Guest post by Bliss at blissbloggin.blogspot.com
I had one Spanish class in third grade because I was a Texas kid. In my 20s I went to Mexico with two other women, we spent a couple of weeks playing around with an old Spanish textbook we found. When my husband and I sailed to Mexico in 1997 we took a Jr. College course, but didn’t finish it. I still have the textbook. I also have Spanish for dummies, a couple of good dictionaries, a verb book, and I use Ultralingua on my computer for translations.
But best of all I found a teacher in Guaymas, 20 min. from home, who spends an hour with me on Spanish and an hour singing Mexican songs with me. I’ve learned a lot about pronunciation and Mexican culture by singing. She’s helping me translate my blog into Spanish, goes over newspaper articles with me so I’m beginning to read more Mexican news, and helped me break into conjugating, an area where I was clueless. I could be working a lot harder (and plan to) but I’m already able to have limited conversations with Mexicans. It’s my goal to be able to have unlimited conversations on any subject and make friends with Mexicans wherever I go.
Bliss
blissbloggin.blogspot.com
Originally posted 2008-04-10 14:20:05. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Spanish Past Tense Verbs
Posted in Grammar, Spanish 7 comments so far
After a few days of not studying, I’m finding it easy to get back to where I left off. I went to the previous lesson of my Learning Spanish Like Crazy and have gone over my current lesson a couple of times, which is working on the past tense. A little confusing but not too bad if I pay attention.
What’s a little confusing is just listening to a few verbs and their present and past tenses that sound similar. Such as -
- Tomo el metro ( I take the train)
- Felipe tomó el metro. (Felipe took the train)
- Tomamos el tren hoy. (We take the train today.)
- Tomamos un taxi ayer. (We took a taxi yesterday.)
How do you tell by listening if it’s tomo or tomó or tomamos (we take) or tomamos (we took)?
I had to think about this one for a few and my purely uneducated guess is that it’s like in English, how do you know if you’re hearing to, too or two? Usually, by the context, it has to do with what the rest of the sentence is saying.
You wouldn’t say, “We take the train yesterday.” It’s all about context. There are plenty of English examples, but we’re used to hearing and sorting out the right word we don’t even think about it. I just have to get to that point while learning Spanish. Right now, it’s a matter of paying real close attention, for me anyway.
I’m sure there’s a better explanation than that, feel free to use the comments!
Even if you don’t swear or use bad words in English, you know what they are. You learned what they were at some point in your life, even if the only reason was to avoid them. The same principle can be used while learning Spanish. I don’t swear a lot in English, right now. There was a time when I swore a lot. I’m not planning on swearing a lot in Spanish, but I wanted to know, partly for curiosity and partly to know when I was being insulted or made fun of.
Also you want to make sure you’re not insulting anyone by accident by saying the wrong word or a word in the wrong way. Knowing profanity doesn’t make you a profane person, it makes you smarter so you know which words to avoid.
What I found was that it depends on what country you’re going to or in my case, where the people you’re talking to came from. Swearing has more to do with the local slang and how certain words have a meaning in one country and may mean something completely different in another country or the biggest point – In what context it’s used. Do I have to use an example? Balls. Perfectly normal everyday, family rated word used all of the time. But used in a certain context, has a completely different meaning.
Ultimate Book of Spanish Swear Words – the best and nastiest Spanish swearing and talking dirty reference. It’s full of the nastiest Spanish you’ll find anywhere.
This is the best Spanish swearing resource I have ever seen. The free slang and curse words you may find on the internet, may or may not be right. There are a ton of Spanish slang books on the market and most are filled with worthless or outdated information.
Signing up to be notified of the MP3 when it’s ready is optional and I haven’t been spammed by them at all, which is always good.
It’s only $7. More than the free resources that are incomplete or wrong and spread throughout the internet and it’s cheaper and filled with more dirty Latin slang than most any book you will find listed at Amazon or anywhere else.
It’s a great deal with some really nasty Spanish, definitely worth the $7. I highly recommend it if you want to talk some really nasty Spanish. The audio of this book should not only be informative, but hilarious as well. There are some really crazy phrases in here that will crack you up.
Link: Ultimate Book of Spanish Swear Words
Originally posted 2008-04-02 04:05:58. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Guest Post by John at mexicowoods.com
By the time I was three years old, I could speak English better than I now speak Spanish—after six years of study and five of living in Mexico full-time. Children are geniuses at acquiring language. Their brains are physiologically different—better wired for picking up vocabulary, for constructing a grammar engine. But not mine, anymore.
I’m 66. How I wish I could still learn language quickly. But feeding a genius-quality language-learning brain sucks up resources needed elsewhere later in life. We’re programmed to learn language early, after which energy gets diverted into other vital activities. Like procreation.
