Harry Potter à l'École des Sorciers

Harry Potter 1

By: J.K. Rowling

Narrated by: Bernard Giraudeau

Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's summary

Orphelin, Harry Potter est élevé par un oncle et une tante qui ne l'aiment pas. Le jour de ses 11 ans, son existence bascule : un géant l'emmène à Poudlard, l'école de sorcellerie ! Voilà son incroyable destin : être sorcier. Jeter des sorts, utiliser des pouvoirs, ensorceler les trolls... À la maison Gryffondor, il rencontre Ron et Hermione, s'initie au Quidditch, un sport pratiqué sur un balai. La vie est excitante, mais Voldemort, Celui-Dont-On-Ne-Doit-Pas-Prononcer-Le-Nom, refait surface.

Initiation ou plaisir renouvelé, plongez dans le 1er tome du célèbre chef d'œuvre de J.K. Rowling ! Guidé par une voix envoutante, revivez le début de la série Harry Potter avec ce livre audio à télécharger.

©1997 J.K. Rowling (P)2000 Éditions Gallimard Jeunesse

The narrator’s effusive style is distracting.

I imagine that if I were a french-speaking teenager, I’d find the narration exciting to listen to. Monsieur Giraudeau does distinctive voices for each character, and reads with much drama. But as a learner, I found this distracting.

Narration is Annoying

I LOVE Harry Potter and have read and listened to them in English multiple times. This is my second time trying to read and listen in French. I really tried the first time but found the voices of the beloved characters so annoying I couldn't listen anymore. I'm trying again for the sake of improving my French but it's not easy. This time as I read along, I've noticed that the narrator also omits words and entire sentences fairly often and I am only on Chapter Four. As other reviewers have said, Mr.Giraudeau reads very quickly and mumbles. I'm happy to see that the narrator changes halfway through the series as I'm not sure I'll be able to listen to any others he narrates.

Great story. Excellent narrator. Fabulous learning tool.

As an American intermediate Speaker of French, I found this book to be a delight and an excellent learning tool. I have it in French on Kindle and the combination is magic (pun intended!). The kindle offers instant dictionary access for unfamiliar words, the audio provides practice in listening and comprehension (the hardest part for me), the ability to stop and repeat offers the opportunity to practice pronunciation, and the plot keeps you engaged and motivated. This and the right reference books have allowed for very efficient progress in my French listening and speaking skills.

Wonderful story, wonderful narrator, organic language acquisition. Most enjoyable and effective learning experience I’ve had in years.

Very Difficult To Understand

So context, I am a fourth year university student (in Canada) taking French. I am fluent in French and fairly confident with my command of the language. That being said, I had a VERY difficult time understanding the narrator... Perhaps because I am not an native French speaker, but even with slowing down the narration I had such a difficult time understanding the voices. They seem mumbled, they seem too nasal and it causes me a lot of difficulty with this book.

I am hoping once I spend a little more time immersed in the French language I will be better equipped to understand that narration, but as someone who exclusively operates in the French language academically... I am not sure that that will happen any time soon.

Review:

As a native speaker, you will enjoy this book
As a language learner, you will probably have difficulty with this book

TIP: if you listen to this while reading a physical copy of the book, you will be able to better understand the narration.

Fantastic book. Big challenge.

Well, it was a delight to listen to this book, it was also a big challenge. Harry Potter is the kind of book I will always read/listen no matter in what language I pick up. In this case, I choose french as an oportunity to pratice the language, but was very hard, I need to say. The narrative is faster than I was used to, and and sometimes was almost impossible to understand, as Hagrid for example. Was an exercise to come back again and again until I thought I got the meaning. After some chapters, I do not know if the narrative was slower if I got used to the pronunciation, but it was a easier to identify the text, but even so it was hard. I think so, It is almost an exercise in resistance. If you stop, you will never know what you are capable of.

French Audio

The French audio is good, however I find some voices hard to distinguish between and others overly exaggerated. But it is entertaining.

Excellent!!

en général, j'ai bien aimé la narration! Toutefois, la voix de certains personnages peut être désagréable et difficile à comprendre. Par exemple, Hermione et Hagrid. J'aurais préféré que la voix d'Hermione soit moins aiguë, comme celle de McGonagall. Néanmoins, ce n'était pas assez pour m'empêcher d'apprécier mon écoute.

Voiced

Some characters voices are growly and deep enough to be difficult to understand. I am not a native speaker. Ron’s lisp is annoying. Otherwise great portrayals.

Annoying narrator

Of course I love Harry Potter but I bought this to help improve my french listening skills and it was so hard because Bernard Giraudeau was way too over the top and so annoying when he did the voices for Dudley and Uncle Vernon. It was too much, we get it they are horrible people but you don't need to make it sound like they are neanderthals...

An amazing tool for learning French

While it was very difficult to get used to the voices and narrative style of spoken French-storytelling, I still enjoyed this book greatly.

I’ll be honest, I never really cared much for Harry Potter, but the excellent work the narrator has done compels me to listen to every book in the series.

If you’re wanting to practice your French listening, this is an exceptional resource.

Side not: Make sure you understand the simple/historic past in French - you’ll only need to learn the conjugations for the 3rd person, but it comes up *constantly*.