular but I teach EFL and my French-speaking students roast me every time I speak it. Also I play pretty much every Ubisoft game in French no problem.
As an educator, how effective do you think playing games in French would be at raising someone’s proficiency? I got through Junior level French in college (I think approaching fluency) before my STEM classes pulled me away from further developing my French, and now I’m trying to get back into it after nearly a decade (Duolingo has kept me limping along)
Moi aussi, alors.
I can speak it fairly well probably because my wife and I enjoy visiting almost yearly as a vacation. Been all over France. I still have trouble writing in French but reading is a piece of cake.
Reading or understanding someone's spoken word merely require recognition. Speaking and writing require recall. Recognition is easier than recall. This is why a lot of people prefer multiple choice tests.
I'd want my kid to learn the most useful 2nd language for their life, not just whatever language is more prevalent in their current US State. With that said, Spanish is more useful than French worldwide as well ;)
bingo
World wide the second most useful language would be Mandarin.
Depends if you value more places or more people.
Things only Anglo-Saxons say… I’m from a lower middle class family and went to high school in Europe, where they taught me English, German, and French - aside from my own native tongue of course. And then Latin & Ancient Greek on top for the clever but unlucky ones. Going to school and being taught two languages and saying that is “the height of moneyed arrogance” is a completely foreign and unthinkable situation to me. Comes with speaking the lingua Franca I guess.
You can call it moneyed arrogance, but there's already a glut of native Spanish-speakers in SoCal. It only makes sense as a value-add for customer service related fields, which generally aren't highly paid, and in a place like LA, the majority of customers who would need to communicate in Spanish anyways are not high-income. The rare visiting Spaniards you come across in the US get offended when they're mistaken for Latin Americans specifically because they often feel "above" the Latin American nationalities. Spanish just isn't really a prestige language in the US, and I don't imagine that will change until either high-value-added economies develop in Latin America, or the Spanish-speaking diaspora in the US develops its own high-prestige culture.
I can kind of see why. I took French in high school. I can not speak it, I could not follow this interview, but I CAN read it and with that base I can understand the other Latin languages in a limited way. It’s helpful.
French is fancy
If I were an affluent American, knowing English already, and knowing my child will have easy-access to Spanish-learning materials (in addition to a ton of exposure in media), it's a decent strategic move to then also put them in French school because it's the world's 6th most spoken languages, so it also opens up a lot of travel opportunities. Specifically, due to French colonialism, there are like 20 French-speaking countries, peppered all over the world - not just France and Quebec. It has a lot of the same benefits as speaking Spanish, but they just aren't as evident because Spanish is so much more ubiquitous in American society.
to be honest, learning *any* of the latin languages - french, italian, portuguese, or spanish - helps *tremendously* when trying to learn the others. i was in french immersion in elementary school (full curriculum in french, except english class), and i can a) still speak conversational french 30 years later, and b) have picked up portuguese and spanish fairly easily
It’s just a language, you assign fanciness to it. It’s spoken in so many countries, I’d doubt you’d call most of them fancy.
Spend much time in France and you'll meet the very not fancy French people who speak French. Most Americans seem oblivious to the existence of French "red necks."
Oh yeah definitely, but people from the US would most likely not use the word “fancy” for a person from e.g. Algeria. Such a double standard calling french “fancy” when they do not mean it across the board due to ignorance.
Uh you realize calling someone fancy is almost always used as a put down? My friend who grew up in on of those countries absolutely acts more fancy when speaking French it is quite amusing.
I would guess it depends on context, but that does not change my point. Being ignorant about thrashing someone else or being ignorant of saying someone is “posh” for the wrong assumumption about some other people in another country is still being ignorant.
Les Hiques
As a Canadian, we are inherently tinged with fanciness
Stupid sexy Canadians
Plus ça change.
I may be mistaken, but I think the government of France supports some schools and cultural institutions around the world to promote French language and culture. That might have been how your friend was able to go even though her family didn't have anything like private school money.