What do you want? French? Or sex? I rest my case.
I began preparing for living in Mexico by engaging the services of Vivian. Years ago she had been a Spanish major at the University of Alabama. She guided me through vocabulary lists and present-tense conjugations. She also gave me an accent—academy Spanish filtered through the deep south.
Six months of lessons three times a week prepared me so that on my first visit to Mexico, I could greet and thank people, inquire about bathrooms, and ask for the check. La cuenta, por favor. A most useful expression.
Carnaval Silacayoapan
Posted in Pictures 2 comments so far
En la fiesta del carnaval Silacayoapan, Oaxaca.
In the carnival on Silacayoapan, Oaxaca.
Carnaval Silacayoapan, originally uploaded by BurrodeOaxaca..
Originally posted 2008-03-31 12:40:57. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Guest post by Brenda at Brenda and Roy Going To Mexico
When we first came to Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico it was supposed to be for only six months to get away from the cold Alberta, Canada winter. I tried to learn some common words that I thought that we would need to survive. I just did this by finding free stuff on the web. I tried to learn how to ask for essential things, words for foodstuffs, simple things like that. Other than that I bought a small English/Spanish dictionary to take with us.
When we liked it so much here that we decided we wanted to retire here, we returned to Canada for 3 months to sell everything we owned, property, possessions, etc.. Needless to say this was a very busy time and I had no time for learning Spanish. The area we lived in, in Canada had no Spanish speakers to converse with. I purchased a verb book, a larger dictionary and a course of CD’s called Visual Link Spanish. With our time constraints in Canada I had very little time to use it there so we returned here still knowing next to nothing of the language.
After we settled in here, I began to use the above mentioned course and also free stuff online. The Visual Link Spanish is good for beginners like we were and I learned a lot from it.
Originally posted 2008-03-24 03:09:43. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
I don’t know about everyone else, but after listening to the same lesson over and over and over, I get a little bored. I was thinking I could find something different without spending a lot of money on an entirely different course, but still get some learning done.
Kid’s lessons or songs came to mind. Should be fairly cheap, simple and easy to understand, right? All true. But the few I’ve tried are a little irritating. They’re too simple and it may be because I’m almost fifty, but the songs and voices are more than a little irritating, but that’s probably just me. Not the worst idea I’ve had, but not so great either!
Beth Manners’ Magic Spanish for Kids: ages 2-6
I still like Learning Spanish Like Crazy. I’m kind of done with level 1. Kind of, meaning I need to go back and listen a few more times to the last five lessons to get more comfortable and quicker with my responses. Every lesson has the same format a conversation at the beginning, then smaller phrases along with new nouns and verbs are introduced. In the beginning only the present tense is introduced with new verbs. Later lessons introduce not only the present tense, but past tenses and other tenses of the verbs are not only introduced but interspersed throughout the lesson.
Usually at the end of the lesson there may be a little quiz, where you are asked a question in Spanish and told what to say in English and your response is to be in Spanish. Then the instructor repeats the answer and hopefully you were right.
There are 30 approximately 30 minute lessons. Plus several bonus lessons which include a couple of lessons from level 2. So, in level 1 you have a couple lessons from level 2 plus the insult lessons, a non-vulgar and a very vulgar insults lesson along with Spanish Idioms. Sayings that don’t really have a direct translation. With level 2 you get about the same format but more advanced of course and the bonus lessons include a couple of slang lessons and about five more regular lessons above and beyond the 30 normal lessons. Plus all of the video lessons, the user forums, pdf transcripts and weekly teleconferences. Learning Spanish Like Crazy is the best program out there.
The only lacking part is that I think there isn’t a review lesson. About every 5 or even 10 lessons I wish there was a review of the previous lessons without having to go through the entire 30 minutes of each lesson. If you only need a review going back the entire course is a much to listen to. To fix that I’ve started making my own review lessons. So far, I’m only taking the conversation at the beginning of the lesson and the little quiz at the end. In the later lessons I may go through and get some of the smaller phrases that are learned and worked on.
Get your free trial lessons, which are the real first 5 lessons to try it for yourself. Learning Spanish Like Crazy. If you can fully and easily understand the little snippet from lesson 30, you may want to go straight to Level 2, but there is still a lot of stuff in Level 1, especially in the later lessons, probably after lesson 13 it starts getting harder and it’s not just a matter of responding, it’s a matter of having to think and come up with your responses a lot quicker. Since they are on Mp3′s it’s easy to go back and even repeat the lessons several times, which most people have to do.
lesson30snippet
Originally posted 2008-05-13 06:00:50. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
