3/4 Speed

This morning was Harry Potter book club with my Desafío friends. It's fun because we take time to catch up on the week. My one friend Nous admitted she had finished the Turkish series Con Olor a Fresas. I said that I stopped around Episode 14 and switched back to Dreaming Spanish when I realized I wasn't understanding enough of the dialogue to make it comprehensible. 

So I switched back to Pablo. She said that she 'cheated' and was watching at v the quarter speed with Spanish subtitles. Thanks for the reminder Nous.🤦‍♀️🤷‍♀️🥴 I always seem to forget to slow down the speed. 

So I went back to the series and knocked out two episodes. I'm still not understanding all of it, but enough now to make it comprehensible. Thanks Nous!

Ser y Estar

From Gerald: acronyms to help remember when to use Ser and when to use Estar

You use SER in these instances:

D escripción fisica

O cupación 

C aracteristicas de la personalidad

T iempo

O rigen

R elaciones

You use ESTAR

P osiciones

L ugar (ubicación)

A cciones progressivos

C ondiciones

E mociones

Luis van Ahn

This morning I woke up and wasn't quite ready to get out of bed. So I decided to listen to this podcast since falling back asleep probably wasn't going to happen. I am happy to say that I understood 90-95% of it!  I remember listening to this once before, it's about a terrible event that happened to one of the creators of Duolingo Luis van Ahn. and one of the reasons he left Guatemala for the U.S. 

Later I had a chat with Iris and she knew exactly who Luis van Ahn was. But she hadn't heard about the kidnapping of his aunt. 

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Last night I attended Jackie's class again. I admit it's not for everyone, but her anthropology and linguistic background can make her insights extremely interesting. Not every time, mind you, but it was very interesting last night. This is the question she discussed yesterday.

Why do Spanish speakers say "se me olvido la cartera" instead of "me olvide la cartera"

I'm paraphrasing from her notes: 

In Spanish culture, accidents happen and they don't take responsibility for them.

In contrast, in English, we're quick to point out who is responsible for dropping, forgetting, spilling and losing things, even when it's an accident: I dropped it.

Though, we don't take responsibility for the cause of our feelings: You make me mad, You make me happy. You made me sad.

Jackie went on to discuss the research of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf who hypothesized  that language constrains thoughts and experiences. In English, we constrain our emotional experience when we say the other person causes us to feel an emotion.

In Spanish, we constrain responsibility for the physical cause and effect of unexpected, unintended and accidental occurrences. Things just happen by themselves sometimes.

The important takeaway from the hypotheses is that language shapes our internal experience of the world and affects our expectations of how the world/society/relationships should operate. Language plays a big role in how we structure, organize and predict, well, pretty much everything! And that affects not just us as individuals but whole societies and how we organize our families, our work, our institutions, our economies and our government. 

I promise I won't be offended if you stopped reading at 'hypothesis', but I just found this really interesting.

En Los Manos de Dios

Yesterday I attended a Duolingo event with Jill, every week she does something a little different and this week she did song lyric translations. Prior to the class she sent us a link with two videos one in English and the other in Spanish. In our breakout rooms we translated both songs as a group. It was interesting as always to hear the interpretation of lyrics by others.

The Spanish song was from a singer I hadn't heard from in decades, Nelly Furtado I knew as a Canadian singer growing up there. I didn't realize she's also Portuguese and speaks and sings in Spanish also. The song is a ballad, so it was easier to understand and a very pretty but sad song.

And if you're feeling like going down memory lane:

Say It Right

Promiscuous ft. Timbaland

Maneater

Pronombres Objetos Directo y Indirecto

Today  I went through this video with Karen after listening through it once by myself. Entiendo hasta los ejemplos al final. Los ejemplos es muy dificil para mi. Tengo un dolor en mi cabeza. 

El consejo de Karen a mi por primer solamente recordar los pronombres. Entonces, vamos a practicar muchos ejemplos hasta entiendo.

Basically the first column is indirect object pronouns when used alone. The second column shows the changes when used together with the Direct Object pronouns. Le and Les change to se because in Spanish they don't like the sound of le lo or les lo together. The third column is the direct object pronouns and they don't change.

Cuando Nadie Ve

A quickie post today. I participated in Laura's Zumba class today. She's so sweet and it's nice to support her. She had a new song today, which I love! I still can't understand lyrics at the speed they are sung, but listening and watching the video is almost comprehensible input. 

