Daffy Duck en francais

So, as one of my final posts, I wanted to see how far I had come.  Has any of this French actually stuck with me?  What did I actually understand?

So, I decided to watch a short cartoon in French and see how much I could understand.  I settled on a Daffy Duck Cartoon called Yankee Doodle Daffy.

I generally followed what was going on.  It helps that it was a cartoon that is built around slapstick humor.  Porky Pig is a casting director who is trying to leave work early to go golfing.  Before he can rush out the door, Daffy Duck scoops him up and pushes him back into his office.  Daffy then spends the rest of the episode doing performances to try to convince Porky that he ought to be cast in the show.

A few interesting things that I noted.  First, I think it is worth noting that the dialogue had been dubbed into French; however the songs that Daffy sang still remained in the original English.  I wonder if there was an artistic reason for this or if it was just a cheaper way to get the cartoon quickly dubbed.  I struggled immensely with actually understanding the dialogue in this cartoon.  So, I decided that it might help to turn on the closed captioning.  However, I quickly found that the captions did not actually match the dialogue.  I suspect that the program is a sort of 'you talk; it types.'  Therefore, in the middle of French sentences, you would see 'Michael Jackson' or some other non-sequitur.

Overall, I had a lot of problems trying to translate and actually make sense of the dialogue.  I think it is the combination of the speed at which the actors speak, the accents that the actors put on (Daffy Duck still has his signature speech impediment), and my command of French.  I did pick out a few phrase here and there.  Daffy Duck keeps saying that he is going to give Porky Pig an opportunity.  Daffy Duck also talks about the great celebration of Thanksgiving.  Finally, he talks about what is owed to the great story of American history.

"John Gannam - He Was Our Yankee Doodle" by Susi Pator licensed under CC BY 2.0

In the end, I fear that I was too ambitious.  50 hours is really not that long of a time to gain my expected amount of fluency in French.  However, some progress is better than none.