[Deepwaters]

I made a discovery recently.

My ability to read French is coming along very well. My written French is still awful and full of mistakes, and I still have to look up conjugations and so on, but I can deal with it. But when it comes to understanding spoken French, I'm hopeless.

But lately, when listening to spoken French, such as Alizée's interviews or audio recordings in on-line newspapers, I have found myself just listening to the words and mouthing them, not trying to understand. Occasionally I'll recognize a word, but it goes too fast for me to understand it the way I can when I'm reading, and mostly I'm just hearing and learning the sounds themselves, and imitating them.

What I realized is that that's the way I learned English as a child. I didn't have another language, and I wasn't trying to understand what was being said, but there were all these noises around me and I would hear them and instinctively imitate them. Eventually I started to connect meaning with the sounds, and it all fell into place.

So -- what I'm going to ask for now, is links to anything French, audio, and non-musical, so I can just immerse myself in it. Music's not as good for this, I need the rhythms and sounds when people are talking, not singing.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!