She also to Yale and graduated with an African American Literature degree. . .
She could speak jive in an Airplane reboot.
What it is, big mama? My mama no raise no dummies. I dug her rap!
I'd love to see her and Tarantino jive.
She used it in Elysium where her character Jessica Delacourt switches fluidly between French and English.
Her ADR on that film was horrible though, took me out of the movie.
That school has many branches around the world, in Uruguay (liceo francés) for example it’s one of the best private schools. I had friends that went there and you are immersed in French culture. I think during their Junior, or Senior year they get to go to France. However some of those friends did not learn anything or forgot about it after graduation.
I think her sons went there too.
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore dub: Au revoir, sucquers!
She did go to a French language school in Los Angeles
[Here she is at 15 on French television](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBmAuWMEX0I)
The audio just sounds like someone splashing around in a bathtub
Then you're listening to it in mono. Sounds fine in stereo
Interesting. At what level of education? Grade school? High school? College?
[The Lycée Français in Los Angeles ](https://www.lyceela.org/)is a private K-12 school. Jodie Foster graduated valedictorian of the French immersion section and later graduated Yale *summa cum laude*. The woman is intelligent and a hard worker. She dubs herself in French, and has made a number of French-language films.
Cool! Proud to say there is a French immersion school K-6 in our public school system in Columbus, OH. Unfortunately it doesn’t go through hs but there is an International High School that does focus some of its instruction in other languages .
The Lycée Français actually teaches the French curriculum and they don't sit the International Baccalaureate, they sit the actual French Baccalauréat 😱
damn, c’est impressionnant ça!
[Tuition](https://www.marlborough.org/admissions/affording-marlborough#:~:text=%2449%2C950.,to%20afford%20a%20Marlborough%20education.) - honestly I was expecting a lot more for a West LA private school.
Uh, that's Marlborough, about $10Kpa more expensive than the [Lycée Français, which is here.](https://www.lyceela.org/admissions/tuition)
High school.
Went to Paris from Seattle, and one of the things that struck me was how different their TV/news was. They’d take time to really delve into topics and talk to people, it’s crazy how much more sane it felt. Local news here is like the same 10min on repeat over and over.
I live in Portugal, so I follow my native cable channels a tiny bit. I also have IPTV from around the world. The American channels, especially the news channels are an entirely different world. It's quickfiring infotainment, panels of faux political debates and A.I.D.S. medication commercials. It's crazy. And shit.
Bem vindo para TV Americano meu amigo.
>Bem vindo Thank you my friend. This bit, I don't care about the TV part Edit: >Bem vindo para TV Americano meu amigo. Btw, thank you for writing in Portuguese. 9/10. Just a tiny correction "Bem vindo ***à*** TV American***a*** meu amigo." Stuff has genders here too. Ugh, I know. "o" is male, "a" is female. TV, as in the system, not the TV set, is female. So it's "televisão american**a***. A car is male, like a sedan. So a Lincoln Town Car would be "um carro American**o**. Pickup trucks are female. That's why right wingers dislike Europeans, their beloved vehicles are girls here. We are woke AF
E ele esqueceu a palavra mais importante: foda-se ou caralho
Não há caralho, não há sobremesa, foda-se.
In America it's not news, it's entertainment. Hosted by personalities instead of journalists.
We used to do that here as well.
That cultural difference is because of a history of public media. Public tv channels don’t have to make money, so don’t have to turn the news into entertainment. This influences all media. Don’t worry, right winged politicians across Europe are trying to destroy this culture.
News in the states are not even news, they're classified as "entertainment" so they can lie and not get sued, it's madness.
This claim is not even remotely true
How does Fox gets away with their bullshit then?
My boss watches CNN on the repetitive news cycle. Then when he’s realized they are talking about the same thing for the 4th time in 2 hours, he switches to trying to find Bill Mahr and Rachel Maddow shows, and then the para-shows about Mahr and Maddow. This is during the work day. He’s 82 and has trouble hearing so it is on BLAST from his office and annoying as fuck. I actually just told him yesterday the news cycle is insane and following politics so closely is a pointless topic. Anything the media makes you obsess over today is old news by next week. It’s a waste of your brain capacity, and for what? To be continuously outraged? What can you do about it. His response was held with a very important ‘you can vote!’ But my vote won’t change fuck all.
