Have to own up we only watch British TV, not that I watch much but to be honest French kids TV is dreadful and CBeebies is so much better, it is so moralistic and wholesome compared to the regular French TV. I also feel it is better for the children to be exposed to more English than we (as parents) can provide. We live in a very French environment and even with two British parents the children favour French over English already. We do have French TV in case the kids feel they should watch TV so they are not isolated from their contemporaries (all French) but they also prefer British TV.
I don't watch TV as I prefer to read but even though I can read in French, there is no pleasure in it, I read for factual purposes. For relaxation and complete mind blowingness, I read in English, my mother tongue, why should TV be any different?
PS - as regular members know, I read the Daily Mail as well, especially now it's free on t'Internet :-)
hear, hear on dubbed films - bloody awful. the french do contradiction like the brits do sarcasm. subtitles are a pain in the backside especially when you are watching on a small portable like i have and you have to get into the swing of it but so much better. i've just started watching a norwegian thriller on itv4 and it's great. totally scandi-hooked at the moment with my reading material too! what does that make me i wonder? or is it ok to embrace another culture just so long as it's not your own?!!!
Indeed. But we lived in Dresden for 18 months, so the older two are pretty good in German too. I hope all these words will serve them well. :)
I have a friend here who is German, and she never managed to get her children to speak it, though I think they understand mostly. It's a missed opportunity.
and what a gift to a child to be truly bilingual, what a massive advantage when they grow up. why would you deprive your children of that? someone i knowlocally is a brit married to a frenchman and has 2 children. her husband forbids her to speak english to the children who consequently speak hardly a word of english. their own mother is english for goodness sake. this man is not only being a monster towards her but putting his children at an academic and potential financial disadvantage. what an idiot. but hey, the kids live in france so i guess they should do all things french right?
Bit of a sweeping statement dont you think! Many people who now live here, do absorb what is going on here in France through many mediums but that doesnt detract from the fact the we like to keep up to date with the news and culture of our native land - to me it would seem a bit odd or contrived of someone to not express an interest occasionally, with what is occuring in the UK and read the occasional British newspaper or watch the News on TV or listen to British Radio. Just because you love and live in another country doesnt mean you dont love the life and culture of the country you were born in and should never again take great comfort from being able to watch or listen to something that is as familiar as a cup of tea and cornflakes for breakfast!! Also we wanted our children to be bilingual - It is not enough that we speak English at home, for our children to be completely bilingual - they need their "french" English lessons, to read English literature and to watch UK television for a completely rounded base of the language.
What you have said is like saying we shouldnt take the trouble to try to find out who runs the nearest English bookswap library or who sells English language books for the best price - we should read french books because we have chosen to live here! Thats so short sighted. I agree that to watch french TV or listen to french radio helps you learn the language and keeps you up to speed with the goings on in our adoptive country and personally I love a good french film but dont pretend that the familiar sound of your favorite programme's signature tune playing doesnt gladden youre happy cells now and again!
Our reason is that after 7 years of learning French, with much success, we are now in a position where we actively want to expose the children to more current UK culture in order to sharpen up their English and keep it current.
Yes, there's a fair bit of good stuff on French TV, but for the rugby matches I have seen recently the French commentaries seem very very poor.
because unless you manage to speak french fluently there is always comfort in watching and listening to programmes in your own language. it is nothing to feel guilty about. just because you live in france doesn't mean you have to embrace all that is french and renounce all that is british. you can choose to live in france and also to choose to watch uk tv. why do some expats seem to take the view that you have to leave all your britishness at the channel? we actually have a lot to offer. france is woefully insular and negative towards 'nasty foreign influences' (not everywhere, i know but it does seem to be a common pattern). where would britain be without the curry among a squillion other things that we have because of our multicultural attitude? i know, i know, off on a rant and a tangent but i get a bit cross with the attitude that you can't keep some of your creature comforts just because they're not french. i assume that you never deign to eat marmite or cheddar cheese or drink a scotch whiskey or read a non-french book either? you can keep in touch with all things french AND british surely? or perhaps only us multi-tasking females can do that?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We live near Limoux, have a dish on the roof with a satellite Freeview Box we bought in the UK. We get hundreds of Channels from 5 different Satellites (many redundant). All the BBC, ITV, Film 4, & etc. channels. You can also download a program called Expat Shield which give you a UK IP and allows you to use BBC I Player and ITV Player.
We live in Montpellier and brought two fairly old television sets from Britain five years ago. We bought a Sky box and had a dish put on the roof. We don't subscribe to Sky, but get more free stations than anyone could possibly want to watch - most of them are full of rubbish. We used to be able to receive five French stations, but only in monochrome not colour, and the reception was poor - snow-storms and all that. For some reason, we don't seem to be able to tune into them any more. Apart from a station called Arte, a joint French-German venture, we didn't think much of French TV programmes. The ones covering important or serious subjects seemed far too long and needed editing. But of course it is a good way of learning the language, so one day when funds permit we will by a French set which receives French stations in colour and with good reception. The UK free stations we receive in very good colour and sound; the only slight problem is that the sides of the picture are chopped off, so that if people are standing being filmed extreme camera right or left, we can't seem them. But that is quite fun. We also receive all the UK wireless stations on our television sets, but listen to quite a lot of French stations on our several wireless sets.
if you have an internet connection you can watch TV from the UK through an Internet Protocol Hider, which converts your french internet address to a series of anonymous addresses of your choosing, ie youcan choose UK addresses and then use BBC IPlayer. These cost about 20 a year.they are also good for when you use the www to do banking or payment transactions for extra security.
The BBc has also recently launched worldwide IPLayer, I think its about 30. I dont know what programmes it has though it seems to have a big list of old programmes available.
nothing illegal no. uk progs are copyrighted which is why you can't get them on iplayer outside the uk so ethically speaking you should pay for the progs you watch. having said that if it was a massive problem they would code it like you say. have you read the small print with the french tv licence? you have to pay it even if you only use your tv to watch dvds and have no aerial etc! unbelieveable! and you have to opt out of the automatic payment - presumably if you can prove you don't own a tv?!!! i see it as a kind of well i don't pay the uk one so i'll pay here even though i watch zero french tv. i'd prefer the money went to uk though!!!
We have our original sky box in one room with or without the sky card you get the usual channels - we have another box bought from our local one man does everything electrical store here in France 80 euros -He set everything up for us for a ridiculously cheap cost. Its a TELEVES decoder with channel listings for Astra 2A satellite which gets us similar UK channels but on the main Astra 2A set up some channels were missing like ITV +1 BBC4 5USA 5star both +1 channels and recently we lost standard CH5 so I took my remote in hand and started fiddling - Im a complete techno phobe but I found by going into Antenna set up and changing the LNB Type ( havent a clue what this is btw!) between Universal and User I was able to pick up these extra channels and a melange of the others including regional BBC and ITV channels. Both boxes work off the one satellite and our electrician did something clever spliceing cables so that whatever we watch in the kitchen doesnt affect what is being watched in the lounge , if both are in use. All the operational stuff can be in a variety of languages and obviously English is available.
You may prefer to use the UK decoders but if you ever want to put UK TV in an additional room, its nice to know you can get these reasonably priced boxes and cheap installation wizardry from a local satellite/tv electrician. Good luck and welcome to France!