Gamificación

Today I attended a new Duolingo event with Veronica called Aprende español con gamificación or Pictionary. I find games are usually fun and this one was no exception. Veronica was a happy and fun host which also helped. In the back of my mind I'm always thinking about how we might use this in our Harry Potter club. I still working on it. I suppose I could send a private note to the drawer and have them try to draw a picture of an object from the chapter and have everyone else try to guess. That might actually be fun!

Directly after we had our Harry Potter book club meeting, the second one with the 5 of us. Summy prepared a 12 question quiz which we all took on our phones. It was fun, but I think we might try a new platform that we can answer the questions as a group. It might give us more chance to talk and learn versus a crazy beat-the-clock quiz. For reference, Cheriz told us about Kahoot.com

Keep It Fun!

I attended a new Duolingo class today, mostly for the sake of trying something new. I had gotten into a routine of attending the same classes every week and although it was fun, I lost track of whether or not it was the best use of my time. 

Today's class was titled Songs, Poems, Tales Books and History from Mexico to Learn Spanish. It sounded promising, right? And it started out great, I thought Francisco was attentive to all levels of students. Although it was labelled as Beginners and above, the majority of students were advanced. And he spoke all in Spanish, so as a complete beginner I would think you would have had difficulty understanding what was going on. It was challenging for me as an advanced beginner.

My thing was the subject of the book. We literally read and translated one paragraph of one chapter of a Mexican history book. Not my area of interest, at all. History in general to me is pretty dry. And I realized that no matter how high my motivation is for learning Spanish, if the topic isn't fun and interesting, then it's not doing me any good.  So my newly enforced motto

Spanish Level Test

The other day Ismar asked if we could take  the free Spanish Level test by Cervantes and share our results. Here's the link:

Free Spanish Level Test

I passed Level A1 with flying colors, 10/10 questions correct. But I only got 4/10 correct on the Level A2 test and you need at least 8 to pass. I'll admit I thought I would do better at Level A2 but I'm not discouraged. I understood 100% the questions on A1, without guessing at any of them, so that's an improvement! I just need to continue working and then remember to take the test again in awhile. If I work on my reading comprehension I think that would help a lot! It sounds like I should head back to the Duolingo podcasts! And the YouTube videos for comprehensible input.

This is an interview of Pablo Roman from Dreaming Spanish, discussing comprehensible input and comparing it to the traditional method of learning a language. In my opinion, I don't see any harm in pursuing both methods simultaneously.

Un Otro / No Otro

Today I had my first class with Gerald, we started on Chapter 1 of the book he sent me on Verb Conjugations. He wants to start at the beginning and fill in any holes I might have. Sheesh! He's going to find out I'm Swiss cheese LOL 😂

I did pretty well with my verb vocabulary, but I did learn a few new ones plus one extra meaning for a verb I already knew.

• cometer un error - to make an error
• poseer - to possess, to own
• temer - to fear
• esperar - to wait, to hope and to expect

I also learned when to use Cual versus Qué. The general rule is you use Cual with the verb to be and you use Qué with every other verb. Por ejemplo

• Cual es tu comida favorita
• Qué quieres comer

Of course there are exceptions to the rule, because sometimes you will use Qué with estar but only when you're asking for a definition. For example:

• Qué es tu problema? - What is your problem?

Finally my biggest error was using una before otra. That is a NO-NO! Apparently it's a Spanish teacher's nightmare. I think he was joking 😏😕 I guess I'm not alone in making the error, since it was fairly easy to find a clip on it.  I was basically translating word for word English to Spanish, which clearly doesn't always work!

Mirando la tele

Today and yesterday I spent time watching 'TV'. Since the Desafío ended I had lost the habit of watching. So I watched several videos of Dreaming Spanish and then I started in on Con Olor a Fresas, such an addicting show. I noticed my friend had blogged about it the other day also, so NOT the only one who finds it addicting. I started watching last night then again during my lunch break and then again after work. Ridiculous! However I understand I'd say about 65-70% of the dialogue. The story is pretty easy to follow, but sometimes some of the longer dialogues that are less superficial is more difficult for me to understand. But there are I think 65 more episodes to keep practicing with!

I chatted with Iris again today. She's the one who inspired me to start watching TV again. She's currently watching Modern Family, which in my opinion has very fast dialogue! But she says she can understand all of it! Her issue is she never started speaking right away because she was shy. Now she's playing catch up. I'm just the opposite, I have no problem nattering on in Spanish regardless of how many mistakes I make, but I have a hard time with listening comprehension. The program is fun though, so it's easy to practice!

Y No Hago Mas Na'

Today with Karen we played LyricsTraining with this song Y No Hago Mas Na' by El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico.