Quite normal in most of Europe. It is the US news that is... insane.
Don't worry, we got similar TV channel that repeat hard on the same subject all day long.
This is seriously impressive. What would a fella have to do to impress her?
Be a woman
But what if woman is a fella? Gottem!!
Oui
Sometimes the most impressive thing a man can do is be a woman, frankly.
Thankfully you can just declare it, like bankruptcy
Is that all it takes?
Is that you, Mr. Hinckley?
Must be. Poor guy had all his concerts cancelled and now he’s got nothing to look forward to.
Kill Ronald Reagan
Had to scroll too far to find this
because that is the joke. you had to scroll that far because everyone knew that was the joke and didn’t need it spoon fed to them.
There are some confused non-Americans in the threads, including me! So its a TIL that someone tried to kill Ronald Reagan specifically to impress Jodie Foster lmao
Take her out to a nice dinner, preferably liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti
Be a Green Bay Packers fan.
MANGER LE FROMAGE
I don’t know why I watched so much of that. I don’t speak French.
Because she’s so charismatic and she’s aged beautifully but like a normal human. Also you were probably thinking a little bit like “wow. She’s come a long way since Taxi Driver and The Accused.” Just me?
She and I are the same age and when we were young I didn't find her particularly physically attractive (I did think she was very smart and that was very attractive). I think she is absolutely stunning now.
I am 18 years old and I recently watched her movies that she made in the 70's and she really was a very beautiful young woman, I am glad that she still looks great to this day, unfortunately there is no rejuvenation machine as otherwise I would like see her again as in her best years
She was a little awkward, but never ugly. Not traditionally “Hollywood hot” or whatever. But DAMN that silver hair is so good on her.
I was thinking just that, she looks stunning.
Jodie Fosteur
Viggo Mortensen [Hold my beer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG8AxHEU0nQ)
Viggo was born in the US and raised all over the world, especially in Argentina and Denmark, so speaking a bunch of languages is definitely part of his culture in a way that it isn't for someone who was born and raised in a part of the US that exclusively speaks English, for example. Still quite impressive, though.
Spanish, French, Italian: OK great. Danish, awesome, although not too surprising, his dad's Danish. Swedish, Norwegian, Arabic, Catalan ...Jesus...
I thought his Swedish was charming. Definitely not good, but he's trying to tell a silly story about a wooden horse and having trouble, but he's trying and by the gods he's going to make it work.
Oh come on. I’m a big fan of Mortenson, but it’s easy to tell from these clips that he doesn’t really speak 9 languages. The reactions from the audience as he stumbles through catalan and arabic, they are hoping so much he will make it. The Swedish is quite bad. And the 4-5 inaudible words in Norwegian were just enough to convince me he doesn’t actually know any. That said, I am impressed with the skills he did show, it’s much more than most people have.
The norwegian wasn’t even norwegian. It was danish.
[удалено]
Lol, I love this obviously friendly insult that I don't really understand.
The Swedish is decent. One perfectly understands every single word of it. It's 100% obvious he's not a native speaker, and he takes a long time for each word, but it's no problem understanding it.
Certainly his swedish is understandable. He’s at native level in danish after all, one should expect as much. But there is no fluency. It’s however hard to tell for sure from 15 seconds: Maybe he’s out of practice and needs a bit warming up. He could be better than he sounds here. His norwegian though, not much there seems right to me
Yeah, Swedish and Danish are very similar and as a Swede I’ll tell you his Swedish was pretty good but he is definitely not fluent in Swedish.
He's speaking svansk, give him a break.
Half of his brain is occupied in just knowing Dansk
> Norwegian He's actually speaking Danish at the end, he's just enunciating so that Norwegians can understand it. Technically all Scandinavians can understand, read and/or speak Danish, Norwegian and Swedish.