The lyrics contain a lot of reflexive verbs as a review of the past few weeks. It's a salsa about a man who basically is taken care of by his wife. According to Karen, he is a mantenido, which is not a favourable description. He is basically a kept man. Lyrics are always good for learning new words and new expressions. Here are a few from this song:

• hamaca - hammoc
• platicar - charla (entre con amigos)
• pegar - to paste
• se me pega el sueño - I'm sleepy
• pegarle a alguien - crash or hit someone
• enseguida - right now (ahora mismo)
• doblado el lomo - work hard 
• huelga - strike or protest
• cupones - literally coupons, but means welfare

Sigo a él

Track #75 continued

necesitar - to need

Cuando necesites - Whenever you need (informal)

elegir - to choose

eligo - I choose

eliges - you choose (informal)

seguir - to follow, to continue, to carry on

sigo - I follow

sige - he follows

siges - you follow (informal)

sigen - they follow

seguimos - we follow ('e' is not stressed so doesn't change to an 'i')

conseguir - to get, to manage to

consigo - I get

perseguir - to chase

persigo - I get

I will follow you wherever you go. - Te sigo a donde vayas. Which brings me to my clip which is from the movie The Sister Act, which I've watched, but the music clips I've watched many times. A line from this clip is 'I will follow him. Follow him wherever he may go. ' or Te sigo a él. Sigo a él a donde vaya. Did you spot the actress who plays Professor McGonagall? 

Hazlo Por Ella

Review of Track #75 of Language Transfer Mihalis begins with the verb hacer, which means to make or to do. Normally to turn that into an informal positive command you would start with the present tense of informal you, haces, drop the 's' to get hace. But it's irregular so it's actually haz. So 'Do it' is Hazlo.

He then moves to another use of the mood tense, which is to turn words like where into wherever. 

• Where you want- Donde quieres
• Wherever you want- Donde quieres
• Do it wherever you want- Hazlo donde quieras 

Other examples with how and prefer

• You like it- Te gusta
• Do it how you like it- Hazlo como te gusta
• Do it however you like- Hazlo como te guste
• Do what you prefer- Haz lo que prefieres
• Do whatever you prefer- haz lo que prefieras 
• Eat whatever you prefer- Come lo que prefieras (informal)
• Coma lo que prefiera (formal)
• Coman lo que prefieran (more than one person)

The clip for today is 'Hazlo Por Ella', the Simpsons in Spanish, it boggles my mind. 

Indirect Object pronoun

Those darn little words still mess me up so it's always good to review. Now that the Desafío is over I'm still going to blog, but I can keep them short and sweet just for my ownself. This is an example I pulled from Spanish Class with Jackie.

¿Qué hicieron ayer los monos en el parque zoológico?

Ayer los monos les tiraron la comida a los turistas!

• Direct Object: la comida, which receives the action of the verb. Answers the question, What did the monkeys throw? the food
• Indirect Object: les / los turistas, the recipients of the action of the verb. Answers the question, At/to whom did the monkeys throw the food? at the tourists.

les is the indirect pronoun for 3rd person plural, referring to the tourists, who received the action, that is, the throwing of the food by the monkeys

Simple right? On paper it is, using it in conversation is a different story.

And I end with a video of Pocoyo bailando el mono de alambre. I know it's a kid's show, but I still enjoy it. Still a kid at heart I guess?

El final

The end of the Desafío, I kind of miss waking up in the morning, checking my emails and knowing there would be an email with the tarea for the day. I completed my 'final exam' which was to have a call with a native Spanish speaker completely in Spanish, record and share a snippit with the Telegram group. I did fine, I had a little trouble with comprehension but was able to work my way around it, I think 😕. Iris offered to do a practice run first but I wanted to follow the spirit of the exam and keep it impromptu and unscripted. I did alright and I'm pretty proud of the work I've done over the last 90 days. I still have a lot farther to go before I reach my goal. 

I spoke a little longer with Iris about her English studies. She said she'd studied grammar once a week since 2017 with little or no improvement. But in January of this year she started Duolingo events and then added watching TV, movies, listening to music about 3 hours a day and now she says she's stopped translating in her head and can think in English. She even dreamed in English one time. I would love to get to that point. So onward and upward we go!

I end with this clip of El Final Explicado De La Trilogía de Matrix. Partly because it follows with the them of todays post, partly because I can only understand about 25% of this clip so I'm hoping when I come back to it in the future I'll see an improvement but mostly because I love the Matrix trilogy. Go Neo! And good luck to all my fellow compañeros.