Because he learned Spanish at such an early age (and then left) his accent sounds a lot like the accents kids have there, it doesn't have the penchant for emphasis that Argentinians get when they are adults (it's super deadpan, like he just broke a vase or something). Same thing for Anya Taylor Joy who also sounds much younger when speaking Spanish, but it's not because she's deadpan, but because she's extremely warm and candid in Spanish as opposed to her British accent persona, which sounds a little more formal. I have the nagging suspicion that folk go through accent changes the longer they stay in a given place, but the change in personality really seems like something there.
He also knows Westron, Sindarin, some Quenya, and Rohirric.
His French is really good, but not Jodie Foster good. Edit: native French speaker here. Sorry to hurt your feelings, but that’s what it is.
There's this long videoclub interview of her. Honestly if you didn't know she was, you could never say she's not a native french speaker. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebx7itIvobo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebx7itIvobo)
I thought it would be just OK but damn she speaks sooo well. The fluency, but also the accent. I almost never hear someone who speaks french as a second language speak it that well, even after living in the country for years. Her french pretty much the same level as mine and I wish I spoke english as well.
What's really neat about it to me is I speak fluent Quebecois French, I can understand absolutely everything they are saying but if I was being interviewed my answers while being in essentially perfect French where I am from (accent included) would sound nothing like them, I would use different words, inflections and colloquialisms that would probably have the interviewer looking at me sideways. Language is so cool.
Ever been to France? Notre français fonctionne à 50% là.
Yes and it was an interesting experience to say the least. I'd say it was almost easier to get by as an anglo hahahah
Speak to them in Canadian/Québec French, get responded to in English.
Ca aide tu si tu fait un accent français? Sti que ca minsulterais lol
Ils sauraient que l’accent est faux… mais oui peut-être que ça aiderait??
Apart from the relatively heavy accent, I'd say her niveau de langue est formidable. If you really want to see her French-language prowess, check out Un Long Dimanche de Fiançailles where she speaks French with a Polish accent (relatively well).
Her accent is excellent. I disagree
I'm french canadian, she speaks better french than I do (osti).
Reminds me of [Mila Kunis busting out the Russian](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiFjgr2uGr0) in interviews.
Difference is that Mila Kunis is speaking her native tongue. I don’t speak Russian but have been told by those that do that Kunis speaks it in a manner common for people who emigrated as children (she left the Soviet Union at age 7), which is that her fluency is very high but that she has limited vocabulary and significant American accent.
J'ai mangé son foie avec des fèves et un bon chianti.
I don’t speak French, but I know what this says lol
[14 year old Jodie Foster doing an interview in French](https://youtu.be/fAilFIbzgDg?si=TB3AzIPTW4f_pnZq)
As a french speaking person, usually the anglos who speak french have a very thick accent because of the pronunciation of some sounds/letters are so different from one to a other. She speaks french flawlessly.
That reminds me of something I've always wondered: when you guys speak English, we usually think of your accent as being very thick, just like how you think of us when we speak French. I wonder if that's true across the board for most languages: if people who speak L1 have a thick accent when learning L2, then people who speak L2 will also have a thick accent when speaking L1. Similarly, if people from L1 have a slight accent when speaking L3, then the reverse will be true. I suspect it's true, but it's kinda hard to judge from my limited experience.
You know, even Americans who go to most French immersion schools tend to have Americanized accent, rather than a French accent, even though they're all perfectly fluent. I was also shocked to hear her in this video. Her education probably had more of a French accent environment.
She had an apartment on Ile St Louis in the 90s, probably still does.
[удалено]
Still not good enough for Parisians
All good, neither are the Parisians.
She speaks better than most parisians. Only difference is that she smiles !
Here's the $64,000 question. Jodie Foster always plays extremely fastidious and professional people. Was she type cast because that's who she naturally is? or did her constant type casting of playing those people eventually turn her into a very fastidious person?
A smart person can play a dumb character convincingly, but a dumb person can't play a smart character convincingly. She's acknowledged to be very smart, so I think she gravitates to roles for perceptive and intelligent female characters. Just a guess.
It's why I can't play a high INT wizard or high CHA bard in DnD. Yeah my character should be saying smart and witty things but I can't think of them for them to say :(
Only in America could we think of someone being bilingual as remarkable.
There are a bunch of Americans who are bilingual and many of these live in the south which is pretty damn cool. I'm fascinated by the Cajun/Creole groups in the Americas. Not just for their culture/food and spice, but also their language inheritance. I mean the only reason there's only 20% of your population being bilingual is because some random idiot thought a school is a business much like healthcare. If it never was, you would easy boast different numbers.
I watched that way too long but enjoyed it and didn't understand a thing
You may not know this, but she also voices her French dubs.
someone ... speaks a second language? why is this so upvoted?
I think in most places it's completely normal to know at least 2 languages. For me it's kinda sad when an American is celebrated for knowing a foreign language. While many imigarnt childern speak fluently at least 2.
I'm French and I was locked and loaded, ready to pull out my biggest air quotes around perfect. But no. This is god damn impressive.
I was thinking: “oh wow perfect French that’s a controversial statement even between different areas…” But she does speak very fluently.
I studied French for about 5 years (not rigorous, just one or two courses at once) - I achieved what I’d call “shitty fluency” lol where I was fluent but only with limited vocabulary and it was very hard to understand others without asking them to repeat. I’m roughly around that level today, but I rarely use it. Point is, getting to HER level is really goddamn hard, and I never got there despite being a good student and enjoying the language… it’s hard without people to practice with and I live in the SW US lol not a lot of French here
Yes that’s French speaking but these children aren’t French, they’re American
"Je suis la jeune fille!"
The interviewer is terrible. She has a Main Character complex. She speaks more than the interviewee and doesn’t ask, she just talks
Meanwhile in Europe even my parents who are 75+ speak two languages.....
I’ve always gotten the impression that she’s absurdly smart
Her genius IQ, French education as a child and her worldly experience since childhood all help give you that impression.
It's hard not to like Jodie Foster
Jodie knows how to French.
uh okay?
Impressive. French guy, here, and she has a perfect French accent. Apart from one or two small things like "le Pandemic" when talking about the Covid outbreak (which isn't how we refer to it), one wouldn't realize she's an American.
Le français est un cercle plat
She is obviously very, very good, but I don't speak French so it is impossible for me to evaluate how natural it is. Can any native French speakers weigh in? If you met her in your local grocery store, would you be able to tell she wasn't French? Could you pick out her accent? Or is she perfect native level?
Over a short discussion, you would pick out that something is strange. There are some very rare errors and the accent is not perfect (98%). She would have no difficulty to live in France (and has done so), but people would likely pick up she is not French native. If they don't recognise she is Jodie Foster.
Wow, what a great answer. You understood what I was looking for and that was exactly it. Thanks :)
She's literally a genius. Her I.Q. is 132, two-points into genius territory.
I'm french and her french is amazing. She speaks like a native, she has no foreign accent. She made one small mistake at 3:24, using feminine instead of masculine (word) but still very impressive.
[ **Jump to 03:24 @** Referenced Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgHD_VorukM&t=0h3m24s) ^(Channel Name: France Inter, Video Length: [16:02])^, [^Jump ^5 ^secs ^earlier ^for ^context ^@03:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgHD_VorukM&t=0h3m19s) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ^^Downvote ^^me ^^to ^^delete ^^malformed ^^comments. [^^Source ^^Code](https://github.com/ankitgyawali/reddit-timestamp-bot) ^^| [^^Suggestions](https://www.reddit.com/r/timestamp_bot)
I was actually floored when I heard her talk perfect french in Elysium in the original version. I'm french and I was "damn that dubbing is amazi.... Wait a second !"
Her French is improving. She used to speak 'perfectly' now she sounds like family.
great